Fighting Racial Injustice: The American Indian Movement

Houses, land, and culture all taken away in the blink of an eye. The Native Americans faced centuries of troubled interaction with their co-inhabitants “white America”. Attempts to take land from Native Americans happened almost routinely. The land that generations of families were raised on, made memories on and thrived on was at risk of being completely seized. In addition to stripping land and resources dry from Native American land, their culture was also wiped from their bodies as you could wipe off sweat on a hot summer day. Cultural traditions and physical appearances changed for Native Americans to compel them more fitting for a white mans America.

Centuries of this abuse followed into modern times where Native Americans were fed up with the way they were treated. In 1968 The American Indian Movement was founded in order to protest injustice against Native Americans, Dennis Banks, Clyde Bellecourt, Vernon Bellecourt, well respected people in the Native American community. The American Indian Movement members participated in various acts that helped gain back what was theirs little by little. At one point American Indian Movement members in 1972 marched to the White House and put these 20 demands in front of the President of the United States Richard Nixon:

“1.Restoration of treaty making (ended by Congress in 1871).

2. Establishment of a treaty commission to make new treaties (with sovereign Native Nations).

3. Indian leaders to address Congress.

4. Review of treaty commitments and violations.

5. Unratified treaties to go before the Senate.

6. All Indians to be governed by treaty relations.

7. Relief for Native Nations for treaty rights violations.

8. Recognition of the right of Indians to interpret treaties.

9. Joint Congressional Committee to be formed on reconstruction of Indian relations.

10. Restoration of 110 million acres of land taken away from Native Nations by the United States.

11. Restoration of terminated rights.

12. Repeal of state jurisdiction on Native Nations.

13. Federal protection for offenses against Indians.

14. Abolishment of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

15. Creation of a new office of Federal Indian Relations.

16. New office to remedy breakdown in the constitutionally prescribed relationships between the United States and Native Nations.

17. Native Nations to be immune to commerce regulation, taxes, trade restrictions of states.

18. Indian religious freedom and cultural integrity protected.

19. Establishment of national Indian voting with local options; free national Indian organizations from governmental controls

20. Reclaim and affirm health, housing, employment, economic development, and education for all Indian people.” (Wittstock, Laura Waterman & Salinas, Elaine — aimovement.org )

American Indian Movement members participated in protests that would lead to wins such as winning back acres of land, and ensuring their liberty on their soil. In 1973 a ferocious battle occurred on Wounded Knee, a Oglala Lakota Sioux Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, in South Dakota. This is the same location where almost a century ago there was a massacre between the U.S Army’s 7th Calvary, Lakota Sioux people and their chief Big Foot. Tensions that rose to this occasion stemmed from President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830. This act allowed President Andrew Jackson to negotiate with Native Americans to move them into territory other than their Native Land. Tensions rose as the years went on which led to the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890.

In 1973 two hundred American Indian Movement members marched to Wounded Knee in an attempt to occupy back what was theirs. The siege lasted in the historical site for 71 days with a standoff against the United States Government.

Wounded Knee 1973

Work Cited

John. “Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement.” American Indian Culture & Research Journal 29, no. 2 (June 2005): 147–149. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed April 22, 2018).

Rich, Elizabeth. “Remember Wounded Knee”: AIM’s Use of Metonymy in 21st Century Protest.” College Literature 31, no. 3 (Summer2004 2004): 70–91. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost

Cannon, Angie. 2003. “HEALING OLD WOUNDS.” U.S. News & World Report 135, no. 22: 34–39. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed April 22, 2018).