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monday, march 12, 1973
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AIM struggles to resurrect Indian culture
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Photos by
A. J. McClanahan
3 lory by
Chris Harper
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A. I. M. -three letters that have spelled trouble for law
enforcement officials throughout the Midwest.
Many persons believe that members of the American Indian
Movement (AIM) are young revolutionaries who desire to
overthrow the U.S. government.
Russell Means, former AIM national coordiantor, however,
termed AIM members as older "traditionalists who want to
return to Indian cultuie and religion."
The organzation began in 1968 in Minneapolis, Minn, and
has grown to 43 chapters throughout the nation, he said.
The movement gained national attention last March when
Indians congregated in Gordon, Neb., to force an investigation
into the alleged killing of Raymond Yellow Thunder, a
51 -year-old Oglala Sioux, by two whites.
In November, AIM organized a demonstration in
Washington, D.C., to protest the "Trail of Broken Treaties."
Other protests have occurred in Scottsbluff, Neb., Custer,
S.D., Rapid City, S.D., and now in Wounded Knee, S.D.
The Indians' demand: "We are an Indian nation and should
be independent through self -determination," Means said
The key to the Indian movement; however? is not political
demonstrations but spirituality, Means said.
"To be an Indian, you have to be spiritually based," he
said. "When we found our spirituality, our movement began to
grow."
The spiritual significance of Wounded Knee was the
principal reason for the AIM takeover on Feb. 27, according to
Wallace Black Elk, an AIM spiritual leader from Denver, Colo.
On Dec. 29, 1890, between 200 and 250 Indians were
killed by the U.S. Seventh Cavalry, as the Indians proceeded to
Pine Ridge, S.D., to celebrate the Ghost Dance.
The Ghost Dance, an Indian ceremony, celebrated the
reunion of the living and dead, and the restoration of Indian
lands that had been taken by whites.
"The white man has separated my people from their
religion and the Great Spirit," Black Elk said. "We almost got
lost. Wounded Knee is where the white man nearly destroyed
our religion. So we've come back to this place, to our religion,
to start once again from the beginning."
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daily nebraskan
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