None attracted more attention than the 1969 takeover of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. The new generation understood the power of media and sought to use it by staging spectacular protests at historic sites like Mount Rushmore. The flag of the American Indian Movement (AIM).Ī younger, more radical generation of leaders emerged. AIM soon became an influential and controversial organization. Three Indian Patrol leaders, Clyde Bellecourt, Dennis Banks, and George Mitchell, decided to expand the Indian Patrol into a civil rights organization, and in 1968 they formed the American Indian Movement (AIM). Members of the American Indian community formed an “Indian patrol” to assert their rights and monitor the police. Paul, east of several reservations, had attracted a large American Indian population. Like African Americans, American Indians believed they were unfairly targeted and harassed by law enforcement, especially in off-reservation towns and cities. African Americans wanted to be integrated into American society as equal members, but after decades of assimilation and the loss of land and culture, some American Indians wanted nothing more than the right to remain Indians on their own lands.Īmerican Indian activism became more militant in the mid-1960s, with the rise of the “Red Power” movement, which took its name from the growing “Black Power” movement. The goals of the two movements, however, were very different. American Indians, watching the Civil Rights Movement, began to use similar tactics to raise awareness of their concerns. The 1973 Siege at Wounded Knee was only one event in the larger American Indian civil rights movement. This became one cause of the Siege at Wounded Knee. Tribal leaders sometimes ran their reservations like private kingdoms with little oversight from the BIA or input from tribal members. Internal corruption also became a problem, and some tribal governments become quasi-dictatorships. Termination, like the Dawes Act before it, often hurt rather than helped American Indians. The federal government saw relocation as a potential solution to the budgetary expense of managing American Indian reservations, and in the 1950s, it implemented the “Termination Policy.” This policy eliminated the reservations of more “advanced” tribes, opening Indian lands to non-Indian companies to exploit their natural resources. However, living off the reservation, surrounded by non-Indians, made it difficult for them to maintain their Indian identities. World War II brought opportunities, and many American Indians joined the armed forces or moved to cities for jobs in defense plants. The status of American Indians did improve somewhat with the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (sometimes called the Indian New Deal), which allowed tribes to create tribal governments, but their sovereignty was still limited by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The Dawes Allotment Act (1887) broke many Indian reservations into smaller, private landholdings, and Indian children were often forced to attend boarding schools where, as Richard Henry Pratt, the head of the Carlisle Indian School, explained, “We must kill the Indian to save the man.” Government control, the prohibition of traditional ceremonies, limited rations, high unemployment, and alcohol abuse afflicted reservations. Reformers and the federal government hoped to integrate Indians into the larger society. Use this Narrative with the César Chávez, Dolores Huerta, and the United Farm Workers Narrative and The Gay Liberation Movement Narrative while discussing the various civil rights movements occurring during the 1970s.īy the late nineteenth century, American Indians had largely faded from public consciousness, with most consigned to Indian reservations.
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