Klineberg, Otto, ed. 1944. Characteristics of the AmericanNegro. New York: Harper.

Myrdal, Gunnar. 1944. An American Dilemma: The NegroProblem and Modern Democracy. New York: Harper.

Sterner, Richard. 1943. The Negro’s Share. New York:Harper.

AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT

The American Indian Movement (AIM) emergedfrom the broader context of ethnic/racial activism dur-ing the civil rights era in the United States. AIM wasfounded in 1968 on the streets of Minneapolis to mon-itor police harassment and abuse. From this originalmandate, AIM quickly evolved into a civil rights orga-nization fighting for Native American rights. Thisentry reviews its history and contributions.

Early Issues

Amid the many local struggles in which AIM mem-bers participated across the country, one major protestevent drew national and international attention. In1969, the group “Indians of All Tribes” began itsoccupation of Alcatraz Island. During the 19-monthoccupation, a major spokesperson was Dennis Banks,a founder of AIM. That same year, AIM founded anIndian Health Board in Minneapolis, the first urban-based health care center for American Indians in thenation.

After the Alcatraz occupation, AIM chapters werefounded across the United States in major cities withsignificant Native American populations. During thistime, some of AIM’s most ardent leaders, such asRussell Means and John Trudell, were recruited to itsranks. Throughout these early years, AIM membersexpanded their vision for social justice by attackinginequalities on numerous fronts. For example, AIMoccupied abandoned property at the naval air stationnear Minneapolis to focus attention on Indian educa-tion. In 1970, a legal rights center was founded toassist in alleviating indigenous legal issues.

In a series of demonstrations, AIM members pub-licly addressed Native American grievances. Forexample, on July 4, 1971, AIM members held demon-strations atop Mount Rushmore. On ThanksgivingDay, protesters took over a replica of the Mayflower atPlymouth, Massachusetts, painting Plymouth Rock

red, and they used the ship as a public forum to airNative grievances. In 1971, AIM assisted the LacCourte Orielles of Ojibwa, Wisconsin, in taking overa dam controlled by Northern States Power thatflooded reservation land. The action led to an eventualsettlement, returning more than 25,000 acres of Ojibwaland. That same year, the First National AIMConference was convened to develop long-rangestrategies for future directions of the movement.Eighteen AIM chapters attended the meeting.

An Agenda of Issues

AIM continued to become directly involved in issuesnationwide. In February 1972, Means led a caravan ofapproximately 1,000 people to Gordon, Nebraska, toprotest the failure of local authorities to charge twoAnglo men in the torture and murder of RaymondYellow Thunder. AIM also organized a caravan toWashington, D.C. The central objective was to presenta twenty-point solution paper to President RichardNixon to address Native American grievances on theeve of the 1972 U.S. presidential election. In what wascalled the “Trail of Broken Treaties,” 2,000 peoplefrom reservations and urban areas across the countryarrived in the capital in November.

When government officials refused to allow repre-sentatives to deliver their document about treaty rightsand self-governance, approximately 400 AIM mem-bers and activists seized the Bureau of Indian Affairs(BIA) headquarters in the Department of the Interiorbuilding. The six-day occupation ended only after theNixon administration publicly committed itself toaddressing each point. The occupiers left the building,but not before taking many confidential files discov-ered in BIA offices. The documents revealed manyquestionable government practices, including landand mineral fraud as well as the forced sterilization ofIndian women. AIM came to Washington as a civilrights organization, and it left with the reputation forviolent action. This reputation was magnified after themedia focused on the vandalizing of the BIA officesrather than on the issues of indigenous sovereignty.

While AIM members drew national and interna-tional attention to Native American issues, they alsosought solutions to problems. Realizing that any reso-lution must be based in a strong cultural and spiritualcontext, AIM opened several survival schools inMilwaukee and the Twin Cities (Minneapolis–St. Paul) area. However, in 1973, the federal government

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abruptly canceled AIM’s education grants. Manybelieve that the withdrawal of funding was punish-ment for the Trail of Broken Treaties, although legalaction restored them. Within two years, a Federationof Survival Schools was created among sixteenschools in the United States and Canada. The purposeof the federation was to advocate and cooperate in aculturally based education for American Indian andNative children. That same year (1975), Housing andUrban Development (HUD) chose AIM to be the pri-mary sponsor of the first Indian-run housing project,the Little Earth of United Tribes.

Wounded Knee

After the Trail of Broken Treaties, some AIM mem-bers headed to South Dakota to protest a pattern ofracism and violence against Indians in off-reservationborder towns. On February 6, 1973, 200 AIM mem-bers and police confronted each other at the countycourthouse in Custer. A local Anglo man, DaroldSchmitz, stabbed Wesley Bad Heart Bull to death, andSchmitz was charged with manslaughter rather thanfirst-degree murder. When local officials refused theAIM request to alter the charge, violence ensued. Inthe end, approximately 40 AIM members werecharged with offenses. Several AIM members werejailed, including the victim’s mother, but Schmitznever served a day in jail.

AIM leadership also was contacted by the LakotaElders to assist them in solving the pattern of grosscorruption within the BIA and the Tribal Council onthe Pine Ridge Reservation. The major conflict was between traditional Oglalas and the federallysponsored tribal government under Dick Wilson.Traditional Oglalas requested support from AIM todefend them against what they saw as a state of terror carried out by Wilson’s tribal government. Theconflict led to the 71-day armed confrontation atWounded Knee, the site of the 1890 Wounded KneeMassacre.

The occupation began February 28, 1973, and thearmed standoff, involving U.S. army reserves, FederalBureau of Investigation (FBI) agents, law enforce-ment, and armed vigilantes, ended May 7 after offi-cials agreed to investigate the complaints. Theincident at Wounded Knee became a powerful socialpoint for Indian sovereignty.

After the Wounded Knee incident, the federal gov-ernment intervened in ways that had a negative effect

on the movement. AIM leadership was neutralized bya series of criminal charges. During the eight monthsof trials, the longest federal trial in U.S. history, thedefense uncovered many instances of governmentmisconduct. Eventually, most charges were droppedagainst Means, Banks, and others. On the Pine Ridgereservation, Wilson remained in power despite beingoutpolled by Means in an election. The Department ofthe Interior upheld the decision to keep Wilson inpower. Wilson’s vigilantes then began a violent cam-paign to rid the reservation of any political opposition.

By the spring of 1975, the Oglalas who were tar-geted by Wilson’s men had come to conclude thatarmed self-defense was their only means of survival.AIM members were called back to the reservation andestablished a base camp at the Jumping Bull property.When FBI agents chased a car onto the property, a gunbattle ensued. A force of federal agents, Guardians ofthe Oglala Nation (GOONS), and BIA police attackedthe AIM defensive encampment. Two FBI agents andone AIM member were killed in the firefight. To cap-ture escaping AIM members, the FBI brought a forceof 250 militarily equipped men onto the reservation.Over the course of the next year, the hostilities on thereservation subsided.

For the killings of the FBI agents, a number ofAIM members were placed on trial. All were acquit-ted except Leonard Peltier, who was extradited fromCanada in 1977. Peltier was convicted in the deaths of the FBI agents and given two life sentences.Questions have been raised about the evidence sub-mitted by the prosecution at the original trial, and newevidence demonstrated that Peltier’s gun did not killthe agents. Nevertheless, Peltier remained incarcer-ated. Many charge that Peltier is a political prisoner,incarcerated more for his activism than for the deathsof the FBI agents.

A Global Perspective

As AIM’s activities grew, the FBI’s CounterIntelligence Program (COINTELPRO) began anactive campaign to undermine and discredit the move-ment’s goals, using everything from arrests to infiltra-tor provocateurs. The effort did not succeed indestroying AIM; rather, it had a role in the eventualcreation of a unified AIM.

In 1974, Means founded the International IndianTreaty Council (IITC) to charge that the U.S. govern-ment is in violation of an 1868 treaty. Within three

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years, the IITC arranged the first meeting of Indianpeoples from North, South, and Central Americabefore the UN Economic and Social Council at thepalace of nations in Geneva, Switzerland. That meet-ing led to the creation of the Working Group onIndigenous Populations charged with conductinginvestigations into indigenous issues worldwide. TheIITC was the first designated indigenous nongovern-mental organization.

The IITC remained active into the mid-1980s, butinternal political disagreements led to a decline insupport among many activists. Despite changes inpolitical direction since its existence, IITC memberscontinue to struggle for international indigenousrights. In April 1996, AIM and IITC representa-tives attended the Preparatory Meeting for theIntercontinental Encounter for Humanity and AgainstNeoliberalism hosted by the Zapatista Army ofNational Liberation (EZLN) and held in La Realidadin the Lancondone Rainforest of Eastern Chiapas,Mexico. EZLN also hosted a second meeting, heldfrom July 27 until August 3, 1996, about theIntercontinental Encounter for Humanity and AgainstNeoliberalism. Delegates of the IITC and AIM alsoattended this meeting.

Domestic Issues

The Longest Walk was the final unified AIM action.Organized by Banks, the walk began in San Franciscoin February 1978. Participants walked across theUnited States holding a series of public educationevents to gather local support and participants. By thetime they arrived in Washington, D.C., on July 23, themarch contained several hundred Native Americansrepresenting more than 80 nations. The participantsheld a rally on July 25 where a manifesto was deliv-ered amplifying the 1972 twenty-point program.Congressman Ron Dellums had the piece printed aspart of the congressional record.

On local stages across the country, AIM continuedto maintain a high level of involvement in AmericanIndian issues. Members founded MIGIZI Communi-cations, which is dedicated to the production of Indiannews and information to educate students of all agesas tomorrow’s technical workforce. This organizationlaunched an adult educational program for AmericanIndian offenders, continued to establish survivalschools, and opened the American Indian Opportuni-ties Industrialization Center (AIOIC), which creates

job training schools to ameliorate unemploymentamong Indian people. More than 17,000 NativeAmericans have been trained for jobs at the centersince it opened in 1979.

Throughout the 1980s and beyond, AIM continuedits efforts to achieve social justice for AmericanIndians. In South Dakota, local AIM chapters playedan instrumental role in the 1980 Black HillsInternational Gathering. A year later, they founded theYellow Thunder Camp, a four-year occupation of 880acres in the Black Hills of South Dakota. AIM mem-bers became involved in the Hopi–Navajo land issueby organizing a security camp to protect 10,000 tradi-tional Dine from being forcibly removed from theirhomes. They also assisted the Anishinabe AkeengOrganization in its struggle to regain control of stolenreservation lands. AIM formed the National Coalitionon Racism in Sports and Media to confront the mediastereotypes about American Indians.

Over the course of its existence, AIM has gonethrough a number of alterations in purpose and orga-nizational structure. In the beginning, AIM sought tosolve local issues, but it quickly evolved into anactivist organization to address national and (eventu-ally) international indigenous issues. AIM remains inthe forefront with respect to issues of self-determination,sovereignty, and the improvement of American Indianlives. This commitment now extends to supportingindigenous struggles across the globe.

Over time, however, AIM has gone from a central-ized organization to autonomous AIM chapters scat-tered across various states and into Canada. This is theresult of several factors. As the political economiclandscape changed, disagreements arose within AIM’sranks over tactics and strategies for continuing thestruggle. This factor, combined with governmentalefforts to undermine AIM, resulted in charges andcountercharges of government collaboration, ethnicfraud, and conspiracy among AIM factions.

The legacy of AIM’s work has entered into themainstream of Native North America. On February27, 1998, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the WoundedKnee incident, an Oglala Lakota Nation resolutionestablished that day as a National Day of Liberation.On July 16–19, 1998, the 25th annual Lac CourteOreilles Honor the Earth Homecoming Celebrationwas held to celebrate and honor the people of LacCourte Oreilles and AIM who participated in the July31, 1971, takeover of the Winter Dam and the birth ofHonor the Earth. Several days later, at the Pipe Stone

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Quarries, Minnesota, the AIM Grand GoverningCouncil convened to commemorate AIM’s 30thanniversary and set the agenda for struggling forAmerican Indian rights and sovereignty.

Gregory R. Campbell

See also Bureau of Indian Affairs; Deloria, Vine, Jr.; NationalIndian Youth Council; Native American Identity, NativeAmericans; Peltier, Leonard; Red Power; ReservationSystem; Wounded Knee (1890 and 1973), ZapatistaRebellion

Further Readings

Churchill, Ward. 1994a. “American Indian Movement.” Pp. 37–38 in Native Americans in the Twentieth Century: AnEncyclopedia, edited by Mary B. Davis. New York: Garland.

Churchill, Ward. 1994b. Indians Are Us? Culture andGenocide in Native North America. Monroe, ME:Common Courage.

Churchill, Ward and Jim Vander Wall. 2002. Agents ofRepression: The FBI’s Secret Wars against the BlackPanther Party and the American Indian Movement. rev.ed. Boston, MA: South End.

Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1984. Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties:An American Indian Declaration of Independence.2nd ed. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Johansen, Bruce and Roberto Maestas. 1979. Wasi’shu: TheContinuing Indian Wars. New York: Monthly Review.

Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. 1971. Red Power: The AmericanIndian’s Fight for Freedom. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Wittstock, Laura Waterman and Elaine J. Salinas. n.d. A BriefHistory of the American Indian Movement. RetrievedNovember 5, 2007, from http://www.aimovement.org/ggc/history.html

Web Sites

American Indian Movement, Council on Security andIntelligence: http://www.aimovement.org/csi

AMERICAN INDIANS

See NATIVE AMERICANS

AMERICANIZATION

Americanization—literally, the process of becomingAmerican—is a cultural phenomenon rather than alegal one, not to be confused with naturalization and

the process of becoming a legal citizen of the UnitedStates. It represents a conservative social pressure,exerted on individuals or groups who are (or are per-ceived to be) culturally marginalized, to become inte-grated into “mainstream” culture, whatever that mightbe at any given time. For much of U.S. history, thatculture was strongly identified with and determinedby Western Europeans and Protestantism, so that prej-udice related to race and religion excluded manypeople from the possibility of being Americanized. In other words, Americanization was the process ofbecoming more like, or more accepted by, theProtestant dominant culture. As demographics havechanged particularly since World War II, with reli-gious diversification and a dramatic change in the roleof religion in U.S. society, so too has the meaning ofAmericanization changed. This entry traces the his-tory of Americanization from the founding of therepublic to contemporary times.

Early Years

Relative cultural homogeneity during the colonial andearly republic period meant that concepts of inclusioninto public culture—particularly as enshrined in thelaw—were generally defined by European males, usu-ally from wealthy families, who were overwhelm-ingly Protestant. The “blue” and Sunday closing laws,religious restrictions on voting and eligibility for elec-tion, prosecutions for blasphemy, and Bible reading inschool were common reflections of the synthesis ofProtestantism and U.S. public society. Some Catholicmen did participate in the larger political culture—forinstance, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Maryland,was one of the signers of the Declaration ofIndependence—but by the American Revolution eventhe historically Catholic colony of Maryland wasunder Protestant political control.

Free African Americans, women, Jews, and theworking classes were marginalized politically and,thus, rendered incapable of contributing to the largercultural debates in other than occasional or indirectways. Enslaved African Americans and NativeAmericans residing on reservations were specificallyexcluded by law. This meant that, for the most part,although all of these groups may have been the focusof public debate about the ethics of slavery or therights of women, for example, they were never mis-taken for fully vested members of U.S. society.

This is not to suggest that there was universalagreement within the Euro-American Protestant

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