American Indian Political Action IV::

'Red Power' - Activism in the 1960s and 1970s

Several factors can be implicated in the dramatic boost Indian activism received in the 1960s and especially the 1970s. One of these is the civil rights movement which removed the stigma attached to being Indian and encouraged many people to revive their interest in their cultural heritage and to identify themselves ethnically and racially with being not only Indian but of a particular tribe. Going back to the population table, part of the reason for the increased Indian population is the increasing tendency of Indians to identify themselves as Indian now that stigmas have been removed.

Here is a quote from the writer Joseph Bruchac who writes of the debilitating effects of termination on his sense of being Indian and the sense of release he got from the ethnic renewal sweeping 1960s and 1970s America:

"I found myself growing up with two heritages that I knew very little about. I was curious about them [...]. I began to directly seek out more about my Native American heritage. I sought it from books, I sought it from other people, and I sought it at the feet of elders, listening to everything they would have to say. By the time I became an adult, my mother [...] referred to me a few years ago as 'my son, the Indian'. Which I found very funny, and she said, 'Well, you know what I mean, you know what I mean.' [...] What she meant was that she had never been allowed to think that about herself. So she didn't think of herself in that way. It was almost like it had skipped a generation. And I was finally allowed to be proud of a heritage that had been a shame or something to be covered up."

The growing pan-Indian movement prior to this period also raised awareness amongst Indians of their plight and gave them the political and legal infrastructure to do something about it.

Money was also a major factor in facilitating greater political participation: federal funding for reservation and urban Indians had increased during the 1950s and then escalated significantly during the 1960s and 1970s. The American Indian Movement, for instance, received federal funding for their survival schools in Minneapolis and Milwaukee during the 1970s. Land claims compensation also injected much-needed moneys into Indian communities. Ward Churchill reports that between 1946 and 1970, $128 million in Indian land claims awards were disbursed. By 1978, that number exceeded $657 million. Land claims and federal moneys enabled tribal governments to fund political, economic and cultural revitalisation programmes which boosted Indian ethnic renewal and awareness and, in turn, activism.

In 1969, another activist organisation, called Indians of All Tribes, seized and occupied Alcatraz Island - a former federal penitentiary in San Francisco Bay. They occupied it for 19 months. They claimed that as Indians they had a right to the land as all North American soil still legally and morally belonged to Indians. This symbolic gesture captured the public imagination both nationally and internationally and exposed a largely ignorant audience to the reality of Indian grievances. It stirred Indian ethnic pride and, in the words of former NIYC member and NCAI president Vine Deloria Jr, it was "the master stroke of Indian activism".

The occupation stimulated a rash of similar protests, the most famous perhaps being the occupation at Wounded Knee in 1973 by members and supporters of the American Indian Movement or AIM.

This is Mary Crow Dog of the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota:

"The American Indian Movement hit our reservation like a tornado, like a new wind blowing out of nowhere, a drumbeat from far off getting louder and louder. It was almost like the Ghost Dance fever that had hit the tribes in 1890 [...]. I could feel this new thing, almost hear it, smell it, touch it. Meeting up with AIM for the first time loosened a sort of earthquake inside me."

AIM was a result of the urban Indian experience. It was founded in 1968 in Minneapolis in an effort to halt police mistreatment of Indians in the city. By 1970, it was organising Indians in cities across America as well as on reservations. By 1970, though the focus was still supratribal, it shifted from urban to reservation concerns, by linking its interests to the issues of treaty rights, land claims and tribal government matters that primarily concerned Indian activism on a local or tribal level. AIM's urban agenda returned to its reservation roots.

To this end, AIM organised the 'Trail of Broken Treaties' in 1972. The 'Trail of Broken Treaties' consisted of several caravans of Indian activists that snaked their way across America through numerous reservations, agitating on treaty rather than civil rights. The Trail of Broken Treaties caravan eventually brought 1000 Indians to Washington, where it demanded of federal government a restoration of and reaffirmation of treaty rights, that Indians have direct administrative access to the White House, that termination policies be repealed and that the BIA be abolished. It also brought up problems of federal control of tribal lands and resources and encroachment by states on tribal civil and criminal jurisdictions. For a week AIM's Trail participants occupied Washington's BIA building and presented their demands - an event that made the front page of the New York Times.

A few months later, in 1973, AIM descended on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and held a 10-week-long siege at the small reservation village of Wounded Knee - close to the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre.

On the evening of 27 February 1973, a caravan of some 250 American Indian Movement (AIM) supporters arrived at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, at the request of local activists angry with the current tribal government headed by Richard Wilson. More than 300 local activists, most organised as the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization and including elders and such medicine men as Frank Fools Crow, had charged Wilson with corruption, viewed him as a puppet of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and accused him and his followers of civil rights abuses against 'traditionals' and activists on the reservation. Their efforts to impeach the president exacerbated long-standing reservation divisions between 'traditionalists' and 'progressives'.

The two groups - AIM-backed activists and Wilson's violent 'GOON squad' (Guardians of the Oglala Nation) - armed themselves, took over the small village of Wounded Knee and entered into a 10-week-long siege that eventually involved federal marshals, the FBI, tribal police, the national media, celebrity figures, AIM, local residents, national political, legal and religious organisations and the BIA. Activists demanded hearings of treaty rights and civil rights violations, as well as an investigation of the BIA and the return of traditional autonomous Sioux governance. The siege lasted until 9 May 1973, by which time two Indians had been killed and scores more wounded.

Although, on the surface, little changed on the reservation in the aftermath, Wounded Knee II, as it became known, reinjected many Sioux residents and activists with the desire to fight for treaty and other rights, as well as fanned the flames for cultural and ceremonial revival. Wounded Knee II riveted national and international attention upon Lakota Sioux and other tribal issues, such as treaty violations, land claims, economic impoverishment and tribal government responsibilities. More significantly, perhaps, it drew widespread attention to the fact that American Indian protest activism was an important and highly developed component of Indian culture.

It is important to note that not all tribal members were in support of AIM's tactics, least of all local Indian residents who complained that Wounded Knee II had served to glorify a few city Indians but left conditions on the reservation as bad as before. Such disgruntlement still resonate on Pine Ridge today and serves as an important reminder that such militant Indian organisations have not always received their most active support from the reservations.

AIM's influence was far-reaching and extended outwards from direct action:

• It shared information about planned collective actions through an extensive network of urban Indian organisations such as Indian centres, Indian churches and Indian charitable organisations;
• It pushed protest activities and strategies through reservation networks such as via the kinship routes and the 'powwow circuit' (the 'moccasin telegraph' reenacted);
• It actively encouraged the news media (such as television, radio, newspapers and magazines) to report on Indian issues and campaigns.

Indeed, of the last point, some of AIM's leaders were so charismatic that they naturally attracted media attention - the AIM leader and Oglala Lakota Russell Means comes to mind here. As one writer has described him, Means has a genius for public relations.