Indian men, women and children were killed (Cornell 3).
After the Wounded Knee massacre, the government was finally able to gain a stronghold over the American Indian people. In 1934, this control was increased with the Indian Reorganization Act. This act called for the establishment of tribal governments; however, the actual outcome of the act was to replace the traditional governments of chiefs and elders with local governments which were "manageable from the offices of the U.S. Department of Interior" (Weyler 37). Thus, the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act put the Indian people under greater government control than ever before. In the 1950s and 1960s, during the rise of the Civil Rights movement in America, there was an increase in the number of Indian protests in the nation. There were demonstrations over such issues as fishing rights, broken treaties, and the U.S. government ignoring the needs of the American Indians. Many Indians protested the control of the government and the BIA over local tribal affairs. In 1969, a dramatic protest was staged on Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay. A group of Indians calling themselves the Indians of All Tribes took over the island for nineteen months, demanding that it be made into an Indian cultural and educational center (Prucha 81). This demand was never met, and eventually the group was forced to leave the island. However, the situation had a strong impact in terms of drawing national attention to the plight of the American Indian. In addition, it encouraged other militant Indian groups to take further steps.
One such group was the American Indian Movement, which was founded in Minneapolis in July, 1968. The first leader of AIM was Dennis Banks, a Chippewa Indian who had served time in prison on burglary charges. Banks wanted to give other young Indians in Minneapolis a better chance than he had. Thus, he founded AIM for the purpose of creating "a revitalized sense...