And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: American Indian Movement grew in response to its times BY JODI RAVE Lincoln Journal Star http://www.journalstar.com/stories/top/sto2 At its peak in the 1970s, the American Indian Movement was on the front pages of the nation's newspapers. Today, it is a factionalized organization with two competing chapters: Colorado AIM in Denver and the American Indian Movement Grand Governing Council in Minneapolis. Each is led by staunch native activists -- Russell Means in Colorado and brothers Clyde and Vernon Bellecourt in Minnesota. "Times change," said Robert Warrior, professor of American Indian studies at Cornell University. "The organization didn't. It became obsolete." Vernon Bellecourt disagrees. "The American Indian Movement is not fractionated. What we're experiencing is an infiltration of about 10 or 12 people. They tried to make it appear that the group was divided. We're in the process of isolating them." AIM made a low-key debut in 1968, when it was formed in Minneapolis to protect the city's urban Indians from police brutality. Dennis Banks, an Anishinabe Indian, and Clyde Bellecourt were the co-founders. Three years later AIM members were summoned from city streets to South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation to seek justice for people who felt they had none after the February 1972 slaying of Raymond Yellow Thunder in a small, western Nebraska town. Yellow Thunder, 51, died of a brain hemorrhage after being beaten by Leslie and Melvin Hare. His slaying received little attention until the American Indian Movement showed up. A caravan of about 150 cars and 600 Indians drove into Gordon to protest his death. The killers were convicted of manslaughter. "AIM was a response to the times," said Warrior. "It ended up becoming an organization that responded to the lives of Indian people, first in the urban areas, then on reservations. The real turning point for AIM was the murder of Raymond Yellow Thunder in Gordon, Nebraska." AIM was born of the U.S. civil rights movement. It was most active during the mid- to early 1970s and well into the '80s, said Warrior, an Osage Indian who wrote "Like a Hurricane: The Indian movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee." A four-mile caravan of Indian activists arrived in Washington, D.C, on Nov. 3, 1972, the end of what was called the Trail of Broken Treaties March. When they arrived they took over and barricaded the Bureau of Indian Affairs building. The standoff ended after five days. In February 1973 AIM members occupied Wounded Knee, S.D., to dramatize their demands for free elections of tribal leader, investigation of the Bureau of Indiana Affairs and review of all U.S.-Indian treaties. The group surrendered May 8 after officials promised to investigate its complaints. The standoff cost the U.S. government $7 million and was the longest armed conflict in the United States since the Civil War. "There are unconcluded legal matters still rippling from that time," said Richard LaCourse, editor of the Yakama Nation Review. "One of them is the trial and imprisonment of Leonard Peltier." Peltier, an American Indian activist, was convicted of killing two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975, but he maintains his innocence, and his supporters contend authorities lacked sufficient evidence for his conviction. Despite questions of AIM's effectiveness today, said Vernon Bellecourt, "Even our detractors will say we brought about a rebirth of indigenous thought. The American Indian Movement helped get people on the Red Road, sparking spiritual, cultural, social, economic, political and philosophical thought. That's our major contribution." Two Other stories in the Lincoln Star Journal Today, as well: Pine Ridge looks forward to July 7 visit by Clinton BY KEVIN ABOUREZK Lincoln Journal Star http://www.journalstar.com/stories/top/sto1 Beer retailers, critics disagree on alcohol troubles BY JOE DUGGAN Lincoln Journal Star http://www.journalstar.com/stories/top/sto3 Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
