The American Indian Movement (AIM) is an American Indian grassroots movement founded in Minneapolis in July 1968. Initially centered in urban areas to address systemic issues of poverty, discrimination, and police brutality against American Indians, AIM soon widened its scope to many Indigenous Tribal issues that American Indian groups have faced due to settler colonialism in the Americas. These issues have included treaty rights, high rates of unemployment, the lack of American Indian subjects in education, and the preservation of Indigenous cultures.
AIM was organized by Native American men who had been serving time together in prison. Some of the experiences that Native men in AIM shared were boarding school education, military service, and the disorienting urban experience.
They had been alienated from their traditional backgrounds as a result of the United States' Public Law 959 Indian Relocation Act of 1956, which supported thousands of American Indians who wanted to move from reservations to cities, in an attempt to enable them to have more economic opportunities for work. In addition, Public Law 280, one of the first major laws contributing to U.S. Indian termination policy, proposed to terminate the federal government's relations with several tribes which were determined to be far along the path of assimilation. These policies were enacted by the United States Congress under its plenary power. As a result, nearly 70% of American Indians left their communal homelands on reservations and relocated to urban centers, many in hopes of finding economic sustainability. While many Urban Indians struggled with displacement and such radically different settings, some also began to organize in pan-Indian groups in urban centers. They were described as transnationals. The American Indian Movement formed in such urbanized contexts at a time of increasing Indian activism.
From November 1969 to June 1971, AIM participated in the occupation of the abandoned federal penitentiary on Alcatraz Island organized by seven Indian movements, including the Indians of All Tribes and Richard Oakes, a Mohawk activist. In October 1972, AIM and other Indian groups gathered members from across the United States for a protest in Washington, D.C., known as the Trail of Broken Treaties. Public documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reveal advanced coordination occurred between federal Bureau of Indian Affairs staff and the authors of a twenty-point proposal. The proposal was drafted with the help of the AIM for delivery to the United States government officials. Its focused on proposals intended to enhance U.S.–Indian relations.
In the decades since AIM's founding, the group has led protests advocating indigenous American interests, inspired cultural renewal, monitored police activities, and coordinated employment programs in cities and in rural reservation communities across the United States. They have also allied with indigenous interests outside the United States.
A U.S. government policy directive from 1940 to the early 1960s, under multiple executive administrations (both Democrat and Republican), led to the establishment of uranium mining operations across Navajo tribal lands. These operations often provided the only employment opportunities for Navajo people in isolated areas, and Navajo workers were initially enthusiastic about employment. The U.S. government, though, appears to have known about the harmful risks associated with uranium mining since the 1930s but neglected to inform the Navajo communities. In addition, most Navajo workers did not speak English. They had no knowledge of radiation, nor a translation for the word in their language.
Both the open and other now abandoned uranium mines continue to poison and pollute the land, water, and air of Navajo communities today. Clean-up has been slow even after environmental laws were passed and the dangers assessed. As a result, the Navajo people believe that the federal government has violated the Treaty of 1868, which assigned the Bureau of Indian Affairs to provide services that safeguard their health.
On March 6, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Executive Order 11399, establishing the National Council on Indian Opportunity (NCIO). President Johnson announced in his Special Message to the Congress on the Problems of the American Indian, "[T]he time has come to focus our efforts on the plight of the American Indian," and that the NCIO's formation would "launch an undivided, Government-wide effort in this area." Johnson tried to connect the nation's trust responsibility to the tribes and nations to contemporary African American civil rights issues, an area with which he was much more familiar.
In Congress, the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Indian Affairs, James Haley (D-FL), supported Indian rights. He thought that Indians should participate more in "policy matters," but he also believed that "the right of self-determination is in the Congress as a representative of all the people." In the 1960s, Haley met with President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Johnson, urging them to support Indian self-determination and control in transactions over their communal lands. One struggle was over the long-term leasing of American Indian land.
Non-Indian businesses and banks said they could not invest in leases of 25 years, even with generous options, as the time was too short for land-based transactions. Leasing land through business partnerships to relieve long-term poverty on most reservations was considered infeasible but returning to the 99-year lease from the 19th century was seen as a possible solution. However, an Interior Department memo said, "a 99-year lease is in the nature of a conveyance of the land". These battles over land had their beginnings in the 1870s when federal policy often related to wholesale taking, not leases. In the 1950s, many American Indians believed that leases had become too frequently a way for outsiders to control Indian land.
Wallace "Mad Bear" Anderson (Tuscarora) was a leader in central New York in the 1950s. He struggled to resist the New York City planner Robert Moses' plan to take tribal land in upstate New York for use in a state hydropower project to supply New York City. The struggle ended in a bitter compromise.
AIM, like civil rights and antiwar activists, used the American press and media to convey its message to the United States public, creating events to capture the attention of the press. If successful, news outlets would seek out AIM spokespersons for interviews. Rather than relying on traditional lobbying efforts, AIM took its message directly to the American public. Its leaders looked for opportunities to gain publicity. Sound bites such as the AIM Song became associated with the movement.
Dennis J. Banks was an Ojibwe tribal member who co-founded AIM in Minneapolis, Minnesota 1968. He became one of the more recognizable face of the American Indian Movement.
Russell Means was a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe from the Pineridge Reservation. He collaborated with Banks to formulate AIM and is also a central leader to the movement.
Leonard Peltier is enrolled in the turtle band Chippewa tribe in North Dakota, but is Lakota/Dakota as well. Leonard Peltier was an organizer and activist in AIM. He was convicted of killing two FBI agents. Peltier was released from federal prison in 2025 on the condition he abide by home confinement.
During ceremonies on Thanksgiving Day 1970 to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrims' landing at Plymouth Rock, an AIM group seized the replica of the Mayflower in Boston. In 1971, members occupied Mount Rushmore for a few days. This huge sculpture was created on a mountain long considered sacred by the Lakota, and the associated land in the Black Hills of South Dakota was taken by the federal government after gold was discovered there. This area was originally within the Great Sioux Reservation as created by the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868, which covered most of present-day South Dakota west of the Missouri River. After the discovery of gold in 1874, the federal government broke up the large reservation and sold off much of the Black Hills to European Americans for mining and settlement. It reassigned several Lakota tribes to five smaller reservations in this area.