The American Indian Movement is something new, but it is also something very old. It was born when the white man killed the first Indian and stole some of his land. AIM was founded inside a Minnesota prison by young men who had been abused, mistreated, and starved in boarding schools, orphanages, and foster homes, who had been taken away from loving parents whom white bureaucrats called unfit because their homes had no electricity or indoor plumbing. When they came out of these foster homes and boarding schools they were angry, and because they were angry they got into trouble and wound up in a penitentiary. A group of these men, including Dennis Banks and Clyde Bellecourt, began talking inside prison walls. They were all Ojibway born on various Minnesota reservations. Out of these talks an idea was born. After their release they founded an Indian civil rights organization. During one of their first meetings in Saint Paul somebody proposed that they call themselves Concerned Indian Americans, but abbreviated that would have been CIA. Then one woman said, “You men always aim to do this or to do that, why don’t you call yourselves AIM, the American Indian Movement?” After that nothing was ever the same again.
AIM was an organization of Indians living in big-city ghettos. Most of them no longer spoke their tribal languages. Many had never seen an Indian ceremony performed. They started out the right way, keeping Indians from drinking, protecting them from police brutality, founding an Indian Way School for Native kids, demonstrating against racism and injustice. But for over a year we on the reservation didn’t know about them.
Even so, I was already involved in the struggle. I want to say up front that I am not against the white man as a person, but I am against his system, under which I am forced to live. So from early on I fought against it. I try to educate my people. I am like a magnet, I pull the people to me, pull them together. I went to the full-bloods who live way out on the prairie and in the hills, the neglected and forgotten folks living in tar paper shacks without indoor plumbing.
I told them, “Listen, I’m speaking to you. I want to tell what is happening to you and to your lives. I’m concerned for you. I’ve seen how much hardship you’ve endured. I don’t want you to be left out. I don’t want to see you in old folks’ homes. I don’t want to see you poor and hungry. You are the real Indians, the real Lakota, the backbone of the nation. You know the language and the ways of our people, but your voice has not been heard. We must stop letting the government and the tribal council talk for you. We must stop letting them tell you how to run your lives. I will talk to you in our language so you can understand. We’ll be talking about our land, because we are its caretakers. I’m talking to you, elders, to you, grandfathers and grandmothers, who have the wisdom. We must plant a seed and we must watch it grow.
“You are my people. I’ll stand by you. The carpet of the universal earth is still here for us. It’s a web of sunrises and only we traditionals can walk on this web. And we must never accept money for the Paha Sapa, our sacred Black Hills. That’s our Earth. She wears Wakan Tanka’s ornaments and jewels—the pines, the aspens, the cottonwoods. The Black Hills are not for sale. The government stole them from us. Now they want to ease their bad conscience by paying us a little money. No! The Hills, the home of the sacred thunderbirds, are not for sale.”
The BIA—the Bureau of Indian Affairs—is better than it was twenty years ago; it now has some real honest-to-goodness Indians at the top. But at the time I’m talking about it represented all that was wrong with the government’s Indian policy. So I told the people, “We are not the BIA’s wards anymore. Enough, enough, enough!”
I also tried to educate the white people. I told them, “Hey, white America, listen to me. Before you came here we had no lawyers, no penitentiaries, no foster homes, no old age homes, no mental institutions, no psychiatric clinics, no taxes, no TV, no telephones. We had no crime or madness or drugs. Look at these wonderful things you brought us. You call it ‘civilization,’ but we had a culture long before you came. You call us ‘Indians’ because a stupid and greedy man called Columbus thought he was in India when he landed here. He did not discover America. We had been here for tens of thousands of years. We are the landlords and one day we’ll come to collect the rent.” When I was young I was afraid to talk in front of a white man, but I’m not that way anymore.
The white man is very clever, but our elders are wise. There’s a big difference between cleverness and wisdom. Our elders have an orbit mind. We had a religion and history before Columbus arrived. The Great Spirit planted us here and planetized us. They used to call us “hostile” and “unregenerate.” Now they call us “militants.” I guess I am a militant, a militant on behalf of the tree, the earth, the river, all living things. The white man does not respect Mother Earth. He has a barbed wire mind. We first have to cut through this wire before we can begin to talk to each other.
We were nursed at the breast, not at the bottle. You gave us the cow for a mother and also the condom. We don’t need it. We are not over populated. Thanks to you we are underpopulated, victims of genocide. You have a Holocaust Museum in Washington to remind us of a genocide that happened far away in Europe. What about having a museum about the holocaust that happened right here, the Native American holocaust? We used to put our dead in the burial tree, to give their bodies to the winds and the universe. We are not allowed to do this anymore. We must plant them six feet underground in a casket. But Crazy Horse was not buried in a casket. Beneath our reservations lie coal, oil, uranium, gold, silver, all the elements. It should make us the richest people in the world, but we are the poorest. There are more than three thousand counties in the United States and out of all of them the county covering Pine Ridge, the Oglala Sioux reservation, is the poorest, and my own Rosebud reservation isn’t far behind.
There are thirty million blacks and fewer than two million of us. African-Americans live in big cities and have a lot of voting power, forming one big power bloc. We are divided into some three hundred tribes scattered all over the continent. If we want to talk to one another we have to do it in English. We live far from the centers of power where decisions are made. So we cannot make our influence felt.
Whites say not to blame them, they aren’t involved. It’s their ancestors who did wrong. But they should be involved. They are living on our land. We are still third-class citizens. We are still invisible. Indians are in jail. Indians are starving. You should take some responsibility, not for what was, but for what is. We can’t put all of you back on the Mayflower. So we’ve got to live with one another as best we can. I look upon my white friends who have for so long supported me as brothers and sisters. I don’t look at the color of their skin. Many young wasichus have come to Crow Dog’s Paradise, often staying for weeks or months. I feed them and give them shelter. There are many good, understanding white men and women. The only trouble is, there’s not enough of them.
In 1970 a man came to Crow Dog’s place. His name was Dennis Banks. He was an Ojibway from the Leech Lake reservation in Minnesota and a co-founder of AIM. He knocked at our door. My dad opened it and invited him in. Dennis said, “I’ve come because you people have got something that we city Indians lost. We have an Indian organization that is doing fine, but it needs not only a political philosophy but also a spiritual meaning in order to be complete. That is why I have come.”
My father asked him, “Have you ever gone on a vision quest?” Dennis said no.
My father asked, “Are you a sun dancer?” Dennis said no.
My father asked, “Have you ever purified yourself in a sweat lodge?” And again Dennis said no.
My father told him, “Then I don’t know why you have come.” Dennis said, “I live close to Pipestone. I can make red stone pipes.”
My father said, “Then we have something to talk about.”
My mother fried up some meat and brewed some coffee. They all had something to eat. Then my father and Dennis talked for a long time. After that my dad took Dennis in back of our place where we have our sweat lodge. It was
just the skeleton of the lodge, the little dome of willow sticks. It was winter and there was a lot of snow on the ground. My father had Dennis shovel away the snow inside and around the lodge. He made Dennis chop some wood. They made a fire and heated the rocks in it. The buffalo skull was already there. My dad brought some tarps and blankets to cover up the lodge. He had a sweat with Dennis and purified him. It made Dennis into a new kind of man. My dad told him, “Come again. We have lots to talk about.”
Dennis left and came back with Clyde Bellecourt, another of the AIM founders. They and Dad became good friends. Finally I met Dennis Banks. He told me about AIM and what it stood for. This is what I had been waiting for. After listening to Dennis I really believed that the American Indian Movement could bring about a rebirth of our people. I believed it could unite all the Native Americans in the United States.
Later I got a telegram to go to Rapid City and meet all the AIM leaders. Dennis was there, and Russell Means, Lee Brightman, and Clyde Bellecourt. I talked to them for a very long time. I spoke to them as a spiritual man. They asked me what I thought about the Black Hills and the government offering us some chickenfeed money in exchange for the sacred land they had stolen from us. I said that we’d never accept money for our land. Dennis agreed and said that AIM and all the tribes would take a stand.
Then I went to Denver to meet some more AIM leaders—Vern Bellecourt, Clyde’s brother, Eddie Benton, John Trudell, and Stan Holder. Dennis Banks told me that AIM had enough political leaders, but they needed spiritual guidance. He asked me to be AIM’s medicine man. I answered, “I will give myself to the movement.”
When the traditional Lakota and the city militants got together, that was the moment AIM took off. Suddenly men wore their hair long or in braids. They threw away their neckties. Everybody started wearing bead or bone chokers. They began wearing ribbon shirts. They wore Levi jackets with AIM patches and buttons reading, INDIAN POWER or INDIAN AND PROUD. They had eagle feathers tied to their hair or stuck into their hatbands. We became warriors again. In 1970, Dennis Banks, Russell Means, and Clyde Bellecourt pledged to pierce themselves in the sun dance. In 1971, at Pine Ridge, they offered their pain to the people. The American Indian Movement spread like wildfire.
On a Saturday night, in February of 1972, at Gordon, Nebraska, close to the Pine Ridge reservation, a couple of rednecks grabbed fifty-one-year-old Raymond Yellow Thunder, an Oglala Sioux, and dragged him into an American Legion hall that was hooked up to a bar. There, before a crowd of drunken, grinning cowboys and cowgirls, they stripped Raymond naked from the waist down and forced him to dance at gunpoint. They beat and kicked him. They had nothing personally against Raymond. They didn’t even know him. They just wanted to have themselves some fun. They stuffed him into the trunk of a car and he died. The men who had grabbed him first, a pair of brothers called Hare, were arrested, charged with second-degree manslaughter, and released without bail. Second-degree manslaughter meant that the murderers would not serve a single hour in jail.
I had known Raymond Yellow Thunder since 1959. At that time we both worked on farms in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska. He was a humble and kind man. He did not drink. He worked hard for as little as eighty cents an hour. He had no enemies, only friends. He had no car and I used to drive him where he wanted to go. He was from the Pine Ridge reservation and had been killed for no reason. What were we going to do? How could we get justice? Raymond’s relatives went to the police, to the FBI, to the BIA, and to the tribal council for help. Nobody gave a damn. Then we called the American Indian Movement for help. A man called Severt Young Bear, a representative of the Porcupine community, who had some AIM friends, called Russell Means. Virgil Kills Right called Dennis Banks. The whole Yellow Thunder family asked AIM to come in. I called everyone I could think of. So there was the war cry: “We’re going to Gordon!”
Dennis Banks called for a thousand people to join the march. Sixteen thousand came. A caravan of more than two hundred cars drove to Gordon. Members of fifty-one tribes were represented. It was the biggest Native American civil rights march ever. It was like a thunderstorm, a hurricane blowing across Nebraska. Before we set out we had a big meeting at Porcupine, on the Pine Ridge reservation. The main question was this: Should we go armed or without arms? Russ Means stood up and said, “This is a serious matter. We have a lot of people involved here who are not prepared for what might be coming down on us. Gordon police and white vigilantes could be lying in wait for us. There could be a bloodbath. We could get killed. This is a matter for our spiritual leader, Crow Dog, to decide. I am asking him now to perform a ceremony for us.”
So I put on a yuwipi ceremony that night. The spirits entered the ceremony and told me that we should go unarmed, that our spiritual power would be greater than any guns. They also told me to use sacred gopher dust, the kind that made Crazy Horse bulletproof. So in the morning I sprinkled gopher dust over our leaders—Dennis Banks, Russell Means, Ron Petite, Clyde and Vernon Bellecourt. I cedared them. I fanned them off with my eagle wing. We smoked the pipe. And before we started out we organized an AIM chapter at Porcupine. We got one hundred seventy-two new members. We called the Justice Department and the governor of Nebraska to let them know we were coming. Besides having some one hundred fifty cars starting from Porcupine alone, we got hold of a Greyhound charter bus, which joined the caravan. That bus was crammed full to overflowing. And so we went to Gordon.
We went to that town not just for Raymond Yellow Thunder, but for all Native Americans in this country. We went there as one big family. We went there with the drum. I told the people, “The thunder power is in that drum, the wind of the eagle wing. The drum represents the sacred hoop.” And we went there with a new song. It was made up by a fourteen-year-old boy. Some say he was an Ojibway, others say he was a Lakota. This song spoke in all the Indian languages. Soon every Indian knew it and they were singing it in every tribe. And like the ghost dancers of 1890, we came with American flags flying upside down as a sign of distress and a cry for justice.
Russell Means, Dennis Banks, and I were the first to enter Gordon. The sheriff’s deputies, the state troopers, and the FBI were waiting for us. They had riot guns, but they didn’t make a move. They were as meek as lambs. They were scared of us. The whole town was scared. We hardly saw any people on the streets. The stores were closed and locked. As we marched up Broadway, a handful of Indians and whites were there to support us. A half a dozen rednecks threw beer cans and firecrackers at us and then ran like hell. Russell, Dennis, and I led the march to City Hall. Yellow Thunder’s relatives walked behind us.
We took over City Hall. Dennis Banks set up shop in the mayor’s office. We had microphones and loudspeakers and held rallies. We made our demands. We made the mayor, the state attorney, and other officials come to us and negotiate. We had Raymond Yellow Thunder’s body dug up to document the cruelties done to him. We forced them to bring the Hare brothers up on murder charges. (They were later convicted and put in jail. They did not stay there long enough, but a short time was better than no time.) We forced them to charge the Hare brothers for his death. We also forced the mayor to dismiss Gordon’s chief of police. There were at that time cops in Gordon who harassed young Indian women; their victims were too scared and embarrassed to complain. We got a promise that Indian teenagers would no longer be thrown in with adult prisoners for a misdemeanor. We set up a special phone chain so that whenever an Indian was mistreated or discriminated against, word would get around fast so that action could be taken. We sensitized the white community and let them know that from now on they would be held responsible for what they did. Finally we set up an AIM chapter in Gordon. We had been in that city for about a week. It was a great victory.
They brought Raymond Yellow Thunder’s body back to Porcupine, where he had been raised among his Oglala people. His relatives asked me to bury him. So I filled the pipe. I put the staff right in front of the sacred ground. We smoked the pipe. We used sacred gopher dust, we used red face
paint, we used spiritual power. Before we gave Raymond back to Mother Earth we faced toward the west, the north, the east, and the south. I lifted the pipe up toward the sky and then pointed it down toward the earth. When the body was going down into the ground we sang the AIM song. One of our elders chanted a special song in honor of Yellow Thunder, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Big Foot, and all of our great chiefs of long ago who had been killed by the white man. We prayed, using ancient, sacred words.
I explained why I buried Raymond Yellow Thunder six feet underground. I said, “I’d rather put our dead brother on a funeral scaffold or a sacred tree for the wind and the eagle to take care of him, but then some anthropologists could come and take his body for whatever purpose. I have to bury him deep where they can’t steal his body. It will go back to the earth, but his soul will stay with us forever.” I put an eagle plume with him to be the flower of the bloom of the universe, of the earth and the sky. One man asked me why I didn’t bless the body with water. I told him that the first thunder, the first rain to hit the earth, would bless his body. Then he asked why I didn’t put a cross on Yellow Thunder’s grave. I said, “Our cross is equal, of the same length everywhere. It stands for the sacred four directions. But the white man’s cross is a cross of injustice and inequality. That’s why the bottom part is long and the top is short. This cross represents the suppression of Indian religion.” So I buried our brother in a ceremonial way.
We had made a big first step in getting justice for Raymond Yellow Thunder. We could build on this foundation. AIM and the Lakota people together had won this victory. It was the beginning of a new Indian nation.
Crow Dog : Four Generations of Sioux Medicine Men (9780062200143) Page 16