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Research how culture changed as a result of your movement. How does this movement impact how members of the community live today? What changes still need to be made? Find 3 news articles that respond to these questions. Add your findings here.

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Research collective actions taken by your group. Research the who, what, where, when, why of these actions and add them here. What role did cooperation play in these actions?

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What role did the government/law enforcement play (positive or negative) in your movement? What laws were changed as a result of your movement? Add significant events, Supreme Court Cases, or new laws here.

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What challenges did your community face? Did they experience de facto or de jure discrimination? If so, how? Record your findings and sources here.

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Find three important figures from your movement. Add images. Find biographical details. What qualities made them a strong leader? Include a quote from each leader that exemplifies their beliefs.

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The American Indian Movement is an organization that aimed to fight for native american rights. It was formed in 1968 and has gone through much changes with its current successors continuing to carry out protests revolving around native American rights. It has managed to raise much needed awareness about how native americans were being treated in modern society. Native americans have traditionally experienced a unbelievable amount of both de jure and de facto discrimination and the american indian movement aimed to stop that with one of their biggest stunts being a 71 day long standoff that gained world wide news and attention, helping the movement step forward.

going back in time, there have been many laws prohibiting Native Americans from accessing the same rights as other racial groups. For example, the allotment act. This act divided tribal lands into individual plots to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream society by making them individual landowners instead of tribe run organizations. This created a large loss of tribal land and large loss of life

American Indians experienced De Facto discrimination in their everyday lives, impacting education, housing, and employment discrimination, even though the legal segregation was abolished. This occurred due to years of cultural and educational discrimination, which led to the displacement of American Indians. Media portrayals created a lack of welcoming attitudes from communities, which led to hard access to education, employment, and housing.

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American Indian Movement (AIM) - Goals, Leaders, Today

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The American Indian Movement (AIM) is a grassroots movement for Indigenous rights, founded in 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The group has organized many high-profile protests and occupations, and was a driving force behind the Native American civil rights movement of the 1970s.

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Founded in 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by Clyde and Vernon Bellecourt, Dennis Banks, and George Mitchell, the American Indian Movement (AIM) became the most recognizable Native American activist organization of the late 1960s and 1970s. Its original purpose, to help curb racial profiling of Indians by Minneapolis police officers, soon expanded to that of serving as the mouthpiece as well as the muscle for Native peoples in need across the United States. Described as “the shock troops of American Indian sovereignty and the new warrior class of the century,” AIM gained worldwide notoriety for its takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) building in Washington, D.C., in 1972 and for its standoff with the FBI at Wounded Knee in 1973. Although criticized by whites and Indians alike for its sometimes confrontational tactics, the organization brought the corruption and inefficiency of the BIA to the general public’s attention and worked to protect the rights of Indian people caught up in Anglo court and criminal justice systems.

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The months of October and November are often the only time students learn about Native Americans, and usually in the past tense or as helpless "wards of the state."

To counter this, we offer this collection of recent Native movements and activists who have continued to struggle for sovereignty, dignity, and justice for their communities. The financial and colonial drive that usurps Native peoples ways of life is not just relegated to the past; it continues today. Here are just a few stories of struggle and achievement since the late 1960s.

For Native American Heritage Month (and beyond), view lessons and resources at the Zinn Education Project.

If you have stories to add, email us at zep@zinnedproject.org.

1969: Activists Began a 19-month Occupation of Alcatraz Island

On Nov. 20, 1969, a fleet of wooden sailboats holding 90 Native Americans landed on Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay. For the next 19 months, the group occupied the island, hoping to reclaim the rock "in the name of all American Indians." In their proclamation, activists stated that Alcatraz was "more than suitable for an Indian reservation, as determined by the white man's own standards" in that:

1. It is isolated from modern facilities, and without adequate means of transportation.

2. It has no fresh running water.

3. It has inadequate sanitation facilities.

4. There are no oil or mineral rights.

5. There is no industry and so unemployment is very great.

6. There are no health-care facilities.

7. The soil is rocky and non-productive, and the land does not support game.

8. There are no educational facilities.

9. The population has always exceeded the land base.

10. The population has always been held as prisoners and kept dependent upon others.

The occupiers' list of demands included the return of Alcatraz to the American Indians and sufficient funding to build, maintain, and operate an Indian cultural complex and a university.

Learn more in this profile of the Alcatraz Occupation and the film, Alcatraz Is Not an Island, by James M. Fortier.

1970: Activists Occupy Mount Rushmore

On August 29, 1970, members of the United Native Americans, with support from the American Indian Movement, occupied Mount Rushmore to reclaim the land that had been promised to the Oceti Sakowin (The Great Sioux Nation) in the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie in perpetuity. When gold was found in the mountains, prospectors migrated there in the 1870s and the federal government forced the Sioux to relinquish the Black Hills portion of their reservation. When park officials asked protesters how long they intended to stay, UNA president Lehman Brightman replied, "As long as the grass grows, the water flows, and the sun shines." This phase referenced President Jackson's, then General, promise to protect the life and land of the Native people of Mississippi before his massive campaign to exterminate them.

[Description adapted from " The American Experience: Native Americans and Mount Rushmore" and the international Indian newspaper, War Path.]

Watch a CBS new broadcast covering the 1970 occupation. Read more about the reclamation of the Black Hills in the article, " Reclaiming the Sacred Black Hills," by Ruth Hopkins at Indian Country Today.

1970: First National Day of Mourning Occurs After Speech Censorship

On November 26, 1970, American Indian Movement (AIM) activists occupied Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts. Known as the National Day of Mourning, this annual event was sparked by Commonwealth of Massachusetts officials censoring a speech to be given by Frank James (Wamsutta), an Aquinnah Wampanoag, at the 350th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. The reason given was ". . . the theme of the anniversary celebration is brotherhood and anything inflammatory would have been out of place." James' speech included many harsh truths. "History gives us facts and there were atrocities," James wrote and went on to recall the loss of language, culture, land, and life. However, his speech closed with a call for a new beginning:

Our spirit refuses to die. . . We are uniting. . . We stand tall and proud, and before too many moons pass we'll right the wrongs we have allowed to happen to us. We forfeited our country. Our lands have fallen into the hands of the aggressor. We have allowed the white man to keep us on our knees. What has happened cannot be changed, but today we must work towards a more humane America, a more Indian America, where men and nature once again are important; where the Indian values of honor, truth, and brotherhood prevail. You the white man are celebrating an anniversary. We, the Wampanoags, will help you celebrate in the concept of a beginning. It was the beginning of a new life for the Pilgrims. Now, 350 years later it is a beginning of a new determination for the original American: the American Indian.

Today, the National Day of Mourning is meant to be "a day of remembrance and spiritual connection as well as a protest of the racism and oppression which Native Americans continue to experience. "

Read the full speech and learn more about the National Day of Mourning.

1972: Trail of Broken Treaties Caravan Arrives in Washington, D.C.

On Nov. 3, 1972, protesters from the Trail of Broken Treaties Caravan occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) offices in Washington, D.C. for six days. The protesters 20-Point Manifesto begins:

We seek a new American majority - a majority that is not content merely to confirm itself by superiority in numbers, but which by conscience is committed toward prevailing upon the public will in ceasing wrongs and in doing right.

Continue reading the manifesto at the AIM website.

Read reflections on the occupation by Suzan Shown Harjo in the article, " Trail of Broken Treaties: A 30th Anniversary Memory," at Indian Country News.

1972: AIM Opens "Survival Schools"

In 1972, the American Indian Movement (AIM) organizers and parents in the Minneapolis area started their own community schools as an alternative to public and Bureau of Indian Affairs (now Bureau of Indian Education) schools with high dropout rates. Clyde Bellecourt remembers, "We were losing our children during this time; juvenile courts were sweeping our children up, and they were fostering them out, and sometimes whole families were being broken up."

Known as survival schools for their focus on basic learning and living skills, the schools strongly promoted Indian culture. [Description adapted from Education Week's " A History of American Indian Education " by Jon Reyhner.]

Read more in the book, Survival Schools: The American Indian Movement and Community Education in the Twin Cities, by Julie Davis (University of Minnesota Press, 2013).

1973: Activists Occupy Wounded Knee

On Feb. 27, 1973, about 250 Sioux Indians, led by members of the American Indian Movement, converged on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation, launching the famous 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee.

Set in the same impoverished village as the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre, the occupation called global attention to unsafe living conditions and generations of mistreatment from federal and local agencies. The occupation, which began during the evening of February 27, is hailed as one of AIM's greatest successes.

"In a way, it was a very beautiful experience," said Len Foster, a Navajo man who joined AIM in 1970 and was at Wounded Knee for the entire 71 days. "It was a time to look at the commitment we made and a willingness to put our lives on the line for a cause."

Continue reading the article by " Native History: AIM Occupation of Wounded Knee Begins," by Alysa Landry at Indian Country Today.

Watch the film, Incident at Oglala, by Michael Apted.

1975: Protesters Take Over of Bonneville Power Administration

On August 15, 1975, 100 Native American protesters took over the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) building in Portland, Oregon, in response to the killing of Joseph Stuntz, member of the American Indian Movement (AIM).

Two years after the occupation of Wounded Knee, Stuntz was involved in a controversial shootout with FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and was killed. Protesters at the BPA building demanded an end to the undeclared state of martial law in South Dakota, and restitution for Stuntz's young widow.

Read more at the Oregon History Project.

1978: Longest Walk Begins

On July 15, 1978, a peaceful transcontinental trek for Native American justice, which had begun with a few hundred departing Alcatraz Island, California, ended this day when they arrived in Washington, D.C. accompanied by 30,000 marchers. They were calling attention to the ongoing problems plaguing Indian communities, such as lack of jobs, housing, health care, as well as dozens of pieces of legislation before Congress canceling treaty obligations of the U.S. government toward various Indian tribes.

Read more in the articles, " Indians End Longest Walk in Washington DC on July 15, 1978," by Jo Freeman, and " Native Americans Walk from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. for U.S. Civil Rights, 1978 " at Global Nonviolence Action Database.

1981: Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation Celebrates the Orme Dam Victory

After 10 years of organizing and protesting the building of the Orme Dam, on November 12, 1981, the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation of Arizona won the struggle when Interior Secretary James Watt announced that Orme Dam would not be built. The dam was a Central Arizona Project plan that would have flooded more than half the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation reservation, most of their farmland, and the remnants of ancestral homeland. Each year, a weekend long celebration is held called the Orme Dam Victory Days to commemorate the event.

Learn more about this struggle and background in the articles, " Orme Dam and the Yavapai; A Broken Promise Could Break a Nation," by Christina Ravashiere in the Christian Science Monitor.

Watch a documentary at Arizona PBS.

1992: National Coalition of Racism in Sports and Media Forms

In 1992, the National Coalition of Racism in Sports and Media (NCRSM) was established by Native leaders in order to organize against the use of Indian images and names for logos, symbols or mascots in professional and collegiate sports, marketing and the media. While the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) launched a campaign to address stereotypes found in print and other media in 1968, the NCRSM focused directly on the issue of sports mascots, building on previous decades of work to change team mascots, stating:

These mascots and symbols serve to mis-educate all youth by perpetuating an inaccurate history and encouraging a suspension of logic and reason. Schools, teachers and students become culturally illiterate in the realm of Native history and culturally insensitive with respect to teaching tolerance and celebrating diversity.

Learn more about the long history of mascot and name changes by schools, cities, and sports team, including Washington, D.C.'s NFL team. Listen to a StoryCorps interview with D.C. teacher Julian Hipkins about the controversy.

2004: Coalition Forms to "Protect the Peaks"

On, February 2, 2004, the Save the Peaks Coalition formed to address environmental and human rights concerns with Arizona Snowbowl's proposed developments on the San Francisco Peaks, land that has spiritual and cultural significance to at least 13 surrounding tribes. This coalition (made up of tribal and spiritual leaders, citizens, agencies, business, and conservationists) rallied to protest the "clearcutting of approximately 30,000 trees, that is home to threatened species, making new runs and lifts, more parking lots, and building a 14.8 mile buried pipeline to transport up to 180 million gallons (per season) of wastewater to make artificial snow on 205 acres." Despite decades of protest, the U.S. Forest Service and other government agencies have permitted the Snow Bowl ski resort to expand, the coalition continues to protest with calls to boycott the ski resort.

Learn more at: www.protectthepeaks.org/about/ and watch the documentary, The Snowbowl Effect, by Native activist Klee Bennally.

2011: Keystone XL Pipeline Protesters Launch Massive Campaign

In August 2011, environmental and indigenous groups launched a massive campaign designed to press President Obama not to approve Phase IV of the Keystone XL Pipeline project that would run through and near tribal lands, water resources, and place of spiritual significance. On Nov. 6, 2015, President Obama rejected the Keystone XL Pipeline proposal. The Indigenous Environmental Network, representing several indigenous groups and nations, issued a press release by Tom Goldtooth, executive director, stating:

In the fight against Keystone XL our efforts as Indigenous peoples, whether Lakota, Dakota, Assiniboine, Ponca, Cree, Dene or other has always been in the defense of Mother Earth and the sacredness of the water. Today, with this decision we feel those efforts have been validated. With the rejection of Keystone XL we have not only protected the sacredness of the land and water we have also helped our Cree & Dene relatives at the source take one step closer to shutting down the tar sands. The black snake, Keystone XL, has been defeated and best believe we will dance to our victory!

Explore this issue with students in the teaching activity, " Dirty Oil and Shovel-Ready Jobs: A Role Play on Tar Sands and the Keystone XL Pipeline" by Abby MacPhail. And have students learn about Indigenous Peoples' activism to respond to climate change in "' Don't Take Our Voices Away': A Role Play on the Indigenous Peoples' Summit on Climate Change," by Julie O'Neill and Tim Swinehart.

2013: Havasupai Tribe Files a Lawsuit to Stop the Operation of a Uranium Mine

On March 7, 2013, the Havasupai Tribe, along with three conservation groups, filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service "over its decision to allow Energy Fuels Resources, Inc. to begin operating a uranium mine near Grand Canyon National Park without initiating or completing formal tribal consultations and without updating an outdated 1986 federal environmental review." In April 2015, a U.S. District Judge ruled on this suit and decided uranium mining can continue in Northern Arizona.

Uranium mining on and near tribal and ceremonial lands, as well as being in close proximity to the Grand Canyon, has raised concerns of tribal rights, environmental impact, and safety issues for decades. On Oct. 12, 2015, in collaboration with Havasupai, Hualapai, Hopi, Navajo, Zuni, Paiute, and Yavapai leaders, Arizona Congressman Raúl Grijalva announced a bill designed to permanently ban uranium mining in the Grand Canyon watershed. As reported in the Phoenix New Times:

According to a statement from Grijalva's office, the bill, if successful, "permanently protects the Grand Canyon from new uranium mining claims; protects tribal sacred cultural sites; promotes a more collaborative regional approach between tribal nations and federal land managers; protects commercial and recreational hunting; preserves grazing and water rights; and conserves the Grand Canyon watershed."

Read more about the struggle in, " Uranium Mine Near Grand Canyon Approved by Federal Judge," by Miriam Wasser and about Clean Up the Mines!, a concurrent campaign to clean up thousands of abandoned uranium mines throughout the U.S. Watch an interview with activist Klee Bennally on Democracy Now!

2016: Standing Rock Sioux Oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL)

On April 1, 2016, one of the greatest organizing efforts to protect land, human rights, and the future of this planet began in North Dakota.

As described in the DAPL Fact Zine,

On April 1st, 2016, tribal citizens of the Standing Rock Lakota Nation and ally Lakota, Nakota, & Dakota citizens, under the group name "Chante tin'sa kinanzi Po" founded a Spirit Camp along the proposed route of the bakken oil pipeline, Dakota Access. The Spirit Camp is dedicated to stopping and raising awareness the Dakota Access pipeline, the dangers associated with pipeline spills and the necessity to protect the water resources of the Missouri river.

The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is proposed to transport 450,000 barrels per day of Bakken crude oil (which is fracked and highly volatile) from the lands of North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois. The threats this pipeline poses to the environment, human health and human rights are strikingly similar to those posed by the Keystone XL. Because the DAPL will cross over the Ogallala Aquifer (one of the largest aquifers in the world) and under the Missouri River twice (the longest river in the United States), the possible contamination of these water sources makes the Dakota Access pipeline a national threat.

The Standing Rock Sioux have been joined by members of more than 200 other Native American tribes and allies in taking a stand against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Learn more at Sacred Stone Camp website and stay up to date on news at Indian Country Today Media Network and Democracy Now!

© 2016 Zinn Education Project

2018: Ancestral Land Returned to Ponca Tribe

On June 10, 2018, along the "Trail of Tears" in Neligh, Nebraska, a farmer signed a deed to return ancestral land to the Ponca Tribe. Nearby is the gravesite of White Buffalo Girl, an 18-month-old Ponca girl who died during the forced removal of the Ponca Nation.

In 1877, the Ponca Nation was forced by the federal government to leave their home of Nishu'de ke (also known as Missouri) to relocate 600 miles south into present-day Oklahoma. Their forced removal took 55 days and killed several - including White Buffalo Girl - and is known as the Ponca Trail of Tears.

In 2013, farmer Art Tanderup retired on his wife's farm just outside of Neligh, when they found out that the Keystone XL Pipeline would be built right across their property. Tanderup and others formed a coalition between farmers, ranchers, and Native peoples called Bold Nebraska that opposed this decision. At one of the events held by this coalition, Tanderup met Mekasi Horinek, a member of the Ponca Nation. Mekasi shared with Tanderup that his grandfather had walked through his farm as an eight-year-old boy during this forced relocation.

During their discussion, Horinek explained that the relocation had been especially brutal because they were forced to leave all of the corn they had harvested that year behind. Tanderup and Horinek decided to plant corn in the middle of the Keystone Pipeline's proposed route.

Horinek tracked down corn that had come from the final crop planted by the Ponca, which had been saved in medicine bundles by the Lakota. With just two handfuls of sacred red corn, they planted the 137 year old kernels. The first harvest in 2014 was wildly successful, and the ceremonial plantings and harvests have now become an annual event for both the Ponca Nation and non-Ponca people alike. Tanderup and his family formally deeded a portion of his farm to the Ponca Nation, saying that he wanted to make the first steps towards righting the wrongs of their ancestors. Continue reading in this This Day in History post.

Recommended Article

The Spirit of Standing Rock on the Move by Stephanie Woodard, YES! Magazine, Winter 2017.

People from more than 300 tribes traveled to the North Dakota plains to pray and march in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux. Back home, each tribe faces its own version of the "black snake" and a centuries-old struggle to survive. [Publisher's description]

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Native American Activism: 1960s to Present - Zinn Education Project

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Overview of Native American activism since the late 1960s, including protests at Mt. Rushmore, Alcatraz, Standing Rock, and more.

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American Indian activists occupy the Bureau of Indian Affairs building during the Trail of Broken Treaties demonstration.
Photo by Paul Schmick. Courtesy of the DC Public Library Washington Start Collection.

Introduction

Inspired by the Civil Rights Movement at home and the Third World Movements abroad, newly empowered and organized Native Americans embarked on a new campaign for Native American Rights in 1972. Called the Trail of Broken Treaties, the demonstration brought caravans of Native American activists from the West Coast to Washington, D.C. to demand redress for years of failed and destructive federal Indian policies. Although the campaign was ultimately overshadowed by the activists' week-long occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) building and the negative press that resulted, the activists themselves remained steadfast in their objectives. These objectives were outlined in a Twenty-Point Position Paper that established an agenda for the Native American rights struggle in the years to come.

By 1972, years of Native American activism had brought about the end of the disastrous policy of termination. Responding to demands from Native American rights organizations like the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), in 1968 President Lyndon B. Johnson called for Indian "self-determination"-a new federal stance that would end termination and promote equal access to economic opportunity for Native Americans. These reforms continued under Johnson's successor, President Richard Nixon, who made a number of policy changes and commitments that would officially end termination. But 200 years of federal Indian policy had stripped Native American communities of most of their land, resources, and ability to act as independent nations. Rebuilding those communities required not only the end of termination, but also a reversal of the most destructive policies and recognition of the Native American rights guaranteed to the various tribes by treaties with the federal government.

Coalitions and Confrontations

The Trail of Broken Treaties was the product of years of grassroots organizing among Native American activists. Organizations like the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC), which had played a key role in the Poor People's Campaign, and the Survival of American Indians Association (SAIA) drew upon the direct action tactics of the Civil Rights Movement to advocate for Indian rights. In 1964 SAIA, led by Hank Adams, began organizing "fish-ins" after the state of Washington refused to recognize the treaty-protected right of Pacific Northwest tribes to fish in ancestral waters. The state of Washington had imposed restrictions on the amount and type of fishing that could take place in its waters. But Pacific Northwest tribes, for whom fishing was a vital economic activity, argued that these restrictions were a violation of their treaty rights.

Consciously modeled on the sit-ins in the American South, the fish-ins triggered a wave of resistance across the Northwest and the nation. In acts of civil disobedience across Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, Native people began fishing and hunting to assert their own treaty-protected rights. Conflicts over Indian land rights, tribal sovereignty, and self-determination unfolded across the country, inspiring a new generation of American Indian activists who adopted confrontational tactics first brought to the attention of the American public through the Civil Rights Movement: sit-ins, occupations, and direct action. As Standing Rock Sioux activist and historian Vine Deloria, Jr. explained, "The increased militancy of Indians began to spread across the country as people heard about the fishing-rights issue. Indians began to examine the conditions under which they lived, and they soon seethed with discontent and a new determination to correct the injustices." But this was more than an extension of the Civil Rights Movement. The era of "Red Power" had begun.

The formation of the American Indian Movement (AIM) in July 1968 and the nineteen-month occupation of Alcatraz by a group of American Indian activists calling itself the Indians of All Tribes beginning in November 1969 hailed the arrival of Red Power. Dennis Banks and Clyde Bellecourt organized the American Indian Movement in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1968, with the immediate goal of addressing the various socio-economic issues faced by urban Indians: housing, education, employment, and police violence. But they quickly became interested in federal Indian policy as they recognized that policy as the root of Indian issues. The takeover of Alcatraz the following year mobilized Native Americans across the country, and influenced the direction of AIM's work. Increasingly, AIM and other Native activists focused on mobilizing Native Americans across the country to protest federal Indian policy through a series of direct-action demonstrations called "confrontation politics."

The new movement for Native American rights gave Indians more power in their dealings with the federal government. For most of American history, tribal governments tended to deal with the government on a one-to-one basis. Now, acting in solidarity with other tribes, Indians gained strength in numbers. The new direct-action tactics, moreover, brought Native American issues to the center of American politics. As Clyde Bellecourt explained years later, "Native people saw that confrontation politics was the only way we could get things done. We had to take control, occupy, and fight-whatever it took to bring our grievances to the forefront." No longer would Native issues be pushed to the margins.

On the Trail

Galvanized by the Alcatraz occupation and the growing movement across the nation, the American Indian Movement mobilized to bring confrontation politics to the nation's capital. Hank Adams, together with Dennis Banks and Russell Means of AIM, assembled eight Native organizations, including AIM, the Indians of All Tribes, the National Indian Youth Council, and others to bring their grievances directly to the government in the Trail of Broken Treaties.

The plan called for a cross-country caravans of thousands of Native Americans bound for D.C. The caravan was meant to generate publicity that would draw Americans' attention to the government's failure to uphold its treaty obligations. At the journey's end, the demonstrators planned to bring their demands directly to government officials in the BIA and the White House. Timed to arrive in Washington the week of the 1972 presidential election, the intention was to place American Indian issues at the center of political debate and obtain a commitment from both candidates to honor Indigenous sovereignty.

On October 6, 1972, three caravans departed from Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. A fourth caravan later departed from Oklahoma, symbolically retracing the Trail of Tears. Along the way, the caravans passed through several Indian Reservations, where they held ceremonial demonstrations, workshops, and listening sessions, taking note of the specific grievances faced by the different communities they visited. As the caravans wound their way eastward and listened to the struggles faced by Native communities, participants gained a broad perspective on the extent of discontent in Indian country that would guide the movement in the coming years.

Before their arrival in Washington, D.C., the original three caravans met in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where they drafted a document that laid out their specific objectives to the federal government. Known as the Twenty-Points Position Paper, it distilled their analysis of Native American issues into a list of twenty demands, and proposed a new framework for the relationship between Indian tribes and the federal government. Among other things, it called for a restoration of the treaty-making process, the legal recognition of existing treaties, the return of 110 million acres of land to indigenous communities, the repeal of the termination laws and restoration of terminated tribes, and the protection of religious freedom. It also called for attention to crises in health, housing, and education in both rural and urban Indian communities.

The overriding objective of the Twenty Points was the recognition of Native American Sovereignty and the restoration and enforcement of Indigenous rights, as guaranteed by treaties. This powerful document not only served as a guide in the Native American rights movement to come, but also was later presented to the United Nations and formed the basis of the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. But in the fall of 1972, the objectives laid out in the Twenty Points plan were overshadowed by the events that unfolded after the caravan's arrival in Washington.

The Occupation of the BIA

The ambitions of the Trail's organizers began unraveling almost immediately upon the caravan's arrival in Washington, D.C. on November 2, 1972. The organizers had planned meetings with several government officials and hoped to deliver the Twenty Points proposal directly to President Nixon. But upon their arrival, they learned that Nixon was out of town. Scheduled meetings with officials at the Department of Interior, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Commerce were canceled without notice. Adding insult to injury, the National Park Service denied AIM's request to hold a ceremony at Arlington Ridge Park, where Pima Indian Ira Hayes is memorialized in the United States Marine Corps War Memorial. Among the demonstrators were many who had fought for the United States in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.

Though the participants could only suspect it at the time, later investigations would reveal that individuals within the BIA had been actively working against the movement. Typically, when Indian delegations came to Washington, the BIA assisted them with logistical matters such as locating housing and scheduling meetings with officials. But shortly after the caravans departed in October, the Assistant Secretary of the Interior prohibited the BIA from extending any assistance to the caravan. Frustrated at every turn, tensions continued to build when organizers discovered their accommodations in the basement of a rat-infested church to be woefully insufficient. The demonstrators went to the BIA, seeking assistance in obtaining better lodging. When the BIA denied them assistance, tensions boiled over, initiating a week-long occupation of the BIA building.

On November 2, roughly 500 Native American demonstrators initiated a sit-in at the Bureau of Indian Affairs building. With more demonstrators continuing to arrive from around the country, that number quickly grew to more than 1,000. Department of Interior officials had asked the D.C. police to evict the squatters at 5:00 p.m., and when they arrived to evict the demonstrators, they touched off a violent skirmish at the building's entrance. The demonstrators acted quickly to barricade the doors with furniture. After negotiations with a White House aide failed, the demonstrators unfurled a banner that read "NATIVE AMERICAN EMBASSY." The occupation had begun.

Over the following week, the demonstrators continued to barricade themselves within the BIA, prepared to defend the building with Molotov cocktails and weapons fashioned out of furniture. In the midst of the occupation, demonstrators went through hundreds of boxes of BIA documents, which participants say proved the mismanagement and outright theft of money and other resources from Native Americans that were supposed to have been held in trust by the government.

Despite the damning evidence gathered by the demonstrators, the occupation backfired, at least in the immediate aftermath. The press fixated on damages to the BIA building, showing images of broken furniture and spray-painted walls. The press largely overlooked the Twenty Points, which articulated the demonstrators' reason for being there. To bring a peaceful end to the siege, the Nixon administration made a deal with the caravan leadership that provided the participants immunity from prosecution and roughly $66,500 in travel expenses to return the demonstrators to their homes. The administration also established a task force to consider the Twenty Points, but the task force eventually rejected the demands.

"One Hell of a Smoke Signal"

Although the Trail of Broken Treaties did not accomplish all that its organizers had hoped, it would be a mistake to call the demonstration a failure. Though Nixon's task force initially rejected the demands set forth in the Twenty Points, many of these objectives were later incorporated into American Indian policy in the coming years, setting a new course for self-determination and tribal recognition, a reversal of the disastrous policies of the past.

The Trail of Broken Treaties also marked a new beginning for Native peoples for whom Washington, D.C. was their ancestral homeland. Prior to the Trail's arrival in November of 1972, an advance party went to the capital to set up an AIM office and prepare for the caravans' arrival. It was then that Billy Tayac, a Piscataway salesman, first encountered the American Indian Movement. The Piscataway peoples had long since ceased to live as a people, as European and American colonization in the 17th and 18th century had disrupted and dispersed tribal organizations. But many Piscataway families had persisted in the region, bearing their traditions through the generations. Among these was Billy Tayac's father, Turkey Tayac. Inspired by the movement unfolding at his doorstep, the younger Tayac soon became involved in the AIM Resurrection Project, which organized the remnant communities of peoples and local tribes along the East Coast. In 1974, Billy Tayac was instrumental in the Piscataway Resurrection.

For AIM organizer Dennis Banks, the Trail of Broken Treaties and the takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs had been a victory. It established new solidarity among tribes across the country, bringing Native Americans together in numbers more powerful than ever. "For the first time ever," he wrote, "members of some two hundred tribes had acted together for a common cause. I was proud to have been a part of this. If nothing else, we had sent up one hell of a smoke signal."

Alysa Landry, "Lyndon B. Johnson: Indians are 'Forgotten Americans," Indian Country Today, 13 September 2018, accessed 20 March 2022. https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/lyndon-b-johnson-indians-are-forgotten-americans

Landry, "Richard M. Nixon, 'Self-Determination Without Termination," Indian Country Today, 13, September 2018, accessed 20 March 2022. https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/richard-m-nixon-self-determination-without-termination

Nick Estes, Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance (New York: Verso, 2019), 183; Kent Blansett, A Journey to Freedom: Richard Oakes, Alcatraz, and the Red Power Movement (New Haven: Yale University Press), 250.

Hendricks, The Unquiet Grave, 38; Deloria, Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties, 47.

Hendricks, The Unquiet Grave, 38-39; Bellecourt, The Thunder Before the Storm, 119-120.

Gabrielle Tayac, "Spirits in the River: A Report on the Piscataway People," Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, 1999, 56-57.

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The Trail of Broken Treaties, 1972 (U.S. National Park Service)

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Inspired by the Civil Rights Movement at home and the Third World Movements abroad, newly empowered and organized Native Americans embarked on a new campaign for Native American Rights in 1972. Called the Trail of Broken Treaties, the demonstration brought caravans of Native American activists from the West Coast to Washington, D.C.

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Dennis Banks

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Clyde Bellecourt

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Russell Means

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The controversial construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) gained national and international attention when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers accepted an application filed by Energy Transfer Partners, a Texas-based developer behind the project.

The position of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is that the Dakota Access Pipeline violates Article II of the Fort Laramie Treaty, which guarantees the "undisturbed use and occupation" of reservation lands surrounding the proposed location of the pipeline. In 2015 the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, operating as a , passed a resolution regarding the pipeline stating that "the Dakota Access Pipeline poses a serious risk to the very survival of our Tribe and ... would destroy valuable cultural resources."

To generate momentum for their cause and demonstrate their opposition to the pipeline, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe organized runs, horseback rides, and marches. Many Native Nations, along with non-Native allies, celebrities, and several politicians supported the movement and travelled to join DAPL protesters at the Sacred Stone Camp on the Standing Rock Reservation. Conditions at the camp became intense. North Dakota law enforcement officials and private guards hired by Energy Transfer Partners clashed with protestors, sometimes violently, and made hundreds of arrests.

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Standing Rock Sioux and Dakota Access Pipeline | Teacher Resource

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Explore this interactive case study on the Dakota Access Pipeline and its violation of the Fort Laramie Treaty. Students will use the images, quotes, objects, and short passages to discover how youth groups organized, planned, and responded to address injustices.

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The American Indian movement was largely anti-government and an antagonizing force to them for the majority of their lifespan. Examples include the occupation of Alcatraz and the trail of broken treaties demonstration in 1972. This was in response to the centuries of oppression they had dealt with at the hands of the American Government. The FBI was also heavily invested in taking them down, and actively caused infighting within the organization. Despite this, they were heavily involved in passing legislation such as the Indian Self Determination and education assistance act of 1975 and the declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples by the United Nations in 2007.

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The american indian movement (AIM) did many large scale protests around the country like the trail of broken treaties, the wounded knee occupation and more. However, a more recent protest that was organized by successors of the American Indian movement was the Dakota access pipeline protest where large groups of native american peoples from many different tribes gathered together to protest the construction of an oil pipeline, meant to transport oil from North dakota to illinois. The construction of this pipeline would have drastic environmental impacts by contaminating the water, causing oil spills and disrupting the natural wildlife in the area. While the environmental impacts were a large part of why people protested the construction of the pipeline it was not the only reason. A very large concern with the pipeline was how it encroached on native american land and paid no respect to their culture and way of life. Native American culture believes nature and especially water, is sacred and the fact that this pipeline not only contaminates the water and disrupts the environment, but it also encroaches on native american burial sites and completely ignores all treaties put into place that are meant to protect native american land. The protest ended in February of 2017 with the unfortunate defeat of the native american tribes and the construction of the pipeline but also raising a very large amount of awareness about this issue.

Going back in time, when the American Indian movement was first being formed, There was a huge protests by a different group of native american peoples who took over alcatraz island in san francisco after it was discontinued and abandoned. They were able to do this because of a treaty that said any abandoned or out of use federally owned land was legally property of the Native American population. This occupation lasted for 19 grueling months with no power or running water and very limited supplies because of a government blockade that was attempting to force them out. Eventually a 13-year old girl died because of the harsh conditions, causing the family of the girl to leave the island which started the ripple effect leading to the complete retreat of Alcatraz island. While the American Indian movement was not involved in the occupation of Alcatraz, it inspired them and was one of the main driving points that made the organization so strong.

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Rising: The American Indian Movement and the Third Space of Sovereignty

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CURATORS

The research for this online exhibition was undertaken by William & Mary students enrolled in the Spring 2020 senior seminar titled Native Sovereignty, offered in the Department of Anthropology and cross-listed with Native Studies.

Student curators for Rising are:
Patrick Abboud ('20)
Kat Baganski ('21)
Abram Clear ('21)
Carley Fines ('20, Patawomeck)
Matthew Forcier ('20)
Victoria Reynolds ('20)
Oliver Ring ('20)
Lyla Rossi ('20)
Carolina Wasinger ('21, Delaware/Cherokee).

Faculty curator:

Danielle Moretti-Langholtz, Ph.D.
Director, American Indian Resource Center | Lecturer, Department of Anthropology | Administrator for the Native Studies Minor | Curator of Native American Art at the Muscarelle Museum of Art, William & Mary

Design and Exhibition Materials:
Brendan Reed at Artifact

Editing: Laura Fogarty

THANK YOU

Special thanks to Brendan Reed at for design and technical assistance making this online exhibition possible, to Alexis Jenkins ('19) for editorial and research assistance and to Natasha Mcfarland for assistance with research at Swem Libraries.

Additional thanks to Interim Director David Brashear and staff members at the Muscarelle Museum of Art, in particular; Melissa Parris, Laura Fogarty and Adriano Marinazzo, for providing images and assistance for Shared Ideologies.

With sincere appreciation to Dean Kate Conley for her support for the Native Studies Minor.

Thanks to Ann Marie Stock, the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Mark Hofer, Director, Studio for Teaching and Learning Innovation, for their support of this project.

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Rising: The American Indian Movement and the Third Space of Sovereignty

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CURATORS The research for this online exhibition was undertaken by William & Mary students enrolled in the Spring 2020 senior seminar titled Native Sovereignty, offered in the Department of Anthropology and cross-listed with Native Studies.

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I remember a history class my junior year in high school dealing with the period in United States history when Indian tribes were being forced onto reservations. Presented as a better option were Indian schools where children were taught to assimilate into American society. To ensure that they would learn English and American customs these students saw their families only rarely. I raised my hand and asked how the Indians felt about assimilation. The teacher answered that Indian ways were the way of the past and Indian cultures simply were not going to survive. I think this was one of the experiences that led me to become interested in folklore and anthropology, because, for me, there has always been an obvious flaw in this argument: schools are not supposed to take knowledge away from people. I have no Indian background, but did not need one to know that my teacher was wrong - or history was wrong. This was 1969 and an Indian rights movement was well underway. Oglala Lakota author Vine Deloria's book, Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, had just been published. Cracks were appearing in the accepted history of the first Americans as vanishing peoples.

There are many Indian cultures in the Americas with varied histories and various reactions to European contact. As a result of assimilation programs many Indian peoples lost much of their culture and part or all of their languages. Traditional lands were taken away for European American settlement, including places sacred to Indian peoples. Artifacts of cultural importance to Indians were taken away for protection in museums since Indian culture was expected to disappear. The wax cylinders of Indian songs made between 1890 and 1930, which are now in the American Folklife Center's archive, were largely made by ethnologists and linguists who believed that the songs and Indian languages would be gone in one or two generations.

In 1879 a case brought by a Ponca Indian named Standing Bear established that Indians are persons within the definition of the law. In 1924 all Indians were made citizens of the United States. Even then, Indians were not granted rights under the Constitution uniformly across the United States. Indian rights were made uniform with civil rights legislation in 1968.

Efforts to Christianize Native Americans led to some religious customs being strongly discouraged and even outlawed by some states. The American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978 established that Indian religions and rituals were protected under the Constitution. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 went further than this to clear the way for Indian religious objects and human remains held by agencies that receive federal funds to be returned to the appropriate tribes. Today there is a process for human remains to be returned to tribes for reburial. In some cases museums are returning sacred objects, while in others, museums may hold objects to preserve them but work with the tribes to establish appropriate traditional care and to make artifacts available for ceremonies. In many cases this work has enriched intercultural understanding of the traditions surrounding these objects.

A moving example is the Sacred Pole of the Omaha, a central object of Omaha spirituality and cultural history which was placed in the Peabody Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1888 and returned to the tribe just over one hundred years later, in 1989. The Pole has continued to have profound meaning for the Omaha in spite of assimilation efforts, and current generations of Omaha longed to see the Pole, which is believed to embody a protective spirit. A video documenting this event was made by the Native American Public Broadcasting Consortium and is available on the Nebraska Public Broadcasting website: The Return of the Sacred Pole (29 minutes).

The Sacred Pole is a powerful example of the importance of sacred objects. Tangible cultural heritage items, such as the Pole or the wolf mask in the photograph in this article, do not in themselves present a complete picture of a tradition. Much of what gives an object meaning is intangible heritage, such as the ceremonies in which the object is used, the beliefs associated with it, the stories that may be associated with it, and the language those stories are told in. Most of culture, it is said, resides between our ears.

Today many Indian and Alaskan Native peoples are working to revitalize their languages when there are native speakers or documentation of the languages to make this possible. In some cases elders who still speak the languages are teaching younger people who did not learn the language growing up. Dictionaries and teaching materials are being developed so that more people can learn these languages. By the late 20th century, the Wampanoag, the tribe in Massachusetts famous for having helped the Pilgrims to survive the first difficult winters, no longer had any living elders to teach them the full language. They had continued to say prayers in their native language, and had a few words, but not a language they could use for conversation. They found that there was a Bible in the language written by a missionary, John Eliot, in 1663 and that native speakers had used his writing system to write documents such as deeds and wills in their language. Members of the tribe, headed by linguist Jessie Little Doe Baird, worked with linguist Ken Hale to learn to read these documents and create a dictionary of Wampanoag. There are now a few young people acquiring both Wampanoag and English as first languages as they grow up. As it becomes a living language again, Wampanoag needs new words for modern life and technology, and so the language is growing. A film about this effort, We Still Live Here - Âs Nutayuneân, was made by Anne Makepeace for public television in 2011.

While the cylinder recordings housed in the American Folklife Center's archive are not sufficient to revive whole languages, they can play a part in the revitalization of intangible Indian cultural heritage. They provide songs for ceremonies and secular dances as they were sung at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Recordings from these cylinders have been placed in Indian tribal archives for use by the communities from which they came as part of the Federal Cylinder Project beginning in 1979. Efforts to provide tribes with access to materials held in the Center's collections continue today. This is an example of a cylinder recording, a song sung by Louis Pigeon in Menominee, telling the story of the culture hero Manabus tricking water birds to close their eyes and dance to his song so that he can eat them: " Manabus Tells the Ducks to Close Their Eyes " (recorded by Frances Densmore in Wisconsin in 1925).

Many of the public programs of the American Folklife Center, available on video, include presentations of culture by Indians who are skilled at introducing their cultural heritage and at explaining their own efforts at cultural revitalization. For those readers who would like to explore further, here are a few examples to get you started (each video is about one hour long):

The Navajo dance group, Dineh Tah is mainly made up of college and high school students learning their tradition from elders. This performance at the Library of Congress was in 2007. They omit some parts of the dances used only in ceremonies, but present enough to give their audiences a look at the rich tradition of Navajo dance.

In the 2009 video," Wayne Newell and Blanch Sockabasin: Traditional Passamaquoddy Music From Maine," two elders present Passamaquoddy songs and traditions. Wayne Newell teaches Passamaquoddy language, while Blanch Sockabasin is a traditional basket maker and a teacher of singing and drumming.

Tim Tingle is an author and storyteller with long experience working to teach both Indians and non-Indians about the Choctaw people. At the 2014 National Book Festival he presented a reading from his book that aims to teach young people what it felt like to be a child on the Trail of Tears as Indians from the Southeast were marched to Oklahoma Territory at gunpoint, How I Became a Ghost: A Choctaw Trail of Tears Story. In 2011 he teamed up with flute player D.J. Battiest-Tomasi to present a concert of music and storytelling at the Library.

The 2006 video " Mary Louise Defender Wilson and Keith Bear Sioux and Mandan Hidatsa storytelling and music from North Dakota " includes a story of the Mandan and Hidatsa people told by Keith Bear, and stories of the Sioux told by Mary Louise Defender Wilson, told in Dakota and English.
Resources
Anderson, Jane. " Anxieties of Authorship & Ownership: Intellectual Property, Indigenous Collections & Decolonial Futures," April 3, 2013.

" Carlos Nakai - American Indian Flute Music from Arizona," performance at the Library of Congress, 2010 (RealMedia format).

Curtis (Edward S.) Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

Florida Folklife from the WPA Collections, 1937 to 1942 (includes recordings of Seminole songs)

Hall, Stephanie. " Indigenous American Cylinder Recordings and the American Folklife Center," Folklife Today, November 27, 2013.

Hall, Stephanie. " Omaha Hethu'shka Society Songs and Dances," Folklife Today, November 26, 2014.

Homegrown Concert Series Online Archive, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. A list of available concerts online, including more Native American concerts.

" Hoop Dances by Dallas Chief Eagle and Jasmine Pickner "(Rosebud and Crow Creek Sioux tribes of South Dakota), performance at the Library of Congress, 2007.

National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

National Breath of Life Institute for Indigenous Languages.

National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution.

" Ollin Yoliztli Calmecac - Aztec dance ensemble from Pennsylvania," performance at the Libary of Congress, 2009 (RealMedia format).

Omaha Indian Music, selections from the American Folklife Center's collections documenting Omaha music traditions.

Seeger, Anthony. " Wait! Does This Belong to Us? New Ideas of Music Ownership & the Musical Life of the Kïsêdjê " April 8, 2015. This talk is about the introduction of the concept of intellectual property to an indigenous group in the Amazon basin and the ways that the tribe struggled with that new idea.

" Mauchahty-Ware with Thomas Ware, III and Chester Tieyah, Jr. Kiowa and Comanche Music and Dance," performance at the Library of Congress, 2009. A video excerpt from " Legends and Legacies: A Concert Celebrating Joe Wilson and the NCTA Collection."

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Native American Cultural Revitalization Today

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I remember a history class my junior year in high school dealing with the period in United States history when Indian tribes were being forced onto reservations. Presented as a better option were Indian schools where children were taught to assimilate into American society.