If grass roots activism accomplished landmark civil rights for Native Americans it did so because it focused national attention on an injustice and worked within the system to correct it. What then did the founders of the "Red Power" movement accomplish through their less diplomatic efforts? In order to answer that question it is important to understand the underlying motivation of these activists. Generally dissatisfied with the slow pace of progress, the leaders of these organizations were younger and eager to effect change within their communities. Many were college educated and as a result had been exposed to the rapidly developing culture of defiance that was so much a part campus activism in the 1960s. Not outwardly violent, these Native Americans were most assuredly angry. This was the next phase of Native American activism, a countercultural that would be in essence a microcosm of a greater intergenerational clash within the United States.
Some of the more prominent “Red Power” organizations grew out of previously existing grass roots coalitions. The founders of these groups came from the reservations, but experienced the rising dissent among their contemporaries at America’s universities and colleges--dissent that was so much a part of the post-war period. The most visible example of this movement was the American Indian Movement. Founded in Minnesota in 1968, AIM advocated the occupation of federal land as a symbolic gesture. By doing this they expected to focus national attention on the plight of Indians. In 1969, AIM occupied Alcatraz Island and demanded that the United States government review the treaties that it had broken with Native American nations. They remained on the historic island unmolested until disbursed by federal agents in 1971. The government made this move, however, only after the media attention had faded.
AIM subsequently marched on Washington D.C. and raided the offices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. No one was hurt but as an act of defiance to the organization that had mismanaged Indian affairs for two centuries, the group destroyed several files and made quite a mess. They symbolically captured the Mayflower II while it was anchored in Plymouth harbor in 1970. These dramatic demonstrations were shocking to be certain, especially to the leaders of the less provocative grass roots organizations. However, so far they had been lacking in any acts of violence. All of that changed in 1973.
Seeking a change in what they viewed to be lackluster leadership of the Lakota Sioux and once more demanding a review of Indian land cessions, AIM occupied the reservation at Pine Ridge—the site of the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. When federal agents moved in to remove the dissidents, tensions flared and the resulting gun battle cost the lives of two members of the group. Flushed out after 71 days of siege, AIM narrowly avoided criminal prosecution when it was revealed that the federal prosecutor had improperly pursued his case and all charges were subsequently dropped. A second siege at Pine Ridge in 1975 made criminals of the leadership of the American Indian Movement and cost the lives of two federal agents. The group only survived by changing its tactics and adopting the peaceful legal protests of the groups from whom they had separated in the 1960. By the 1980s, AIM had reorganized amid a renewed era of grass roots activism that had once more swept the nation. The leaders of AIM realized that the only way to improve the status of Native Americans rights was to work through the system and participate in the great march toward peace.
Bibliography
Mark C. Carnes, ed. U.S. History. (New York: MacMillan Library Reference, 1996).
Kenneth Janda, Jeffrey M Berry, and Jerry Goldman. The Challenge of Democracy:Government in America. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999).
Carl Waldman. Atlas of the North American Indian. (New York: Checkmark Books, 2000).
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