#american indian movement

[blanket-burrito-protocol]

The 50th anniversary of AIMs (American Indian Movement's) occupation at Wounded Knee is coming up, so the Lakota People's Law Project is leading another push to free an AIM activist who was wrongly convicted of killing two federal agents in 1975- Leonard Peltier. He was convicted on false evidence and false testimony and sentenced to two life sentences. He is now 78.

LPL has a formatted email up on their website now which you can personalize and send to Biden to ask for clemency. (Please personalize emails like this so it doesn't get filtered as spam. Just move some words around, add some, take some, you don't have to write a whole email.) Please pass this around.

[decolonize-the-left]

Have you heard of the American Indian Movement? Did you know natives had a movement/group in the 70's-80's dedicated to native liberation?

No? It's a part of history they don't teach you in school, but come close and look so I can show you.

Watch this, it's not long I promise. This is Russel Means, a prominent native activists and one of the leaders of AIM. AIM sought to help natives with things like tribal sovereignty, housing, healthcare, and food security.

Here he is testifying to the US government.

The transcript ^

A little excerpt of the end:

"The American Indian people’s right to self-determination is recognized and will be implemented through the following policies:

The American Indian individual shall have the right to choose his or her citizenship and the American Indian nations have the right to choose their level of citizenship and autonomy up to absolute independence;

The American Indian will have their just property rights restored which include rights of easement, access, hunting, fishing, prayer, and water;

The BIA will be abolished with the American Indian tribal members deciding the extent and nature of their governments, if any;

Negotiations will be undertaken to exchange otherwise unclaimed and un-owned federal property for any and all government obligations to the American Indian nations, and to fully -- and to hold fully liable those responsible for any and all damages which have resulted from the resource development on or near our reservation lands including the -- including damages done by careless and inexcusable disposal of uranium mill tailings and other mineral and toxic wastes.

I want to thank you, gentlemen, for inviting me here. It's been a high honor, especially since I'm the only one invited here today to testify that doesn't receive money from the federal government. Also, I want to make -- I was introduced as a former founder and leader of American Indian movement to the tribal chairwoman that you have here, a former associates for the American Indian Movement back in the days when we were gross militants and so I just wanted to let you in on that, that the American Indian Movement is a very proud continuing part of American Indian Society.

Thank you."

"The American Indian Movement remains based in Minneapolis with several branches nationwide. The organization prides itself on fighting for the rights of Native peoples outlined in treaties and helping to preserve indigenous traditions and spiritual practices. The organization also has fought for the interests of aboriginal peoples in Canada, Latin America and worldwide. “At the heart of AIM is deep spirituality and a belief in the connectedness of all Indian people,” the group states on its website."

[3-feet-high-and-rising]

[garadinervi]

Leonard Peltier, I Am Everyone, in Prison Writings. My Life Is My Sun Dance, Edited by Harvey Arden, Introduction by Chief Arvol Looking Horse, Preface by Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, St. Martin's Press, New York, NY, 1999

I am everyone who ever died without a voice or a prayer or a hope or a chance… everyone who ever suffered for being an Indian, for being human, for being indigenous, for being free, for being Other, for being committed… I am every one of them. Every single one. Yes. Even you. I am everyone.

International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee American Indian Movement The Jericho Movement

[glowingcritter]

Sacred Heart Church, Wounded Knee occupation, 1973

[strathshepard]

American Indian Movement (AIM) teepee on the grounds of the Washington Monument

[empress-lotus]

“What the American Indian Movement says is that the American Indians are the Palestinians of the United States, and the Palestinians are the American Indians of Europe” -Russell Means

Portrait of Russell Means by Andy Warhol

[emma-dennehy-presents]

Just realized that the 50th anniversary of the Wounded Knee Occupation started like a week ago. (Feb 27 - May 8, 1973) For 71 days, 200 Oglala Sioux and AIM activists occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in opposition to the corruption of tribal chairman Richard Wilson and centuries of failure by the US Government to honor treaties with native peoples. The town would be besieged by federal forces (US Marshals, FBI, SD National Guard) and GOON (a paramilitary force run by Richard Wilson). 5 people were killed, and 16 wounded during the siege. On May 5, an agreement was reached between leaders of the occupiers and the feds. By May 8, the town had been evacuated, and the US Government seized control. The occupation saw significant public support and helped bring light to issues facing indigenous peoples within the US. Issues they continue to face and fight to this day, 50 years later. (For example, there are around 4200 to 5700 unsolved cases involving murdered or missing indigenous women, as of 2021)

[playitagin]

1973-End of the Wounded Knee Occupation

[voteharder]

FREE LEONARD PELTIER. FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS.

[commonweal]

Patch worn by members of AIM circa.1973

[decolonize-the-left]

"I have been kept away from my family and only seen them a few times over the past 47 years. It is more than hard, especially when the kids write to me and tell me they want to see me and I cannot afford the cost of travel. If I was free I would build me a home on my tribal land, help build the economy of our nations and give a home to our homeless children,” Peltier said in an interview conducted over email via one of his approved contacts.

Peltier, an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa tribe and of Lakota and Dakota descent, was convicted of murdering two FBI agents during a shootout on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota in June 1975. Peltier was a leader of the American Indian Movement (Aim), an Indigenous civil rights movement founded in Minneapolis that was infiltrated and repressed by the FBI.

The 1977 murder trial – and subsequent parole hearings – were rife with irregularities and due process violations including evidence that the FBI had coerced witnesses, withheld and falsified evidence. Amnesty International, UN experts, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and the Rev Jesse Jackson are among those to have condemned his prolonged detention as arbitrary and politically motivated and called for his release.

[oldshowbiz]

[garadinervi]

Leonard Peltier, Prison Writings. My Life Is My Sun Dance, Edited by Harvey Arden, Introduction by Chief Arvol Looking Horse, Preface by Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, St. Martin's Press, New York, NY, 1999

Doing time creates a demented darkness of my own imagination… Doing time does this thing to you. But, of course, you don’t do time. You do without it. Or rather, time does you. Time is a cannibal that devours the flesh of your years day by day, bite by bite.

International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee American Indian Movement The Jericho Movement

[glowingcritter]

American Indian activist, Vietnam War veteran, and protest folksinger, Peter LaFarge in Greenwich Village, August 1962