using the articles from AMERICAN EARTH written before 1900. What does each selection show us about how the environmental consciousness of Americans was changing during this period?
300 words
American Indian Movement
OVERVIEW
The American Indian Movement (AIM) was
founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during the
summer of 1968, when community activists
George Mitchell, Dennis Banks, and Clyde
Bellecourt organized a meeting attended by
about 200 Native Americans from the surround-
ing area. Actor Russell Means later became a
prominent leader in the group. The stated goal
of AIM is to foster spiritual and cultural revival
among native peoples in the hope of attaining
native sovereignty and the re-establishment of
the treaty system for dealingwith the ‘‘colonialist’’
governments of North and South America.
The first actions of the group focused on
documenting cases of police brutality, using
police scanners and CB radios to arrive at the
scene of arrests of Native Americans. Inspired
by the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz Island, the
group began to look beyond its original focus on
urban Native American issues, and progressed
to more radical and ambitious methods. Their
major actions include the forceful takeover of
the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1972, followed
swiftly by the dramatic, 71-day siege that came
to be known as Wounded Knee II. In recent
years, the group has broken into factions, each
claiming to represent the true spirit of AIM, with
a western faction led by Russell Means and a
Minnesota faction led by Clyde Bellecourt.
1 1 5
LEADERS: George Mitchell, Dennis Banks, and
Clyde Bellecourt
YEAR ESTABLISHED OR BECAME ACTIVE: 1968
USUAL AREA OF OPERATION: United States
HISTORY
The American Indian Movement emerged from
social tumult of the late 1960s in Minneapolis,
Minnesota, founded by activists who were
determined to improve the lives of urban
Native Americans. In the summer of 1968,
George Mitchell, Dennis Banks, and Clyde
Bellecourt organized a meeting to discuss the
issues facing the Native American community
of Minneapolis. Among the problems
addressed were poverty, substandard housing,
the highest unemployment rate of any ethnic
group, and police brutality. The approximately
200 attendees founded a group called the
Concerned Indians of America. The name was
changed shortly afterwards to the American
Indian Movement to avoid reference to the
acronym commonly used for the Central
Intelligence Agency.
The earliest actions of the group involved
the founding of the Minneapolis AIM Patrol,
that used CB radios and police scanners to arrive
at the scene of police investigations involving
Native Americans, in order to document
instances of police brutality. These AIM patrols
continue to the present day.
Were it not the turbulent decade of the
1960s, with civil upheaval and social protest
sweeping across the country in waves, AIM
might have stayed an urban movement focused
on local issues. Within a year of AIM’s found-
ing, however, ‘‘Red Power’’ burst onto the
national consciousness with the dramatic occu-
pation of Alcatraz Island by San Francisco-area
Native American activists. Inspired by the
success and the boldness of the action, native
youth from all over the country flocked to join
in the protest, including members of AIM.
Citing an 1868 treaty that said Indians could
use any part of federal territory that was not
being used by the government, the activists
managed to hold on to the occupation for
19 months, and garnered much publicity for
their cause before the government finally
forced them off the island.
In 1972, AIM leaders in Colorado joined
with other groups to organize what became the
Trail of Broken Treaties caravan to Washington
D.C. The plan was to attract publicity generated
by the last days of the upcoming presidential
campaign to draw attention to Native
American issues. Native American activist from
across the country formed a caravan and
traveled from Denver to Washington to present
Richard Nixon and the government with their
platform of demands, which they called the
20 Points. When the caravan arrived at its desti-
nation, the activists found little in the way of
accommodations, as hundreds more activists
arrived over the course of a few days in early
November. The activists claimed that the gov-
ernment had reneged on its promise to provide
accommodations; the government blamed the
situation on poor planning by the organizers of
the caravan. At any rate, the immediate result
was that a group of AIM members stormed the
Bureau of Indian Affairs offices, overwhelming
security, and occupying the office for six days.
The most dramatic confrontation with fed-
eral authorities, however, came in 1973 when
AIM activists led members of the Lakota Sioux
tribe from the Pine Ridge reservation in a
A U.S. flag flies upside down outside an American
Indian Movement (AIM) church. The church was
erected on the site of the 1890 massacre at
Wounded Knee, South Dakota. AP/Wide World Photos.
Reproduced by permission.
A m e r i c a n I n d i a n M o v e m e n t
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takeover and occupation of the site of the 1890
Wounded Knee Massacre. Pine Ridge residents
had been engaged in an ongoing internal poli-
tical struggle pitting the traditionalists of the
tribe against the more assimilated members.
The traditionalists voted to impeach Dick
Wilson, the government-backed head of the
tribal administration, only to encounter federal
resistance and brutal oppression by Wilson’s
supporters. They turned to AIM for help, and
found the activists more than willing to take up
their cause. Group lore has it that it was the
Lakota women who goaded the men into seizing
the Wounded Knee site as a way to fight back
and dramatize their plight. The siege that came to
be known as Wounded Knee II lasted from
February 27 until May 8, resulting in the deaths
of two activists and one FBI agent and the arrest
of nearly 1,200 people. Under the intense glare of
the national media that drew relentless parallels
to the 1890 massacre, the siege ended with a
negotiated ceasefire and the activists abandoning
the site. Meanwhile, the conflict between the
traditionalists and the assimilators raged on in
Pine Ridge and in the larger Native American
community.
Though AIM participated in other actions,
most notably the Longest Walk protest march
from San Francisco to Washington D.C., the
influence of the group began to decline by the
mid 1970s. This decline is thought to be at least
partially due to the FBI’s infamous operation
COINTELPRO, in which dissenting groups
with anti-government leanings were ‘‘neutralized’’
through the same ruthless counterintelligence
tactics employed against hostile governments.
Today, AIM is a splintered shadow of its
former self, with two factions engaged in a war
of rhetoric that seems to be another reflection of
the struggle between the traditionalists and the
assimilators. One faction, based in Colorado and
loosely organized around University of Colorado
professor Ward Churchill and actor Russell
Means, plays the traditionalist role; another,
led by one of AIM’s founding fathers, Clyde
Bellecourt, is incorporated under the laws of the
United States, has returned to its early urban
focus, and points to its legislative accomplish-
ments and its history of establishing native
schools and social programs.
PHILOSOPHY AND TACTICS
At the heart of AIM is the idea of Indian sover-
eignty and cultural revival. In its heyday, the
group inspired many young men and women to
Russell Means, an American Indian Movement
leader, stands in front of a statue ofMassasoit and
speaks to a crowd in 1970. AP/Wide World Photos
KEY EVENTS
1969: 1969 occupation of Alcatraz Island by
Native American activists.
1972:AIM leaders in Colorado joined with other
groups to organize what became the Trail of
Broken Treaties caravan to Washington
D.C.
1973: AIM activists led members of the Lakota
Sioux tribe in a siege that came to be known
as Wounded Knee II.
A m e r i c a n I n d i a n M o v e m e n t
E x t r e m i s t G r o u p s : I n f o r m a t i o n f o r S t u d e n t s : V o l u m e 1 1 1 7
reclaim their traditions and ethnic pride. The
group’s spirituality is infused with a warrior
ethic and a determination to restore dignity to
the Native American people.
The group’s own materials speak proudly of
its history of ‘‘forceful action.’’ In seizing BIA
headquarters and in sustaining the occupation of
Wounded Knee, AIM has used force in pursuit
of its goals, but has never been wantonly violent.
In their words, AIM is ‘‘Pledged to fight White
Man’s injustice to Indians, his oppression,
persecution, discrimination and malfeasance in
the handling of Indian Affairs. No area in North
America is too remote when trouble impends for
PRIMARY SOURCE
In Court, AIM Members Are Depicted as Killers
The former companion of a leader in the
American Indian Movement clutched a single
feather as she took the witness stand in a federal
court here on Wednesday and tearfully depicted
the movement’s leaders as murderous.
In a full but silent courtroom, the witness,
Ka-Mook Nichols, said leaders of the militant
Indian civil-rights group known as AIM had
orchestrated the death of one of its ownmembers,
Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, nearly three decades
ago. And Ms. Nichols implicated Leonard
Peltier, AIM’s best-known member, in the earlier
killing of two federal agents, crimes for which
Mr. Peltier has been sent to prison for life.
Mr. Peltier, who has always maintained his
innocence, has an international following among
those who believe he was framed by federal
authorities seeking revenge.
The trial, in its second day, will determine
the fate of Arlo Looking Cloud, a former low-
level AIM member charged with killing Ms.
Pictou Aquash, another AIM member. But the
testimony here stretched far beyond this case,
presenting a sweeping and frightening look at
violence and suspicion inside the militant move-
ment that drew national attention to southwest
South Dakota in the 1970s.
‘‘You would think the American Indian
Movement was on trial,’’ Vernon Bellecourt, a
spokesman for the movement, said angrily from
his seat in the front row of the gallery, which has
been full of people who remember those volatile
clashes between Indians and federal authorities:
AIM sympathizers, residents from the Pine
Ridge Reservation where the occupation of
Wounded Knee took place, and federal agents,
now mostly retired.
Mr. Bellecourt denied all accusations
against the movement, and said the latest revela-
tions were merely another effort by the federal
authorities to hide their own wrongdoing. ‘‘It’s
virtually impossible,’’ he said, ‘‘for an Indian to
receive a fair trial in South Dakota.’’
Ms. Nichols, who had an 18-year relation-
ship and four children with Dennis Banks, a
leader of AIM from its earliest days in the late
1960s, told jurors how she joined the movement
as a high school student living on Pine Ridge and
never confided all she had seen until now
because she supported the group’s goals—treaty
recognition, self-determination for Indians, a
return to traditional ways.
‘‘At the time I was committed to the move-
ment and I believed in what the movement stood
for,’’ saidMs. Nichols, now 48. ‘‘I never talked to
anybody about anything.’’
But on Wednesday, Ms. Nichols described
details of the group’s wanderings around the
country—those fleeing the authorities, building
bombs and planning their next moves. She also
told how AIM leaders worried that their own
members might be spying for the authorities.
She testified that the leaders, including Mr.
Banks and Mr. Peltier, strongly suspected Ms.
Pictou Aquash, a Micmac Indian who left
Canada to join the movement, might be a federal
informer. At an AIM convention in June 1975,
Ms. Nichols said, leaders openly discussed that
possibility.
Mr. Peltier once put a gun to Ms. Pictou
Aquash’s head, Ms. Nichols testified, and
A m e r i c a n I n d i a n M o v e m e n t
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Indians. AIM shall be there to help the Native
People regain human rights and achieve restitu-
tions and restorations.’’
Besides being forceful, AIM actions have
also been obviously calculated for optimal dra-
matic effect. The Trail of Broken Treaties was
specifically planned around the expectation of
media coverage. The Wounded Knee site was
specifically chosen for its symbolic value. For
their part, the national media was understand-
ably eager to cover the colorful defenders of an
oppressed tradition; they made excellent copy.
AIM has had no shortage of charismatic,
photogenic leaders who look great on film,
demanded to know if she was a spy. Another
time, he talked about giving her truth serum,
Ms. Nichols testified. All this made Ms. Pictou
Aquash angry and fearful, she said. ‘‘I knew she
was scared of Dennis and Leonard at that
point.’’
Months later, on Feb. 24, 1976, Ms. Pictou
Aquash’s decomposing body was found in a
ravine on Pine Ridge. She had been shot in the
head, but the authorities said they could not
identify her for several weeks. The day the
body was found, however, Mr. Banks called
Ms. Nichols and said Ms. Pictou Aquash had
been turned up dead, Ms. Nichols testified.
‘‘From the day he called me, I started believ-
ing it was the American Indian Movement that
has something to do with it,’’ she said.
Mr. Banks, whohas been separated fromMs.
Nichols since 1989, was traveling and could not
be reached for comment on Wednesday. But Mr.
Peltier’s lawyer, BarryA. Bachrach, said his client
considered Ms. Nichols’ testimony utterly false.
‘‘He has no idea why she’s saying this,’’ Mr.
Bachrach said in a phone interview. ‘‘Anna Mae
was not afraid of AIM or Leonard. Ka-Mook is
doing nothing but parroting government
testimony.’’
Mr. Looking Cloud’s lawyer, Tim Rensch,
suggested that Ms. Nichols might be seeking
revenge on her former companion, Mr. Banks,
because he had once had an affair with Ms.
Pictou Aquash. He also suggested that she
might be in it for money—the government has
paid her $42,000, partly for moving expenses to
protect her from AIM members—or even plan-
ning to write a book.
But on Wednesday, Ms. Nichols said she
simply was telling the truth on behalf of a dear
friend,Ms. Pictou Aquash. One reason, she said,
that AIM leaders might have feared the possibi-
lity of spying so much was that Ms. Pictou
Aquash had witnessed sensitive information.
She said that she had been riding in a motor
home with Ms. Pictou Aquash, Mr. Peltier and
others one day in 1975 when Mr. Peltier began
boasting about shooting the federal agents at
Pine Ridge.
Ms. Nichols testified thatMr. Peltier made a
gun with his fingers and said that one agent had
begged ‘‘for his life, but I shot him anyway.’’
Mr. Peltier, in a federal prison in
Leavenworth, Kan., denies all connection to the
killings and to any boasting. ‘‘Why is she doing
this?’’ Mr. Bachrach said. ‘‘Leonard is baffled.’’
The defendant in this trial, Mr. Looking
Cloud, seemed almost an afterthought on
Wednesday. In opening statements, his lawyer,
Mr. Rensch, acknowledged that Mr. Looking
Cloud had been there with other AIM members
when Ms. Pictou Aquash was killed, but that he
had not participated or known what was
coming.
Wearing glasses, with a braid running
down his back, Mr. Looking Cloud, 50, looked
small and hunched at the defense table. His
lawyer said he quit AIM after what happened
to Ms. Pictou Aquash, and wound up drinking
too much, living on the streets of Denver.
Monica Davey
Source: New York Times, 2004
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Russell Means and perhaps Ward Churchill
being the preeminent examples.
Be that as it may, the movement proved to
be no match for the resources of the federal
government; the FBI used such techniques as
infiltration and ‘‘snitch-jacketing’’ (planting mis-
information to the effect that a particular key
group member was a government informant)
to exploit the community’s historically divisive
nature, exacerbating the infighting and tribal
corruption that ultimately put the movement
into decline.
In recent years, the Minnesota faction has
tempered its traditional rhetoric with a willing-
ness to use the U.S. legal system for its purposes,
to good effect. A legal corporate entity, the AIM
Grand Governing Council has filed successful
suits against the U.S. government, established
schools and job programs, and has generally
assumed the role of a Native American civil
rights organization. Most recently, Bellecourt
has founded the National Coalition on Racism
in Sports and the Media (NCRSM) to organize
against the use of Native American images and
names in professional and collegiate sports.
Though its mission might have once seemed
quixotic, NCRSM has recently made important
inroads toward accomplishing its goals. In the
end, it may be that by working within the legal
system and using its assets wisely, the modern
Minnesota AIM may accomplish more than the
more radicalized 1970s AIM could ever have
hoped to achieve with its ‘‘forceful actions.’’
In contrast, Autonomous AIM styles itself as
an uncompromising native liberation movement
and as the real keepers of AIM spirituality and
Native American heritage. Completely decentra-
lized, Autonomous AIM’s interests and mission
are the local issues of the chapters. In Colorado,
where Autonomous Aim originated, these have
centered on organizing against Denver Columbus
Day celebrations.
OTHER PERSPECTIVES
National AIM was incorporated by the
Bellecourt brothers in 1993, who wasted no time
in issuing a September press release announcing
that ‘‘ . . . only those chapters which have been
duly authorized and chartered by the National
Office should be recognized in the future as legit-
imate representatives of the American Indian
Movement. Questions in this regard can be
resolved by calling the National Office.’’
In response, 60 representatives of 19 state
chapters met in New Mexico in December 1993
and issued the Edgewood Declaration, defining
themselves as a confederacy of autonomous
chapters and renouncing any national authority
claimed by the Bellecourts’ organization.
According to Means, the Declaration did not
represent the forming of a new group, but rather
a reaffirmation of the principles that had gov-
erned AIM since 1975, when a national meeting
of AIM members from throughout the United
States had decided to abolish national offices
and suspend the practice of electing national
leaders and spokespersons.
These dueling proclamations were the cul-
mination of a contentious war of rhetoric that
had been raging for years. The precise origins of
the conflict between the factions are difficult to
ascertain. Accounts of the events that led up to
the Edgewood Declaration are only to be found
in the group’s own materials; it has been well
established that the leaders of both sides of the
struggle are no strangers to historical exaggera-
tion and self-serving embellishment.
It appears that the fight began as a dispute
over the leadership of the Colorado AIM chap-
ter. The chapter had been established by Vernon
Bellecourt and Joe Locust in 1970. By 1972,
Bellecourt had returned to the national offices
in Minnesota, and the chapter steadily grew
inactive and lost membership over the next dec-
ade. In 1983, Locust recruited GlennMorris and
Ward Churchill, a fiery rhetorician and profes-
sor of Ethnic Studies at the University of
Colorado, to help revitalize the chapter.
Membership grew over the next 10 years, and
the chapter was successful putting together a
coalition to organize a massive protest against
the Columbian Quincentennary in 1992. The
event was hailed as a great victory for
Colorado AIM, and drew lots of national
press. Almost immediately, the mutual recrimi-
nations began on both sides, with Vernon
Bellecourt holding a press conference where he
maintained that Morris and Churchill had been
expelled from AIM. In response, Means,
Churchill, and their supporters met in
Edgewood, Colorado, to formulate the
Declaration that formally severed any remaining
ties with the newly incorporated National AIM
Grand Governing Council. Today, more than a
A m e r i c a n I n d i a n M o v e m e n t
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decade later, the war of rhetoric continues with
no signs of abating.
SUMMARY
The American IndianMovement emerged out of
the tumultuous decade of the 1960s, when a
group of local activists led by George Mitchell,
Dennis Banks, Clyde Bellecourt, and others
began meeting to discuss the problems faced by
Native Americans in urban Minnesota. The
group began by organizing local patrols to docu-
ment and/or to prevent instances of police bru-
tality in and around Minneapolis. Within a year
of its founding, the group was inspired by the
occupation of Alcatraz by San Francisco-area
activists. A group of Minnesota AIM members
visited the occupiers, returning to Minnesota
with a bigger vision for the movement and a
new national agenda.
Numerous actions modeled after the
Alcatraz occupation followed, culminating with
the 1973 takeover and occupation of the
Catholic Church and museum that had been
erected at the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee
Massacre. The ensuing siege by federal authori-
ties lasted for 71 days, under the full glare of the
largely sympathetic national media. Wounded
Knee II became the celebrated cause of the poli-
tical left, drawing celebrity advocates such as
Marlon Brando, who famously used the broad-
cast of the Oscars that year to denounce the
federal government’s handling of the situation.
In the ensuing years after Wounded Knee,
the FBI managed to infiltrate, prosecute, and
basically degrade the movement into a shadow
of its former self. Today, AIM is split into two
factions, each claiming to represent the authentic
spirit of the original movement, one based in
Colorado and the other, led by the Bellecourts,
based in Minnesota. The Minnesota faction is
incorporated under the laws of the state of
Minnesota and the United States, and has estab-
lished an impressive history of legislative and
social accomplishments.
SOURCES
Books
Matthiessen, Peter. In The Spirit of Crazy Horse. New
York: Viking Press, 1983.
Periodicals
Davey, Monica. ‘‘In Court, AIM Members are Depicted
as Killers.’’ New York Times. February 5, 2004.
Web sites www.pbs.org/itvs/alcatrazisnotanisland/activism.html>
(accessed October 15, 2005).
MSNBC.com. ‘‘Time & again—Wounded Knee—Siege of
1973.’’ archive/wknee/1973.asp> (accessed October 15, 2005).
A m e r i c a n I n d i a n M o v e m e n t E x t r e m i s t G r o u p s : I n f o r m a t i o n f o r S t u d e n t s : V o l u m e 1 1 2 1 Neuner, Matthias, ed. (2003). National Legislation Sadat-Wexler, Leila (1999). “National Prosecutions for Schabas, William A. (1999). “International Sentencing: Schabas, William A. (2004). “Addressing Impunity in a
Leone.” In La voie vers la Cour pénale internationale: Schwelb, E. (1946). “Crimes Against Humanity.” British Tully, L. Danielle (2003). “Human Rights Compliance and Columbia
International & Comparative Law Report 26:385.
Viout, Jean-Olivier (1999). “The Klaus Barbie Trial and Weinschenk, Fritz, (1999). “The Murders among Them— John McManus The views herein expressed are those of the author, and Department of Justice or the Government of Canada.
Native Americans
The international community has not legally admon- crease cannot be attributed solely to the actions of the Ideological Motivations The second ideological motivation behind U.S. Native Americans [740] e n c y c l o p e d i a o f G E N O C I D E a n d C R I M E S A G A I N S T H U M A N I T Y Colonies and States
One of the lesser known facts in U.S. history is that the Relations between the northeastern tribes and col- er
than other tribes and had the strength to resist settle- The western states did not fair much better with Creek
Massacre in Colorado (1864) and the massacre of the
A mass burial in the aftermath of the Wounded Knee massacre, Yuki of northern California (1856–1860) demonstrate Federal Government
Much of the federal government’s dealings with Native Native Americans e n c y c l o p e d i a o f G E N O C I D E a n d C R I M E S A G A I N S T H U M A N I T Y [741] Kiowa- Apache
P a c i f i c Pojoaque Makah Umatilla Pawnee
Ponca
Arikara
Mandan Hidatsa
Lakota
Southern Cheyenne
Kiowa
Comanche
Lipan
MansoChiricahua Tompiro Sandia Ysleta de Sur Piro Acoma Keres
Tiwa
Laguna San Felipe Pecos Zia Tesuque Nambe Tewa Pueblo Jicarilla
Zuñi
Anasazi
Ute
Navajo Cochiti
San Carlos
Tonto
Arapaho
Eastern Shoshone
Northern Shoshone
Bannock
Crow
Nakota
Gros VentreSalish
Flathead
PieganShoalwater KalispelSnohomish Lake WallawallaQuinault Duwamish Skokomish Kootenai
Coeur d´AlenePalouseWenatcheeNisqually
Squaxin Island Chehalis SteilacoomCoast Salish Swinomish
Klikitat Lummi
Cow Creek Band Umpqua
K ap a Hoh
ChinookStillaguamish Cowlitz Nez Percé
CayuseMuckleshoot Clatsop Tillamook Wasco
Yaquina Kuitsh
Klamath
Siuslaw Latgawa
Coquille Upper Umpqua Takelma
Chastacosta
Shasta Northern Paiute
Nongatl Yurok Whilkut Modoc AtsugewiChilula Hupa Lassik Western Shoshone
GoshuteYuki Cahto Maidu Mattole Pomo
Patwin Yahi Esselen Salinan Mono Owens Valley Paiute
Yokuts Nomlaki
Tubatulabal
Chumash Serrano Southern Paiute
Chemehuevi
Kitanemuk Tataviam
Luiseño Halchidhoma
Cocopa
Mohave
Yuma
Kumeyaay
Hopi Apache Yavapai Pima
Walapai
Maricopa Tohono O’odham
Sobaipuri
Picuris
Hopi-Tewa
Hohokam
Cahuilla
Columbia Map showing location of Native-American tribes throughout the United States prior to their annihilation and forced relocation westward in Native Americans [742] e n c y c l o p e d i a o f G E N O C I D E a n d C R I M E S A G A I N S T H U M A N I T Y A t l a n t i c G u l f M e x i c o
Nansemond
Stockbridge
Tuscarora
Abenaki
Penobscot
Pennacook
Mohawk
Onondaga Iroquois Nipmuk
Delaware
Massachuset
Nanticoke
Cayuga
Seneca
M se M ic W pi er Narraganset Podunk Wampanoag
Montauk Brothertown
Unami
Susquehanna
Po w om Erie
Adena
Menominee
Piscataway
Mattaponi Monacan Powhatan HopewellMiami
Shawnee
Tutelo
Koasati
Cherokee
Saponi Rappahannock
MeherrinLumbee
Catawba
Cheraw
Pamlico
Waccamaw Edisto
Yuchi
Guale
Cusabo
Pedee Yazoo
Apalachee
Yamasee
Apalachicola
Seminole
Timucua
Calusa
Chickasaw
Miccosukee
Hitchiti
Creek Etowah
Coushatta
Alabama Choctaw
Chitimacha
Houma Biloxi
Tunica
Natchez Hasinai
Quapaw
Caddo
Missouri
Kaskaskia
Cahokia
Peoria
Fox
Mississippian
Osage
IllinoisIowa
WinnebagoKickapoo
Sauk
Dakota
Oto
Omaha
Wichita
Kaw (Kansa)
Tonkawa
Tawakoni Schaghticoke
Johnson v. McIntosh in 1823. Despite this paternalistic economic gain at Native Americans’ expense by taking Native Americans e n c y c l o p e d i a o f G E N O C I D E a n d C R I M E S A G A I N S T H U M A N I T Y [743] The War of 1812 marked a turning point from the Approximately four thousand Cherokee perished A second and particularly destructive policy was tive-American life and reduced their land holdings by Yet another assimilation policy was the forced re- A clearer example of a federal genocidal act against Whether government actions such as the Trail of Native Americans [744] e n c y c l o p e d i a o f G E N O C I D E a n d C R I M E S A G A I N S T H U M A N I T Y notions of progress. “Ethnocide was the principal Unit- The U.S. government was more often guilty of acts The third possibility is to categorize U.S. actions as Conclusions ratification) and that the United States violated its obli- Perhaps more important than formal legal sanc- SEE ALSO Cheyenne; Forcible Transfer; Indigenous BIBLIOGRAPHY
Axtell, James (1981). The European and the Indian: Essays Berger, Thomas R. (1999). A Long and Terrible Shadow: Berkhofer, Robert F., Jr. (1965). Salvation and the Savage: Chalk, Frank, and Kurt Jonassohn (1990). The History and Churchill, Ward (1997). A Little Matter of Genocide: Dippie, Brian W. (1982). The Vanishing American: White Glauner, Lindsay (2002). “Comment: The Need for Hagan, William T. (1979). American Indians. Chicago: Horsman, Reginald (1970). The Origins of Indian Removal Lynden, Fremont J., and Lyman H. Legters, eds. (1992). Sheehan, Bernard W. (1973). Seeds of Extinction: Wilkins, David E. (2002). American Indian Politics and the Native Americans e n c y c l o p e d i a o f G E N O C I D E a n d C R I M E S A G A I N S T H U M A N I T Y [745] Williams, Robert A. Jr. (1990). The American Indian in Stacie E. Martin
Nongovernmental Organizations
There is a vast diversity among nongovernmental orga- The secretary general of Amnesty International, Pierre Sane (second from right), discusses the organization’s 1996 China campaign, in numerous countries. Some, like Amnesty Interna- Definitions private organizations (associations, federations, Nongovernmental Organizations [746] e n c y c l o p e d i a o f G E N O C I D E a n d C R I M E S A G A I N S T H U M A N I T Y Turnitin Report Formatting Title Page Citation Outline
PBS.org. ‘‘Alcatraz Is Not an Island.’’
Incorporating International Crimes: Approaches of Civil
and Common Law Countries. Berlin: Wissenschafts-
Verlag.
International Crimes: The French Experience.” In
International Criminal Law, 2nd edition, ed. M. Cherif
Bassioiuni. New York: Transnational Publishers.
From Leipzig (1923) to Arusha (1996).” In International
Criminal Law, 2nd edition, ed. M. Cherif Bassioiuni.
New York: Transnational Publishers.
Developing Countries: Lessons from Rwanda and Sierr
tous les chemins mènent à Rome (The Highway to the
International Criminal Court: All Roads Lead to Rome),
ed. Hélène Dumont and Anne-Marie Boisvert. Montreal:
Éditions Thémis.
Yearbook of International Law 178.
the Gacaca Jurisdictions in Rwanda.” British
Crimes Against Humanity.” Hofstra Law & Policy
Symposium 3:155. New York: Hofstra University Press.
German Justice and the Nazis.” Hofstra Law & Policy
Symposium 3:137.
Matthew McManus
do not necessarily reflect the views of the Canadian
ished the United States for genocidal acts against Native
Americans, yet it is clear that examples of genocidal
acts and crimes against humanity are a well-cited page
in U.S. history. Notorious incidents, such as the Trail
of Tears, the Sand Creek Massacre, and the massacre
of the Yuki of northern California are covered in depth
in separate entries in this encyclopedia. More contro-
versial, however, is whether the colonies and the Unit-
ed States participated in genocidal acts as an overall
policy toward Native Americans. The Native-American
population decrease since the arrival of Spanish explor-
er Christopher Columbus alone signals the toll coloni-
zation and U.S. settlement took on the native popula-
tion. Scholars estimate that approximately 10 million
pre-Columbian Native Americans resided in the pres-
ent-day United States. That number has since fallen to
approximately 2.4 million. While this population de-
U.S. government, they certainly played a key role. In
addition to population decrease, Native Americans
have also experienced significant cultural and propri-
etary losses as a result of U.S. governmental actions.
The total effect has posed a serious threat to the
sustainability of the Native-American people and cul-
ture.
Two conflicting yet equally harmful ideologies signifi-
cantly influenced U.S. dealings with Native Americans.
The first sprang from the Enlightenment and, more
specifically, John Locke’s Second Treatise of Govern-
ment. Locke proposed that the individual had an exclu-
sive claim to one’s person. The fruits of one’s labor, as
an extension of the individual, then, become the labor-
er’s property. Thus, individuals acquire property rights
by removing things from the state of nature through the
investment of their labor. This particular theory of
property helped justify the many harmful policies
against Native Americans throughout United States his-
tory. European settlers falsely saw the Americas as a
vast and empty wasteland that the Native Americans
had failed to cultivate and, therefore, had no worthy
claim to. Euro-Americans saw themselves as the torch-
bearers of civilization and therefore thought they were
uniquely situated to acquire the vast wilderness and de-
velop it (this later developed into the idea of Manifest
Destiny). To the Euro-American mind, that the Native
Americans must yield to European settlement was inev-
itable. This line of reasoning went so far as to result in
a common nineteenth-century belief that the extinction
of Native Americans was also inevitable.
treatment of Native Americans was the policy of assimi-
lation. Its origins are manifested in president Thomas
Jefferson’s idea of the yeoman farmer. Jefferson envi-
sioned a land populated by industrious and autono-
mous yeoman farmers. Native Americans stood in the
way of this vision by their communal occupation of
vast quantities of land. The best solution, then, would
be for Native Americans to assimilate to Euro-
American ways. Thus, the Native Americans would re-
quire less land and the remainder would be available
to white settlers. Under this ideological view of Native
Americans’ role in the new world, there was no place
for Native-American culture as it existed before coloni-
zation. It was a useless stump in fertile land that had
to be extracted. Assimilation of Native Americans and
the intentional destruction of Native-American culture
remained overt policies into modern times and were
often tied to many religious groups’ interactions with
Native Americans.
Virginia and Carolina colonies were heavily engaged in
the slave trade of Native Americans. In the Carolinas,
the proprietors of the colonies favored cultivating Na-
tive-American ties for the lucrative fur trade. Settlers,
some from Barbados where slavery was already estab-
lished, however, raided Native-American tribes and ex-
ploited long-standing native rivalries in order to cap-
ture and sell Native Americans on the slave market.
Historian Thomas R. Berger notes that a South Carolin-
ian, James Moore, abducted and enslaved 325 Native
Americans in the Florida region in 1704 and also
launched a lucrative attack against the North Carolin-
ian Tuscarora tribe in 1713, killing 200 and capturing
392. The end result of such campaigns was to displace
many of the eastern seaboard tribes. The majority of
Native Americans in this region were enslaved domesti-
cally, sold abroad, or forced to flee into the interior.
Such displacement necessarily also destroyed these
tribes’ cultural unity. These acts of intentional enslave-
ment and displacement would qualify as genocidal acts
under the United Nations (UN) definition of genocide.
While slavery is not specifically mentioned in the UN
Genocide Convention’s definition of genocide, it fits
the spirit of the convention. These acts deliberately
caused bodily and mental harm and imposed condi-
tions on the eastern tribes that made life near the colo-
nized settlements precarious to the point of becoming
impossible.
onists were also precarious and often hinged on per-
ceived threat, land conflicts, and trade relations. The
Puritans of New England recognized native land title
only if the land was being cultivated and had a persis-
tent practice of enslaving Native Americans. What har-
mony existed was often disturbed by conflicts over new
settlements and further encroachment on native land.
The Pequot War of 1637 illustrates this tension. The
Pequot had faired the influx of Western disease bett
ments rather than acquiesce to them. When settlers
moved into the Connecticut Valley, the Pequot did just
that. In response, a group of settlers launched an attack
against the Pequot stronghold at night, surrounding
and setting fire to it. The result was the killing of more
than five hundre Pequot and the enslavement of the
survivors. The desire to eliminate a threat also motivat-
ed a similar policy of extermination in Virginia follow-
ing the Indian massacres of 1622 and 1644.
their relations with Native Americans. The Sand
1890.[CORBIS]
that the competition for land and other resources was
not fixed in time, but enduring throughout the United
States’ westward expansion. Both the desire to elimi-
nate a threat and competition for resources, usually
land, led many colonies and states to actions that would
probably be considered war crimes or crimes against
humanity under the Rome Statute.
Americans were fueled by states’ and individuals’ desire
for land. After the French and Indian War
(1754–1763), the English strongly opposed encroach-
ment on native lands for fear that it would provoke na-
tive retaliation and the destruction of beneficial mili-
tary and trade alliances. King George’s Proclamation of
1763 forbade settlement beyond the eastern mountain
ranges and granted the Crown the exclusive right to
purchase Native-American land. This law frustrated
many colonists and land speculators, including Virgin-
ia statesman George Washington, who wished to pur-
chase native lands. Under the Proclamation, native
lands could be acquired from the Crown, but at a much
higher price. The restriction on settlement of certain
portions of land also greatly hindered the expansion
that many colonists saw as desirable and inevitable.
The Crown’s interference with settlers’ desire for cheap,
arable land contributed to many colonists’ support and
justification for the Revolutionary War. This property
system, whereby Native Americans had occupancy
rights but because the Europeans “discovered” the con-
tinent the Crown had exclusive purchasing rights, was
later absorbed into U.S. federal law in the seminal case
O c e a n
Santa Clara
Samish
Twana
Northern Cheyenne
Mogollon
Mimbreno Apache Mescalero
Mimbreno Tano
Isleta
Santa Ana Santo Domingo Towa
San Ildefonso
San Juan TaosJemez
Skagit Sauk-Suiattle
Tenino SpokanQuileute Snoqualmie
Klallam
Puyallup Sanpoil Chelan Colville
Saanich
Wishram
Yakima
al
uy
Nooksack Kwalhioqua
Siletz
Alsea
Coos
Tututni
Tolowa
Wiyot Yana
Karok Huchnom Achumawi
Bear River Wintun
Wailaki Chimariko
WashoeSinkyone
Wappo Miwok
Kawaiisu
Costanoan
Gabrieliño
Karankawa
Cupeño
Havasupai
White Mountain
Aravaipa
the nineteenth century.
O c e a n
o f
ManhattanOneida
Mohegan
un
e
ah
an
ap
ng
Pequot
ShinnecockPaugussett
ta
at
i
Pamunkey
Chickahominy
Coharie
Santee
Mobile
Kichai
Waco
relationship between the federal government and the
native tribes in the post-revolutionary United States,
settlers continued to attempt to acquire native lands
through direct purchase and coercion. The promise of
native land was a cornerstone of the voting Euro-
American population’s interaction with Native Ameri-
cans and heavily influenced U.S. Native-American poli-
cy.
policy of Native-American assimilation and partial re-
tention of native land to the policy of outright removal
of native tribes to the West of the Mississippi. The
forced removal or tribes also resulted in a total relin-
quishment of traditional native land. After many largely
unsuccessful attempts to convince the five relatively
prosperous and assimilated tribes of the Southeast
(Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, and
Creek) to voluntarily move westward, the federal gov-
ernment acquiesced to state pressure and passed the In-
dian Removal Act of 1830. It offered a trade of land in
the East for land in the West. The particularly coercive
aspect of the act was that those who refused the ex-
change would no longer be protected under federal law
and would be subject to hostile state regulation. The re-
moval policies of the federal government resulted in the
humanitarian disaster referred to by the Cherokee as
the Trail of Tears.
on this forced walk to western lands. Removal, howev-
er, was a larger policy than this one famed act. It oc-
curred both before and after 1830 and represented the
belief that American Indians were not capable of exist-
ing with nor desired to coexist with white settlers.
There were conflicting motivations behind the policy.
For some, it was a thinly veiled method of evicting Na-
tive Americans from land that was desired by white set-
tlers. For others, it was based on the belief that Native
Americans were members of an inferior civilization that
could not survive in the civilized world and therefore
needed to be removed for their own sake. Either way,
some scholars reference the federal removal policy as
a genocidal act due to the death and proprietary loss in-
curred to Native Americans as well as the destruction
of their traditional way of life.
that of assimilation. Behind assimilation policies lies
the desire to remove all that is “Indian” from the Native
Americans. A particularly poignant historical example
of how this policy was also tied to the continued desire
for more land is the General Allotment Act of 1887 (the
Dawes Act). This act terminated communal land hold-
ings on the reservations and redistributed land to indi-
vidual Native Americans by a trust system. After twen-
ty-five years, they would own the land individually and
become U.S. citizens. Any “surplus” land would be
taken for sale to settlers. It was an attempt to assimilate
Native-American traditions of communal land holdings
to the Euro-American system of private ownership.
Thereby, it was thought, Native Americans would join
mainstream society and, at the same time, require less
land. This act had disastrous effects on traditional Na-
two-thirds.
moval of Native-American children from their parental
homes to boarding schools for “civilized” education.
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 established an invol-
untary boarding-school system where children were
typically forbidden to speak their native language and
were stripped of all outward native characteristics. The
Carlisle Indian Industrial School was one of these
schools and incorporated an “outing system” whereby
children were placed with white families in order to
learn American customs and values. While having the
good intention to provide education to Native-
American children, this system of indoctrination was
also aimed at “killing the Indian and saving the man”
(Glauner, 2002, p. 10) as Richard Pratt of the Carlisle
School said. In the twenty-first century, this policy
would be considered both a potential violation of the
UN Genocide Convention’s prohibition on transferring
children from one group to another, and a blatant in-
tention to cleanse the Indian population of their native
language and cultural values through the re-education
of their children.
Native Americans was the involuntary sterilization of
approximately seventy thousand Native-American
women. The federally funded Indian Health Services
carried out these sterilizations between 1930 and the
mid-1970s. They were often done without informed
consent, covertly, or under a fraudulent diagnosis of
medical necessity. This directly contravenes the UN
Genocide Convention. Destroying a group’s ability to
reproduce is an obvious and crude method of ensuring
the inability of the group’s survival.
Tears and assimilation policies qualify as genocidal acts
or as crimes against humanity continues to be a subject
of much disagreement and debate. The UN Genocide
Convention requires that a state actor have “intent to
destroy” a group to satisfy the definition of genocide.
As previously outlined, many of the actions taken by
the federal, state, and colonial governments fell short
of actual intent to destroy the Native Americans. Schol-
ars Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn maintain that the
closest cases are the massacres at Sand Creek and of
the Yuki of Round Valley (a modern example would be
the sterilization programs). In both instances, govern-
ment officials played key roles in facilitating the pur-
poseful killing of Native Americans. The circumstances
under which the United States committed genocide
against Native Americans tended to be when other
methods failed to clear a path to settlement, or other
ed States policy toward American Indians in the nine-
teenth century . . . the federal government stood ready
to engage in genocide as a means of coercing tribes
when they resisted ethnocide or resorted to armed re-
sistance” (Chalk and Jonassohn, 1990, p. 203).
of “advertent omission” (that is, without intent to com-
mit genocide, failing to act to prevent private acts that
have genocidal effects or failing to perform obligations
that prevent genocidal effects). There is a debate as to
whether such acts should be incorporated into the defi-
nition of genocide, although they currently are not a
part of the UN definition. Continually turning a blind
eye to aggressive settlers’ illegal consumption of native
land and to other private acts of intimidation are exam-
ples. On the plains, the U.S. government did not pre-
vent the destruction of tribes’ primary food source and
government officials often spoke in approval of it.
From 1883 to 1910, the buffalo, upon which tribes in
that area were dependent, were killed in such great
quantities that the number fell from 60 million to 10
buffalo. Without their traditional food source and with
the pressure exerted by settlers mounting, the plains
Indians experienced famine or were forced to relocate
to reservations. Further, the United States often failed
to uphold treaty obligations to provide protection,
food, and blankets to Native Americans. The failure of
the U.S. government to protect Native Americans and,
in some cases, to follow through on its own obligations,
left Native Americans with few options and contributed
to their destruction.
crimes against humanity under Section 7 of the Rome
Statute of the International Criminal Court. Murder,
extermination, and deportation or forcible transfer of
population fall under this statute when done “as part
of a widespread or systematic attack directed against
any civilian population. . . .” Because many of the acts
of removal were coercive, they could qualify as crimes
against humanity.
The aforementioned allegations of genocidal acts
against American Indians occurred before the United
States ratified the UN Genocide Convention in 1948 (as
of 2004, the United States has not ratified the Rome
Statutes). Most treaties in international law are not re-
troactive. Legal reprisal under the UN Genocide Con-
vention, then, is not likely. An argument may be made,
however, that the involuntary sterilization of Native-
American women occurred after the United States
signed the UN Genocide Convention (although before
gation not to act against the object and purpose of the
treaty.
tions, however, is the recognition of the colonies’, the
United States’, and individuals’ role in the devastation
of Native-American population and culture. As the de-
scription of state policies and actions attest, the de-
struction of Native-American communities and culture
was neither by chance nor mandated by fate. It was di-
rectly connected to government policies and actions.
Peoples; Pequots; Racism; Sand Creek Massacre;
Trail of Tears; Wounded Knee; Yuki of Northern
California
in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America. New York:
Oxford University Press.
White Values, Native Rights in the Americas since 1492.
Seattle: University of Washington Press.
An Analysis of Protestant Missions and American Indian
Response, 1787–1862. Lexington: University of Kentucky
Press.
Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies. New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the
Present. San Francisco: City Lights Books.
Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy. Middletown, Conn.:
Wesleyan University Press.
Accountability and Reparation: 1830–1976 The United
States Government’s Role in the Promotion,
Implementation, and Execution of the Crime of
Genocide Against Native Americans.” DePaul Law
Review 51:911.
University of Chicago Press.
1815–1824. East Lansing: Michigan State University
Press.
Native Americans and Public Policy. Pittsburgh:
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Jeffersonian Philanthropy and the American Indian. New
York: W.W. Norton.
American Political System. New York: Rowman &
Littlefield.
Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest. New
York: Oxford University Press.
nizations (NGOs) in respect to composition, methods
of working, membership, and purpose. If there is a
common denominator to be found, it is less in what
NGOs are but rather in what they are not. As Deborah
Spar and James Dail have noted, NGOs are not “states
or firms; not elected or appointed” (2002, p. 173).
Some have argued that this creates a “democratic defi-
cit,” meaning NGOs are self-appointed representative
agencies that may not be accountable to those they rep-
resent. NGOs differ in size, focus, wealth, and working
methods, as do their clientele and target groups. NGOs
may be local (working within a single state), regional
(working across national borders), or international.
They range from one-person operations to organiza-
tions with large numbers of workers and with offices
March 15, 1996. [AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS]
tional, are membership-driven and supported largely
by donations from its constituent members. Others,
such as Human Rights Watch, rely primarily on foun-
dations or single donors for the funds needed to pay
operating costs. The degree to which an organization’s
membership base is drawn from civil society provides
some clue as to what extent the organization suffers
from the “democratic deficit” attributed to these “un-
elected” bodies.
Given the rather fluid nature of the composition of the
NGO community, it can be difficult to provide a precise
definition of this type of organization. The Encyclopedia
of Public International Law defines NGOs as:
unions, institutes, groups) not established by a
government or by an international agreement,
which are capable of playing a role in interna-
tional affairs by virtue of their activities, and
whose members enjoy independent voting
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