The Mayflower and the First giving
The year 1970 was the 350th anniversary of the establishment of Plymouth Colony. To commemorate this anniversary, a reenactment of what has come to be known as the first giving was planned. In addition, a replica of the Mayflower was moored in Plymouth Harbor, near Plymouth Rock, the purported landing site of the Pilgrims on the Massachusetts mainland (the Pilgrims actually landed near the tip of Cape Cod first).
AIM joined with Wampanoags to protest the continued retelling of American history from a strictly Euro-American perspective. First came a march replete with drumming and singing to where organizers of the anniversary celebration were staging a giving dinner. Those in attendance were dressed as Pilgrims, and when Dennis Banks, Means, and other protesters entered, they were invited to join the dinner. Instead, Banks overturned one of the tables. Others followed suit and then set off for Plymouth Rock.
Banks suggested taking over the Mayflower. A group of demonstrators boarded the ship, tossed off the gangplank, and threw overboard mannequins dressed in period costumes. Leaving the ship after assurances from police that there would be no arrests, they gathered around a statue of Massasoit, who had befriended the Pilgrims, to listen to Means speak of Wampanoag generosity toward the Pilgrims.
The following spring, AIM held its first convention. The Saint Paul gathering was intended to establish AIM as a national organization, and Means was elected national coordinator. Later in 1971, Means returned to Mount Rushmore for another demonstration and participated in a Sun Dance at Pine Ridge. Guided by a highly respected Lakota holy man, Frank Fools Crow, Means participated in the dance and was pierced. During the ceremony, Fools Crow pierced Means’s chest with a razor blade and inserted a stick. With a rope connecting the stick to the sacred Sun Dance tree, Means approached the tree several times before pulling away hard enough to cause the stick to rip out from his skin. The piercing served as a process of spiritual purification and sacrifice intended to benefit the community.
Justice for Raymond Yellow Thunder
Means was invited to attend a conference in Omaha, Nebraska, in February 1972 to address the special needs of urban Indians. Shortly before the conference, he learned of a killing that had occurred in Gordon, Nebraska. Raymond Yellow Thunder had been accosted by a group of whites, beaten, and forced to dance naked from the waist down before attendees at a dance at the local American Legion Hall. His body was discovered a few days later, and five people had been arrested, including Leslie and Melvin Hare, sons of a prominent area rancher.
Family members of Yellow Thunder were concerned that Raymond’s death would be swept under the rug, a belief augmented by the authorities’ refusal to let the family view Raymond’s body. They approached AIM for help. Contributing to concern over a lack of justice was the reputation that Gordon police had for sexually assaulting Indian women with impunity. An important link to AIM was through Russell Means, whose mother had lived in the same community on Pine Ridge as the Yellow Thunder family.
In addition to AIM members, many others converged on Gordon. Ultimately, as many as 1,400 Indians from more than 80 tribes were present, leading many residents to hide indoors and merchants to shut their businesses.6
Means, Banks, and Leonard Crow Dog were among those leading a march into Gordon on March 8. Means, who had advised participants earlier to gather all the U. S. flags they could find and wear them upside down (the international distress signal that remains the AIM emblem), broke off from the group and took down the flag from the Post Office, draping it over himself. Means gave a captivating speech at the Neighborhood Center and then announced that the protestors would take over the city auditorium, a building that housed the city offices, including the mayor’s office and the jail.
Ordered to appear to hear grievances, Mayor Bruce Moore, a local businessman, dutifully showed up. Stew Magnuson, writing in The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder, describes the scene:
The mayor, Britton [the city manager], and the three council members sat on their folding chairs as Means berated them, asking pointed questions but interrupting them before they could respond. The audience, packed all the way up the arena-style seats, looked down on them, some jeering like a Greek chorus. Soon, Means was shouting in Moore’s face, calling him and his town “racist.” The mayor tried to get a word in edgewise, but there was no talking to this angry
7
Man.
In his tirade, Means several times referred explicitly to John Paul, the police officer accused but never convicted of sexually assaulting Indian women in his police car.
Clyde and Vernon Bellecourt then demanded that the mayor go with them to his office and call Governor J. J. Exon to demand a grand jury investigation. Moore made the call, and the governor responded by dispatching representatives to Gordon.
The following day, Means, Banks, and Clyde Bellecourt met with Mayor Moore, Police Chief Robert Case, County Attorney Michael Smith, and Governor Exon’s representative, Clive Short. Several AIM demands were agreed to, including suspending Officer Paul, allowing access to the coroner’s report, and allowing another autopsy arranged by AIM. In addition, a Gordon biracial committee was established to identify and oppose racism in the area.
The trial of the Hare brothers was moved to a different town, Alliance, where it was attended by Means and other AIM members. They expected the
Hares to get off, but instead the jury brought in a guilty verdict on charges of false imprisonment and manslaughter. Leslie received a sentence of 6 years, Melvin 2 years; the brothers would serve just 2 years and 10 months, respectively, before being released on parole. In a separate trial, Robert Bayliss received a sentence of 4 years for his participation in the crime, but, like the Hares, served only a portion of that time. The results were both gratifying and disappointing. It was not at all unusual for Euro-Americans to escape prison time entirely for crimes against Indians, even murder. Even so, the actual time that the men served was clearly inadequate given the serious nature of the crime.
AIM was taking up so much of Means’s time by the middle of 1972 that he decided to leave the Cleveland American Indian Center and return to South Dakota to concentrate solely on working with AIM. Back at Porcupine on the Pine Ridge Reservation, he received a third name, Oyate Wacinyapi, which means “Works for the People”—by that time an appropriate name for Means.
The Trail of Broken Treaties
Also in the 1970s, Means was one of the leaders of the AIM-directed effort known as the Trail of Broken Treaties. The name derived from the forced journey of Cherokees from Georgia to Oklahoma between 1836 and 1840, known as the Trail of Tears, and the long series of treaties that the U. S. government had violated over the years. Means was charged with leading a caravan of cars from Seattle to Washington, D. C. Among those joining Means were members of the Survival of American Indians Association, including the organization’s president, Hank Adams, who would play an important role in the event.
Although AIM had organized the Trail of Broken Treaties, large numbers of nonmembers joined on the way to Washington, D. C., as three caravans, originating in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle, made stops at various centers of Indian life along the way. During a stopover at the Minnesota state fairgrounds at Saint Paul, the group divided into workshops to address individual issues such as land rights, treaties, and tribal government. Hank Adams then took the results of the workshops and composed a set of 20 demands to be presented to government officials in Washington.
The merged caravans, now carrying approximately 1,000 people, arrived in Washington early in the morning on Friday, November 3, 1972. The effort to present a set of 20 points detailing failures of the federal government to uphold treaty provisions and generally treat Indians with some degree of justice quickly, by a chain of unintended events, led to the takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building.
The chain reaction began with the failure of city or government authorities to provide promised housing. Instead, they sent the arrivals to a dilapidated church, where their proposed sleeping quarters in the basement were shared with rats. Angrily, everyone got back in their vehicles and headed to the BIA building. Directed by BIA officials, they next went to an armory, only to find
Henry Adams
Henry Adams (born 1944), usually referred to as Hank Adams, is an Assiniboine from Montana. He moved as a child to Washington State when his mother married a Quinault. Adams thus grew up on a reservation established where the Quinault people traditionally lived—a rarity for American Indians. The Qui-naults had long fished for salmon and trout, but logging and government restrictions had impeded their ability to fish.
Adams was an outstanding student in high school and continued his education at the University of Washington. However, his growing awareness of the Indian struggle to maintain traditional ways of life, including the fish-ins that began in Washington in the early 1960s, especially by the Puyallup and Nisqually fishermen, drew him into political activism.
Adams helped organize a march by 1,000 Indians and the actor Marlon Brando to the Washington state capitol in 1964 to protest fishing policies. Eventually, his leadership on the fishing-rights issue bore fruit, as the Northwest tribes gained the right to half of the salmon catch in the region. Adams also worked with Ralph Nader, Vine Deloria at the National Congress of American Indians, and Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign of 1968.
In 1968, Adams became director of Survival of the American Indians Association, a position he continued to hold well into the twenty-first century. During the 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties, Adams composed the 20 points presented to the federal government as an attempt to further the quest for tribal sovereignty. As a presidential envoy, he helped to negotiate an end to the occupation and siege at Wounded Knee in 1973. Never a flamboyant figure, Adams has worked diligently, often behind the scenes, to improve life for American Indians throughout the country.
The housing there once again inadequate. That led to a second directive—to go to the BIA auditorium.
Packed into the auditorium, the large group awaited the arrival of federal officials to whom the 20 points could be presented. No one showed up, and eventually the protestors were told that the building was being closed for the day and they would have to leave. Means, obviously angered and frustrated over the repeated slights, stood up and yelled, “This is no longer the BIA building! This is now the American Indian embassy.”8 Suddenly, Indians went into action, barricading doors. Employees were allowed to leave, and AIM leaders directed that there be no stealing or damage, although those orders would be disobeyed as the occupation continued for the better part of a week.
The following day, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Louis Bruce added his support, resisting orders from his boss, Assistant Secretary of the Interior Harrison Loesch, to expel AIM and the others and offer no assistance. That support would cost Bruce his job.
Occupation leaders tried to negotiate, but the response from Interior Department officials was that they must first vacate the BIA building. Meanwhile, police ringed the building, with the occupants constantly expecting an attack to evict them by force. President Nixon at the time was away from Washington wrapping up his reelection bid in the final days before the 1972 presidential election.
According to Means, there was considerable disagreement over tactics. Hank Adams and others wanted to destroy the building rather than simply surrender. AIM leaders, including Dennis Banks and Clyde and Vernon Bellecourt, argued against that approach as counterproductive and certain to produce a public relations disaster. Means favored Adams’s position but declined publically to disagree with other AIM leaders.9
With prospects for a peaceful settlement (short of surrender) looking increasingly dim, AIM leaders were contacted by White House officials about 5:00 P. M. on Friday, November 10, requesting a delegation to discuss the situation. According to Means, the group decided that the BIA building would be set on fire if no agreement were reached by 6:00 p. m. After the negotiation team left, others began looting items and destroying offices and bathrooms. Some started burning files, but Means directed them instead to take documents, hoping to find evidence of BIA wrongdoing. In fact, the stolen documents were later passed on to the muckraking columnist Jack Anderson, who used them as sources for writing exposes concerning the BIA.
As Means was about to order setting fire to the building, Vernon Bellecourt argued for waiting until the negotiators returned. A few minutes later, the negotiators phoned with the news that they had arrived at an agreement. The White House had agreed to consider the 20 points and respond within 30 days, and to provide travel money for members of the Trail of Broken Treaties to return home. Later that night, Caspar Weinberger and Leonard Garment arrived with approximately $66,000.
The next day, Means and the others who had remained in the BIA building left, feeling that they had accomplished a victory. That victory appeared less obvious later, when the government rejected all 20 demands.
World History
