The American Indian Movement (AIM) was an organized group of American Indians who spoke out against false treaties they had experienced, blunt racism, and leadership. They were relatively peaceful protestors who demanded the rights promised to them by the United States government. The AIM movement took place between 1968 and 1978. This time period was a harsh one for the Indian people. Many of them had been removed from the reservations they called home and were forced to assimilate with modern American culture by the United States government. This is what ultimately sparked the movement to gain the rights that they as a people were promised and end racism against their culture once and for all.
AIM was founded in July of 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. AIM was at first framed to address Native American treaty issues, assimilation, and all the while tending to occurrences of police violence and bigotry against Indians compelled to move far from reservations and ancestral culture by the Indian Termination Policies. AIM’s foremost target was to make genuine financial freedom for the Indians. AIM was founded and led by activists such as Clyde Bellecourt, Vernon Bellecourt, Mary Jane Wilson, Dennis Banks, and George Mitchell. The first year of the movement was particularly about educating the American people about AIM. They sought to achieve this goal through gaining press attention through events held. These events included the mass Indian takeover of Alcatraz, the occupation of Mount Rushmore, and the Seize of the Mayflower on the 350th anniversary marking pilgrims making landfall in America. Things such as the AIM song were also greatly associated with the movement and assisted in attention.
The event that gained the most attention to the movement while it was still in its early stages was the occupation of Alcatraz Island on the morning of November 20th, 1969. This movement was led by a Mohawk activist Richard Oakes and consisted of 89 Indians. Since many different activists from several tribes were involved, this occupation was an “Indians of All Tribes” (IOAT) movement. The goal of this occupation was to attempt to honor the Treaty of Fort Laramie between the United States government and the Lakota Tribe. This treaty stated that upon retirement, any federal land would be returned to the Native Americans that once occupied it. With Alcatraz being retired federal land it belonged to the Indians. At the height of the occupation there were 400 American people. American Indians and non-Indian individuals conveyed nourishment and other fundamental things to the general population on the island, however the Coast Guards barricades made it progressively harder to supply the inhabitants with sustenance. The providers, after stealthily traveling over the cove through kayak, dropped off the provisions which at that point must be brought up treacherous ladders. This occupation came to an end when Richard Oakes’ 13-year-old daughter fell to her death. This led to Richard Oakes and his family leaving the island which caused the occupation to collapse.
Arguably the most famous protest conducted by AIM was held at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, this protest is known today as the Wounded Knee Incident. The Wounded Knee Incident was the seize and occupation of the town of Wounded Knee which was a part of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. This location was selected because of the historical significance it has as for being where the Wounded Knee Massacre took place in late 1890. Around 200 Indians took over the town and held it for 71 days until government agencies including United States Marshalls, FBI Agents, and other law enforcement agencies took over. According to the United States Marshall website the only reason shots were exchanged is because of the lack of cooperation from the Indians side. Several days before shots were fired by either side 6 FBI Agents were attacked and pinned down at a road block near Wounded Knee. This sparked an almost immediate and rash response from all government agencies involved. As the smoke cleared at Wounded Knee 2 Indians lay dead and 2 government officials lay dead as well. However, these are only the confirmed deaths. Many Indians believe that the government killed much more of them including an activist who wasn’t even a part of AIM, he was simply there to support the movement. Closely following this occupation, the media gained knowledge of what happened and they ran with it. Headlines read “Armed Indians Seize Wounded Knee, Hold Hostages”. This is yet another great example of how the country portrays Indians and the extreme racism that they faced.
These events greatly helped the AIM movement gain enough attention to where they believed they could make a difference. In June of 1974 AIM started the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC). The IITC’s main goal was to push treaties that had been ignored for years and make new ones that would more strongly apply to the Indians current situation. They also heavily sought to get Indians involved in local, statewide, nationwide, and international events. In 1974 the IITC also wrote their Declaration of Continuing Independence. This article stated that they would continue to fight for the independence they were guaranteed by the United States government upon their original removal in the late 1800’s. So far, the IITC has assisted in the progression of several treaties and they are still around today. Their fight has not stopped, they still hold events to this day trying to raise awareness for the lack of respect and unfair treatment they face.
The amount of mistreatment that the American Indians suffered at the hands of the government and white Americans is unimaginable. Ever since Europeans set foot on modern day American soil we have been pushing the Indians closer and closer to extinction. Upon European arrival, there was somewhere between 10 and 90 million Indians in America, now they are estimated to be 0.3% of modern society. In the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s we forced the Indians to drop everything that they knew and assimilate to this new culture, American Culture. This in itself made a great deal of their population slowly start to fade away. With assimilation, all the values that Indians had grown up with would be stripped away and they would have to adopt all American values, beliefs, and the language that we speak. Indian children were forced to attend assimilation schools to teach them this new culture. Some of these boarding schools were on reservations and some were boarding schools but they all had the same agenda; to strip down all traces of their culture and replace it with our own. Some schools required their students to wear school uniforms while others even cut their students hair so they would look more “normal”. This is not even the worst of it.
Arguably the worst thing the United States did to the Indians was make them move west, this is known as the Trail of Tears. By 1840, countless Native Americans had been driven off of their property in the southeastern states and compelled to move over the Mississippi to Indian region (uncharted lands). The federal government guaranteed that their new land would stay left alone always, yet as the line of white settlement pushed westbound, Indian land shrank and shrank. In 1907, Oklahoma turned into a state and Indian region was away for good. This push westward caused thousands of casualties from many different tribes. By 1838, just around 2,000 Cherokees had left Georgia for Indian land. President Martin Van Buren sent General Winfield Scott and 7,000 troopers to facilitate the evacuation procedure. Scott and his troops constrained the Cherokee into stockades at bayonet point while the white soldiers plundered their homes and things. There was a combined total of 16,000 Cherokee who said they would peacefully leave, and with the low amount honoring the treaty drastic measures were taken to remove them. The trek stretched more than 1,200 miles
and with diseases such as whooping cough spreading rapidly over 5,000 Cherokee died.
These awful events are what I believe led to the creation of AIM and the beginning of the American Indian Movement. The American Indians had rightfully had enough. Enough getting pushed from place to place, enough just being a part of someone’s agenda, enough being treated like a bothersome mosquito in the ear of America. AIM led many great movements and protests and in the end, they got their point across relatively well. It took a great deal of time, energy, and patience with the United States government and citizens alike. Near the end of the movement they conducted a very respectful and productive protest called the Longest Walk. This was a spiritual walk led by Dennis Banks (a co-founder of AIM) and stretched across the entire country, 3000 miles. This is the highpoint of the American Indian Movement and marked the end of the movement. What most historians believe to be the end was the smoking of a ceremonial tobacco pipe that had been carried across the nation on the Longest Walk. They smoked this pipe on the Washington Monument in Washington D.C. and people from all different backgrounds came to witness the occasion. This not only marked the strength of the Indian people but also marked the end to one of the most successful movements in American Hisory.