Against mistreatment by landlords and law enforcement officials.

In time, AIM’s ambitions began to grow. At its height, the group’s demands encompassed economic independence, revitalization of traditional culture, protection of legal rights, and, most especially, autonomy over tribal lands and areas and the restoration of lands that Indians believed the U. S. government illegally seized in the past.

Joining in the wave of militancy prevalent in many activist groups, such as the Black Panthers, AIM, too, took militant action. In 1969, AIM seized and occupied the defunct federal prison of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay, symbolically protesting the inefficiency of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) in handling Indian welfare issues. The group converted the prison into an Indian education and cultural center until forced by government officials in 1971 to abandon the enterprise. In November 1972, AIM was instrumental in the weeklong occupation by Native Americans of the BIA building in Washington, D. C., and, in early 1973, the group took over the village of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, for 10 weeks. The occupation of Wounded Knee came almost a century after the massacre of Native Americans at the site by the U. S. Cavalry in 1890. Protestors gathered to remember the massacre and protest contemporary Native American injustices as well as the numerous treaties made with Native American tribes that were broken by the U. S. government.

Involved in much highly publicized protest, AIM was thought too militant by many, generally older, Native Americans who believed change could occur through peaceful means and who sought to distance themselves from the movement. This caused a division between the older and younger generations who felt that their elders had “sold out” to the white establishment. With many of its leaders in prison and rife with internal dissention, AIM’s national leadership disbanded in 1978, although local chapters continue to function.

Further reading: Vine Deloria, Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (New York: Macmillan, 1969); Paul Chaat Smith, Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee (New York: New Press, 1996).

—Nichole Suzanne Prescott