AMIDA BUDDHA

lastrealindians

AIM – Wounded Knee II, 40 years later -Chase Iron Eyes

Violent rabble rousers those AIMsters. The B.I.A. takeover and trashing of the building meant to “help” Indians, the burning down of the courthouse in Custer, SD when they refused to charge a white-man with murder of an Indian, the 71 day siege at Wounded Knee where 10,000 rounds of gunfire were exchanged and lives were lost. This is the American Indian Movement.

Mainstream has succeeded in repainting the face of AIM so that we associate the word AIM with in your face-gun-toting thuggery whose influence we fail to recognize for its contributions then and its evolution now. I do not dispute that the AIM of the 70s was violent; our people didn’t have the blessings of time and coherent organization to plan each and every step of the movement. Things just happened of their own energy, including violence.

However, any real movement of the people must have more than just a knack for confrontation and violence. Real movements must embrace the strong will of the people to change. Movements provide a vehicle for communities to take control of their destiny. This is what I wanted AIM to be: a long lived, evolving resurgence movement that would pervade all aspects of modern indigenous existence in our inter-generational process to reclaim our dignity. And during the early days of the AIM patrol (to police the white cops dishing out brutality to Indians in Minneapolis) and the good days of tent-city wherein AIMsters cut wood and hauled water for elders, AIM was about practical community control of its own destiny. Then AIM had to take it to a higher and more controversial level which resulted in a response from COINTELPRO and the subsequent killing and imprisoning of AIM leadership and successful disorientation of the movement. This time is coming to an end as it is obvious that our people are embracing their Creator-given sense of justice and freedom as indigenous peoples wrongfully and illegitimately subjected to Christian-Corporate-Rule. AIM breathed life into many different forms.

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.