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  Anna Mae Aquash
  Leonard Peltier
  Russell Means


A Our contries Indian Movement (AIM), is an American Indian civil rights group in the United States that burst on the national scene with its seizure of Alcatraz Island in 1968, the BIA headquarters in Inland northwest, D.C., around 1972 and the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. AIM was cofounded by Dennis Banks, Herb Powless, Clyde Bellecourt, Eddie Benton Banai, and numerous others around 1968. Russell Means is also the member.

In the decades since AIM's instauration, a class action has led protests advocating Native Our contries interests, elysian ethnical renewal, monitored constabulary activities & coordinated employment software around cities & inside rural reservation communities through a United States. AIM typically has supported more native interests outside a United States, too.

AIM today
AIM's original mission involved protecting native population from either law force abuse, utilizing CB radios & law force scanners for even even to the scenes of alleged crimes involving native population prior to or when police arrived, for the purpose of documenting or preventing police brutality. AIM Patrols however function wall street of Minneapolis.

AIM has move within opposing a utilise of native caricatures as mascots for sports teams, like a Atlanta Braves and the Washington Redskins, organizing protests at World Series & Very Bowl games involving people teams.

Founders of AIM, based on data from Peter Matthiessen's book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, include Dennis Banks, Clyde Bellecourt, who directs a Peace Maker Center in Minneapolis and administers U.S. Department of Labor job-development services, Eddie Benton-Benai, a school administrator for the Little Red School House in Minneapolis and at Lac Courte Oreilles, Wisconsin, and Russell Means, who has worked as an actor and remains politically active, running for Governor of New Mexico and for president of the Oglala Sioux tribe in 2002. An additional world health organization contributed greatly to the AIM was Leonard Peltier, who is presently serving a sentence on to his involvement in the surety standoff sustaining federal law enforcement agencies at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975.

Fractures witharound the previous AIM leadership use resulted in reciprocal rhetorical attacks, by having Russell Means, sleep in the west, making allegations in the book against Minneapolis AIM leaders Clyde & Vernon Bellecourt. Numerous chapters work independently, & a few under an incorporated umbrella organization process per Bellecourts.

View [http://www.aimovement.org/moipr/USvAIMbackground.html BACKGROUND on US Government War Against AIM] and [http://www.americanindianmovement.org/txaim/bellecourts.html Autonomous American Indian Movement - The Real© Thing] for a positions of the Gr& Governing Council and the Autonomous AIM.

Other activities
In a period of the Sandinista/Indian conflict of the mid-1980s, Russel Means sided with Meskito Indians opposing that country's Sandinista government. Predictably, this stance damaged a few of AIM's trend lines from either numbers of Anglo dominated leftwing organizations in the U.S., world health organization opposed Contra activities & supported a Sandinista movement. Contra activities involved seditious enlisting among Nicaraguan native groups including a Meskito. [http://www.russellmeans.com/int.html]

Further recently, Means, Banks & more AIM affiliates keep around rallied inside trend lines of John Graham & Arlo Searching Cloud, world health organization were indicted within 2003 for the 1976 murder of Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash.

As well, inside Denver, a AIM Branch has organized each year demonstrations sustaining a Chicano community against the Columbus Day Parade held by the Sons of Italy. Apparently, Columbus Day originated inside Colorado as a legally recognized holiday.

The Pine Ridge incidents
AIM at Pine Ridgethe Pine Ridge action involved the alleged pickings of eleven surety & led to a seventy-1-day standoff by having federal offices. As the result a could have-off & following lawsuits in the period of which virtually all accused AIM members were not guilty, winter wren law & action at Pine Ridge resulted in the dying a immature Indigen Our contries, Joseph Stuntz & deuce FBI offices, Jack Coler & Ronald Williams.

A 1973 have-off centered about an arbitrary federal payout of Pine Ridge's treaty-depending claim to the gold-rich Black Hills of South Dakotthe, when well as allegations of federal & tribal law brutality on the Pine Ridge Reservation & allegations of brutality by a tribal class action attached by having the food and drug administration Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOONS). United states of america Court of Appeals Judge Gerald Heaney concluded that Indigen Americans were part blameful for the 1975 firefight in which Stuntz, Coler & Williams died, however that a federal government got "overreacted" when you took & fallowing a 1973 Injured Knee have-off. Heaney said that overreaction created the climate of terror that led to the calamitous shoot-out.

When of 2004, a Sioux nations have eventually to assume the personal injury settlement it were offered within compensation for the Black Hills. Since 1973, many AIM-affiliated groups use install camp at a Black Hills to resist what it view as an arbitrary payout. the 1975 AIM camp in Pine Ridge became the places of a calamitous gunplay that left a single AIM affiliate & ii FBI agencies dead.

AIM maintained Injured Knee residents experienced invited their assistance within 1973 to defend their homes against official & vigilance man attacks, however that a FBI so surrounded a children, profits holding the AIM members surety. Many lawsuits resulted from either a confrontation, which resulted inside a select few court-court brawls by owning U.S. Marshals, however couple of AIM members were convicted for their roles in the standoff.

Lawyer Larry Levanthal, world health organization served when guidance for AIM said, "The courts found that there was illegal use of the military, illegal wiretap, false testimony, bribing of witnesses, covering up of crimes, subornation of perjury, deception of the counsel and deception of the courts."

AIM has been a subject of good deal disputation, a few of it centering as much as a 1977 trial of Leonard Peltier, an AIM leader with apparent involvement in the 1975 Pine Ridge killings of two FBI agencies. A select few militant doubt that he was responsible these killings, & Amnesty International, among others, has called for his release. Others say the killings occurred inside a war-such as environment, & that Peltier's unrevealed role in the killings should become reviewed therein context. Peltier acknowledged he was at least section of an extended-range shoot retired when you took a disastrous encounter. (View Leonard Peltier for more reference.)

A second famed AIM member was Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash, for whose 1976 murder two more 1970s AIM affiliates, John Graham and Arlo Searching Cloud, were indicted around 2003. In a decades prior to a indictments, occasionally militant suggested the FBI played a a share or even covered higher her execution. Folk singer Larry Long detailing the allegations around a song titled Anna Mae (rereleased in Run Freedom/Sweet Thunder, Flight Fish, 1997). Singer-songwriter Buffy Saint-Marie wrote the "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee", referencing two Peltier & Pictou-Aquash. A song was recorded per Indigo Girls for the 1200 Curfews album.

AIM take-overs
At once whilst peaceful sit-ins were the most common protest maneuver, AIM takeovers around its early times were notably emphatic. A few appeared to exist as self-generated results of protest gatherings & for instance involved armed seizure of public facilities. AIM takeovers & occupations include:

Alcatraz Island, 1969, (19 months) Abandoned property at a Naval Air Station touching Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1970 Bureau of Indian Affairs Headquarters, Washington D.C. November, 1972 (sacked building, 24 in remission) Winter Dam, Lac Courte Oreilles, Wisconsin, (AIM help) July, 1971 Custer County Courthouse, 1973 (routed after riot) Pine Ridge Reservation, 1973 (71 days, 2 dead)

See Also

Anna Mae Aquash Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador Zapatista Army of National Liberation

AIM and WK II documents 1973-1983
Educational documents from and about Wounded Knee II (1973-1976).

American Indian Movement Texas Chapter
Official website for AIM Texas Chapter

American Indian Movement - Grand Governing Council


American Indian Movement of FL


American Indian Movement Central Indiana Support Group
This site is for persons interested in the American Indian Movement and more specifically NA persons living in the state of Indiana

American Indian Cultural Support
Official website for AICS organization, a national AIM support group and webhost for several chapters.

American Indian Movement Support Group of New Jersey


AIM South Florida Support Group
Our mission is to support of the AIM of Florida in all matters affecting the indigenous people of Florida and of the United States.

American Indian Movement Eastern Dakota
Official website for AIM Eastern Dakota Chapter

AIM Youth Council Texas Chapter
Official website for AIM Youth Council of Texas


Society: Ethnicity: The Americas: Indigenous: Native Americans: Issues and Activism






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