American Indian Movement (AIM),
Native American civil-rights activist organization, founded in 1968 to encourage
self-determination among Native Americans and to establish international recognition of their
treaty rights. In 1972, members of AIM briefly took over the headquarteras of the Bureau of
Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C. They complained that the
government had created the tribal councils on reservations in 1934 as a way of perpetuating
paternalistic control over Native American development. In 1973, about 200 Sioux, led by
members of AIM, seized the tiny village of Wounded Knee, S.Dak., site of the last great massacre of Native Americans by the
U.S. cavalry (1890). Among their demands was a review of more than 300 treaties between the
Native Americans and the federal government that AIM alleged were broken. Wounded Knee was
occupied for 71 days before the militants surrendered. The leaders were subsequently brought
to trial, but the case was dismissed on grounds of misconduct by the prosecution. AIM also
sponsored talks resulting in the 1977 International Treaty Conference with the UN in Geneva,
Switzerland.
See K. S. Stern, Loud Hawk: The United States versus the American Indian
Movement (1994); P. C. Smith and R. A. Warrior, Like a Hurricane: The Indian
Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee (1996); D. Bancroft and L. W. Wittstock,
We Are Still Here: A Photographic History of the American Indian Movement
(2013); J. L. Davis, Survival Schools: The American Indian Movement and Community
Education in the Twin Cities (2013); J. L. Horton, Art for an Undivided
Earth: The American Indian Movement Generation (2017).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
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