American Indian Movement
The American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded in 1968 by Dennis Banks and
others as a militant civil rights organization that aimed to correct injustices
perpetrated against American Indians. AIM’s goals focused on economic
independence, preservation of traditional culture, civil rights, autonomy for tribal
lands, and the restoration of lands seized by the government to American Indians.
AIM was involved in the occupation of Alcatraz in 1969–1971 as well as the Second
Battle of Wounded Knee in 1973.
“Self Determination of Free Peoples”: Founding
Documents of the American Indian Movement
(AIM)
The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 sought to restore tribal self-determination.
In the early 1950s, Congress passed legislation to limit this Act, terminating some
American Indian reservations and cutting economic support for others. From 1950
to 1970, more than 100 American Indian tribes lost reservation lands, and the
percentage of American Indians living on reservations dropped from 87% to 45%.
These changes forced young American Indians to look for work in urban areas. In
1968, young urban-based American Indians in Minnesota formed the American
Indian Movement (AIM) to fight mistreatment of American Indians by police and to
improve prospects for jobs, education, and housing. In the early 1970s, AIM
pressured the Federal government to honor 19th-century treaties that had
established Indian peoples as sovereign entities. In 1972, AIM initiated “The Trail of
Broken Treaties,” an intertribal caravan to reservations and subsequent march to
Washington. In 1973, more than 2,000 American Indians came to Wounded Knee,
South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, following a courthouse disturbance. At
this historic site where a massacre of Indians by U.S. cavalry soldiers in 1890 ended
years of armed conflict, the demand for hearings on sovereignty rights was met with
a siege by FBI forces, Federal marshals, and BIA police. The 71-day stand-off ended
with assurances that the White House would seriously review the 1868 Fort
Laramie Treaty that had recognized sovereignty of the Lakota nation and their
rights to valuable lands. That promise failed to materialize, and in the next few years
more than 60 AIM members were killed at Pine Ridge. By the end of the decade,
plagued by repression and internal disputes, AIM declined as a leading militant
organization, although one faction remains. The following foundational documents
were submitted to a Congressional committee by undercover FBI informant Doug
Durham, who served for a time as AIM’s Director of Security.
To the Great White Father
The following is an excerpt from the proclamation “To the Great White Father and
All His People,” written by an activist who occupied Alcatraz Island.
We, the Native Americans, re-claim the land known as Alcatraz Island in the name of
all American Indians by right of discovery. . . . We will purchase said Alcatraz Island
for twenty-four dollars [$24] in glass beads and red cloth, a precedent set by the
white man’s purchase of a similar island [Manhattan] about 300 years ago.
We feel that this so-called Alcatraz Island is more suitable for an Indian Reservation,
as determined by the white man’s own standards.
1. It is isolated from modern facilities, and without adequate means of
transportation.
2. It has no fresh running water.
3. It has inadequate sanitation facilities.
4. There are no oil or mineral rights.
5. There is no industry and so unemployment is very great.
6. There are no health care facilities.
7. The soil is rocky and non-productive; and the land does not support game
(animals).
8. There are no educational facilities.
9. The population has exceeded the land base.
10. The population has always been held prisoners and kept dependent upon others.