• 1970–1990
• “Red Power”
• The “state of nature” is paid for by the state of man. It’s a uniquely American arrangement: When the colonists first came to America, the land they claimed—and what grew on it—was considered the property of the king of England. But here in northern Minnesota, for now, public land still benefits the people.

1940s–: Civil Rights Movement

• Civil Rights Movement encapsulating Native Americans
• 1944: 50-tribe delegates formed National Congress of American Indians (NCAI)
  • address termination, poor feederal policy, strengthen intertribal relations
  • high percent of women delegates
  • equal rights and equal protection, restoration of treaty rights, land and culture reclamation
  • overturned federal job disscrimination, state law reservation bans, limited state judicial control, health care, employment, education
  • gradualist, steady work: policy against direct action
    • conservative members purged in 1960s
    • 1964: Vine Deloria Jr. → exec. director
• 1950s: National Indian Youth Council (NIYC)
  • Clyde Warrior, Ponca
    • also the 1960 Southwest Regional Indian Youth Council president
    • being Indian was good, and what culture and tradition Indians maintained were good as well, and sufficient to the task of being Indian in the twentieth century and beyond. It doesn’t sound so radical in our age of identity politics, but it was radical then, especially among Indians. Hundreds of years of being missionized, colonized, reservationized, mainstreamed, marginalized, and criminalized had had a pernicious effect on Indian self-regard. How not to think of oneself as less, how not to think of oneself and one’s place as at the bottom of hierarchical America after being downtrodden for a century?
  • youth leadership and firebrand, active, invested movements for Indian rights
  • Browning Pipestem
  • “take the negtive image of the Indians and shove it down people’s throats”
  • 1966: NIYC direct action in PNW over treaty and fishing rights; “fish-ins” with intertribal alliances and allyship; primary pursuance of tribal sovereignty and Indian culture

American Indian Movement

• 1970s: inspiration and following of Black Panthers as a model for resistance
  • not only civil rights, but economic and political power and disruption of imperialism
• American Indian Movement (AIM) led by Dennis Banks, Clyde and Vernon Bellecourt, George Mitchell, Harold Powless
• economic independence and freedom from police ebrutality
• loud, visible militant theatrics
  • forcing women and lighter-skinned Indians out of image; “The leaders were obsessed with image and given to grandstanding. Yet in the midst of the counterculture movement that co-opted so much Indian aesthetic and culture, AIM was doing one thing right: it was showing Indians around the country that they were proud of being Indian, and in the most uncomfortable ways possible for the mainstream. Indians from reservations and cities alike were, for the first time, pushing back against the acculturation machine that was a part of America’s domestic imperial agenda, and doing it loud and proud.”
• 11/1969: Alcatraz Island takeover by Bay Area students and activists

Alcatraz Island takeover

• alcatraz closed in 1963
• bay area power node in 1950s onward due to migration, termination, relocation, and UC education
• 03/08/1964: Lakota occupation of abandoned federal buildings
  • high support and later reignited by 1969 takeover
• Adam Nordwall, Ojibwe; Richard Oakes, Mohawk
• 10/1969: SF American Indian Center burned; proposition to turn Alcatraz into an expanded Indian center → takeover plan
• 11/9/1969: soft opening of takeoveer
• 11/20: takeover; but no supplies and leadership brought initially; fraught issues of AIM communications
• failed negotiations between Nixon officials and takeover
• conditions worsened; Yvonne Oakes (12 y/o daughter) death → leadership exchanged
  • 1968: LaNada Means (Shoshone-Bannock), first Native student at UCB → one of first leads; ethnic studies program
  • John Trudell
  • Stella Leach
  • negotiations to turn into cultural center failed
• Alcatraz transferred over to federal govt., NPS; 06/11/1971 removed last 15 protestors
  • end of 19 month occupation
• large influence in end of termination period
• large influence in further occupations by AIM
  • 1970: Minneapolis naval air station → educational needs
  • 1970: Wisconsin Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation dam → illegal flooding reparations
  • 1971: BIA, DC → protest over policy and paternalism

1972 Caravan

• 1972: traveling caravan through reservations: “Trail of Broken Treaties” w/ 20-point list
  • large support from other citizens, organizations, and councils
  • failure through violence seeping into AIM disrupting large support
  • 11/1/1972: DC, few shelter and food, police tensions
  • 11/3: Lafayette Park, BIA
    • fear of armed resistance
    • police swarmed building; occupiers took over building
    • resolutions, avoidance of forcible eviction
    • reoccupation as “Native American Embassy”; Marion Barry, LaDonna Harris
    • de-escalation → court resolution
  • 11/6: goodwill evaporated (was right before Election Day); eviction attempt → $2m worth of damage to embassy
  • 67k offered to return caravan home; occupation ended, and little accomplished
    20 point list drafted in Minneapolis and released over court

1. Restoration of constitutional treaty-making authority
2. Establishment of treaty commission to make new treaties
3. An address to the American people & joint sessions of Congress
4. Commission to review treaty commitments & violations
5. Resubmission of unratified treaties to the Senate
6. All Indians to be governed by treaty relations
7. Mandatory relief against treaty rights violations
8. Judicial recognition of Indian right to interpret treaties
9. Creation of congressional joint committee on reconstruction of Indian relations
10. Land reform and restoration of a 110 million-acre Native land base
11. Revision of 25 U.S.C. 163; restoration of rights to Indians terminated by enrollment and revocation of prohibitions against “dual benefits”
12. Repeal of state laws enacted under Public Law 280 (1953)
13. Resume federal protective jurisdiction for offenses against Indians
14. Abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs by 1976
15. Creation of an “Office of Federal Indian Relations and Community Reconstruction”
16. Priorities and purpose of the proposed new office
17. Indian commerce and tax immunities
18. Protection of Indians’ religious freedom and cultural integrity
19. National referendums, local options, and forms of Indian organization
20. Health, housing, employment, economic development, and education

1972: Pine Ridge

• 1972: murder of Oglala Sioux in Gordon, NB: Raymond Yellow Thunder
  • grandson to Lakota chief American Horse
• protests and boycotts organized by AIM over Gordon
  • pressure led to human rights commission, jail turnover and inquiries, manslaughter charges
• Wounded Knee Trading Post on top of the Wounded Knee massacre; trashing of fort and humiliation
• 01/21/1963: Wesley Bad Heart Bull, Buffalo Gap, SD
  • protests at Custer on 01/22 for second-degree manslaughter (lowest possible charge for murder)
  • Buffalo Gap white border town; low support and failure to cause change
• 1970s: Pine Ridge reservation
  • Dick Wilson controlling and district representative → chairman; nepotism, favoritism, mismanagement, stealing of funds
  • “Guardians of the Oglala Nation”
  • 02/1973: backlash and impeachment; not impeached only due to technicalities
  • AIM members swarmed into Pine Ridge; militarization of P.R.
• 2/27/1973: takeover of Wounded Knee village
  • swarmed/sieged by federal law enforcement
  • demands to hold hearings on Indian treaties, investigate BIA malfeasance, investigate reservations, and restrict negotiating partners; remove Wilson and appoint Kissinger for negotiation
  • ~3/9: cease-fire turned into infiltration by AIM activists bringing in supplies → “Inependent Oglala Nation”
  • 3/1: AIM and hostages; escalation of siege
  • illegal presence of military; roadblocks via FBI
  • 3/11: federal postal inspectors in Wounded Knee, spying; wounding and siege
  • Harlington Wood Jr. negotiator for several days
  • after failing aand leaving, intense gunfight; perpetual cycle
  • one month later: Kent Frizzell; violent starvation of resources; firefights
  • April: removal of BIA and Interior from negotiations
  • early April agreement: hearing grievances, Pine Ridge investigation, Means turning in
  • mid-April: sign for end of siege
  • “war games without a war”

1975: Jumping Bull

• Wilson terrorizing reservation: increased homicides between 1973–1976 and increasseed cooperation between Wilson and FBI
• March 1975: Jeannette Bissonette assassination
  • FBI investigations led to AIM members who seemed to perp for standoff, including Leonard Peltier
• 06/25/1975: camp at Lame Ranch of Peltier, Bob Robideau, Darrell Butler
  • Jack Coler and Ron Williams saw camp, followed van, and engaged in a firefight
  • execution of Coler and Williams
  • Robideau and Butler acquitted on self-defense
  • Peltier extradited and serving two consecutive life sentences

1976: Anna Mae Aquash

• Mi’kmaq from Canada who went to join AIM at Wounded Knee
• affair with Banks; fear of FBI informant (COINTELPRO infiltration), sexual politics and resentment by Dakota group — Pie Patrol
• Arlo Looking Cloud aand John Graham ordered to kill; unknown reasoning or order
• cult worship around AIM by white people

other influences of AIM

• 1972: Saint Paul, MN school for “self-determination” and independent education: Red School House
  • followed by Heart of the Earth Survival School and Indian Community School
  • abrupt grant funding pulls were reversed
  • 1975: 16 Indian-run and Indian designed schools, with more to come
• improvement of housing (1973, Little Earth)
• improvement of community and leadership
• high prominence in Minnesota
  • 1978: Indian education in prison; spiritual and educational learning at MN Correctional Facility Stillwater and St. Cloud
  • 1979: American Indian Opportunities Industrialization Center, Minneapolis: vocational education
• grassroots activism and alliances

Federal Efforts

1964–1981: Lyndon Johnson

• 01/08/1964: Lyndon Johnson “war on poverty” speech: address included Indians in a nonviolent, non-“problematic” fashion, as American citizens
  • profound shift in mindset and view of Indians; Indian problem turned into the American problem
• 09/1964: Economic Opporunity Act
  • Job Corps, Youth Conservation Corps, Federal Work-Study, Adult Basic Education, Voluntary Assistance for Needy Children, rural loans, Volunteers in Service to America, migrant workers, business loans
  • Office of Economic Opportunity bypassing federal and state bureaucracies
• dismantled and limited by Nixon
• fully dismantled by Reagan

government acts

• 1972: Indian Education Act
  • curricula reworks, education and unemployment rates
  • local agencies develop curricula and support for Inddian students
  • federal funding and employment of Indians
  • regarded transportation, nutrition, disability management, grants and public school support
  • by 1980s, most hses in Indian country had dedicated education programss, staff, and cultural instruction
  • accredited tribal college; Navajo Community College → Diné College; two-year accredited colleges and vocational prep work
  • 2013: Montana had a fully accredited tribal college administered to every reservation
    • 1999: Indian Education for All Act
• 1976: Iowa Burials Protection Act
  • prevent exploitation of Indian burial remains
• 1978: American Indian Religious Freedom Act
  • Jimmy Carter
  • freedom of religious practice and devotion for American Indian, Inuit, Aleut, and Hawai’ian individuals; emphasis in speech twd Indians
  • establishment of geographical-religiouss limit of act
• 1990: Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)
  • official processes for Indian remains and funerary rites
  • procedures for treating remains archaeologically discovered
  • federal offense for trafficking Indian remains
  • repatriation of Indian remains and artifacts