In 1968, three Anishinabe—Dennis Banks, George Mitchell, and Clyde Bellecourt—founded AIM, the
American Indian Movement, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Many of its original members were urban Indians who had left the reservations to work in the cities. Of course, not all Native Americans live on reservations or on tribal trust lands; in fact, it is estimated by the United States Census Bureau that more than half of all Native Americans live elsewhere. AIM has been one of the most active and militant of all the Native American political groups fighting for Indian rights and improved social conditions on and off reservations.
Members of AIM participated in the 1969 takeover of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco, the 1972 occupation of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D. C., and the 1973 seizure of Wounded Knee in South Dakota, the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. Like many of the conflicts of past centuries, each of these events is a dramatic story of moves and counter-moves—and sometimes violence—between Indians and federal agents. At the 1973 Wounded Knee incident, two Native Americans—Frank Clearwater, a CHEROKEE, and Buddy Lamont, a Sioux—were killed and a federal marshall was wounded. One result of these protests was to help call public attention to the violation of treaty rights by the federal and state governments and to the resulting poverty of the Native American.
World History
