The American Indian Movement (AIM) was an important militant group in the early 1970s. It was founded in Minneapolis in 1968 and was led by Dennis Banks and Russell Means. In November 1972, members of AIM drew attention to the plight of American Indians in modern times by taking over the headquarters of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C. A more dramatic statement was made during the period between February and May, 1973, when AIM occupied the town of Wounded Knee in the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. After the Wounded Knee occupation, the United States government made a systematic and concerted effort to disband AIM and other organizations like it. Although the movement had come to an end by the mid-1970s, it had already made an important contribution to the development of Indian rights at that time. By bringing the attention of the American people to the problems of Indians, AIM provided an important step toward the solving of those problems.
The rise of the American Indian Movement in the early 1970s was not an isolated event. In fact, it stemmed from more than a century of government domination and Indian protests. In the early 1800s, the United States government instituted a policy in which Indians were placed on reservations while white settlers were given traditional Indian lands. In 1824, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was formed for the purpose of overseeing this policy. In the period following the American Civil War, there were many battles in which Indian tribes tried to stand up to the invading white settlers. These conflicts culminated in the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre. In December of that year, the U.S. Seventh Calvary captured a large group of Sioux warriors, along with their wives and children. For some unknown reason, one Indian warrior fired a gun while the soldiers were searching for weapons. The scene suddenly turned into a violent confrontation, and in the end almost 200 ...