To understand the birth of native american activism in the 1960s in the United States, one must bear in mind the socioeconomic conditions in which the natives lived. The Pine Ridge reserve (South Dakota) was the most extreme case of marginality: 80% of the population lived below the poverty rate, the unemployment rate fluctuated around 90%, the annual income per capita among traditionalist families was less than $ 1,000 per year, life expectancy was 43 years, 70% had alcoholism problems, which caused that almost 25% of babies were born with brain damage and school failure was very common, with more of the half the young people leaving the school before finishing the primary education. In addition, the Indian Health Service not only did not have the technical and human resources to reach the minimum guarantees required by the Government itself, but it was also carrying out a sterilization program without the knowledge of the patients themselves.
This state in which the Lakota were found was a direct consequence of the colonizing policy of the government, which had already begun in the second half of the 20th century. XIX, but continued throughout the whole s. XX. The main objective continued to be the native assimilation in the dominant society (mainstream), in order to dilute the indigenous culture in the melting pot that constitutes the North American society, and to seize the territory and indigenous natural resources. The last step in this direction was the Termination Act (1953), which aimed to put an end to high public expenditures in terms of national protection and the special status enjoyed by the inhabitants of the reserves. This law was accompanied by the Relocation Act (1956) which elaborated relocation programs to transfer Indian individuals and families from the reserves to the cities, where they would receive professional training in order to obtain a job. The funds were denied to implement programs similar to reservations. The objective was to depopulate the reserves to leave a free path to corporate interests. These laws resulted in a diaspora of Native Americans. By 1967, almost half of the Sioux population had been moved to the ghettos of cities such as Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. At the same time, it also served to accentuate the fracture in indigenous social cohesion, generating a distancing between those who tried to live like whites and reserve traditionalists.
Many of these training courses were not established. The fortunate ones who received this instruction, had to suffer racism and discrimination from both unions and employers, accept the lowest wages, the heaviest jobs … As independent citizens and taxpayers, without work experience or good training, the Most of the Indians were reduced to absolute poverty would have been relocated in the cities or not.
In 1968 the American Indian Movement (AIM) was born in Minneapolis, which, despite being inspired by the struggles for fishing rights of the Washington and Oregon tribes, in the territorial claims of the Iroquois in Ontario and New York, and in Red Power activism led by the National Youth Indian Council, AIM was the direct result of these termination and relocation policies. At first, the objective of this Movement was the creation of programs of employment, education and housing for the Indians of the cities and at the same time they created patrols that had as mission to protect the natives from the abuses and police brutality. AIM quickly began to expand and in two years it transfers its programs from the local sphere to the national sphere, while it directs its attention from the cities where it was originally from, to the reserves. In this way it was linked to the most traditional sectors of Indian society and was inserted in the fight for the defense of the rights emanated from the treaties, especially the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868. This will be the essence of the Movement: the alliance between the young militants of the cities and the traditionalists of the reserves. These two groups complemented each other and needed each other. The traditionalists and the medicine men reinforced the native identity in the Indians of the cities, with an identity conflict due to the assimilationist policies of the government that had provoked a social dislocation and a forgetting of traditional practices and customs. While the traditionalist elders will see in the young people of the cities the channel through which to convey all their demands: they were a new warrior society that spoke the language of distant cities. Indeed, inspired by the Black Panther Party, the AIM had adopted the same model of self-defense and became an activism that will not reject the armed struggle to confront the prevailing racism in American society. The AIM will play a leading role in a series of mobilizations that will shake the country: employment of Alcatraz (1969), the March of the Broken Treaties (1972) and Wounded Knee (1973). The strategy was to carry out a series of mobilizations and shock actions with a moderate radicalism that would serve to put indigenous demands on the President’s table and initiate negotiation processes. Native claims were never seriously considered and tension increased progressively. But where the violence reached its maximum height went to the Pine Ridge reservation.
There, the federal government implemented the COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) program, which aimed to eliminate any nucleus of dissent. The result was support for a corrupt tribal government headed by Dick Wilson that spawned the Kingdom of Terror (1973 to 1976). Thanks to the cooperation between the FBI, which provided all the necessary logistics, and the Wilson government, he was able to have a squad of assassins called Guardians of the Oglala Nation (Goon). During this period, which coincides with the largest deployment of the FBI in the area, the Pine Ridge Reserve had the highest per capita murder rate in the United States. The General Accounting Office documented more than 60 political murders but stopped the investigations arguing that it did not have more funds. Leonard Peltier and the International Indian Treaty Council estimate that there would have been between 260-300 casualties. The reserve did not reach 20,000 inhabitants. Despite all the allegations, none of these deaths was properly investigated. On the contrary, they were covered up by the FBI. On the part of the federal administration it was the old divide and conquer tactic. A civil war was encouraged among the indigenous people themselves, supporting a factional leader who submitted to the directives of the central government and ended the territorial and native sovereignty claims carried out by this activism. Why? What was behind? The interests of the corporate state, that is to say, the coalition between the federal government and the big multinationals of the energy sector that wanted to put into operation the resources and the deposits of the Indian reserves to obtain the maximum benefit.
So waving the excuse of national defense (in a context where the cold war was fully in force) and energy independence (at a juncture in which the Arab oil embargo has just been produced), the US Administration is unable to do without The economic power of these corporations allowed them to dictate the planning of public policies and declared the Black Hills region (sacred mountains of the Lakota) as a zone of national sacrifice. It was thought that all water supply for non-industrial uses would be suppressed, and the plan that was planned was for colossal measures: the creation of a nuclear park with 25 reactors, the construction of large power plants through a network of power lines. high-voltage transmission would bring energy to eastern cities, the exploitation of coal deposits and open-cut uranium … This plan would have devastating effects from the point of view of environmental sustainability and would pose a threat to health public of the inhabitants of the area due to nuclear pollution and the toxic waste that would be generated.
It is in this context that an AIM contingent in which Peltier was found went to Oglala at the request of the traditional community to protect them from the attacks of the Goonies. On June 26, 1975, two FBI agents, Ronald Williams and Jack Cholera enter the Pine Ridge reservation despite not having jurisdiction over the minor crimes or having a warrant to arrest Jimmy Eagle, an Indian who had stolen boots a few days before. It is not very clear how but a shootout started and the two agents and the Indian Joe Killsright died. The FBI began an investigation process known as RESMURS (Reservation Murders) Investigation in which it proceeded without any respect for civil rights to detain the perpetrators. The first defendants were Robert Robideau, with whom I have been able to talk about the Peltier case, and Dino Butler. But both were acquitted in the trial held in Cedar Rapids (1976), since the jury admitted the plea of self-defense put forward by the accused. Then the Public Ministry and the FBI concentrated all efforts to reach the conviction of Leonard Peltier, who had fled to Canada. At the end of the same year, extradition was obtained through false depositions of Myrtle Poor Bear, which, coerced by FBI agents, signed these documents in which she claimed to be Leonard Peltier’s girlfriend and had witnessed how she had killed agents. In the Peltier trial that took place in Fargo in 1977, Judge Benson along with the FBI and the prosecution established the rules that would govern the process and left no room for maneuver for the defense.
Without any reliable evidence and despite the irregularities and contradictions of the accusation, Peltier was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences and was locked in the maximum security prison in the country: Marion. The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit dismissed Peltier’s appeal (1978) and the Supreme Court denied a review of the case (1979). In 1981, Peltier’s lawyers won the FOIA judicial process (Freedom of Information Act) and obtained the declassification of 12,000 pages of documentation that the FBI and the prosecutor had hidden in relation to the Peltier case while the other 6,000 continued to be held under the excuse of protecting national security. Although these documents exposed the FBI’s fraudulent behavior, the new trials that were undertaken did not serve to free Peltier although Crooks prosecutor acknowledged before the Eighth Circuit Court that they could not prove who killed the agents and contradicting what that he had advocated in Fargo, now argued that Peltier was not in prison for murder but for criminal complicity in them. The Court also admitted that if the defense had availed of the evidence retained by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the sentence would have been different. In any case, the sentence was not modified. If the legal struggle has not been successful, the pressure that the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) has made before the United Nations Human Rights Commission to release Leonard Peltier has not helped either.
The IITC is the international diplomatic arm of the AIM that was created in 1974 to the Standing Rock reserve and became the first indigenous organization to be recognized by the United Nations in 1977 when it acquired the rank of NGO with consultative status within the ECOSOC ( Economic and Social Council of the United Nations). Its purpose was to have its spokespersons present in international organizations the indigenous demands regarding the provisions of the treaties and the violations of their rights. Many sectors of indigenous activism, including Robert Robideau, do not trust the option represented by the United Nations. Nor has the emergence on stage of a mysterious unidentified character, Mr. X, who in 1988 confessed to be the author of the murders in an interview with Peter Mathiessen.
CONCLUSIONS
As a consequence of COINTELPRO and internal differences today, AIM has lost the unifying force and leadership that it exercised in the 1970s within indigenous activism. As Edward Flagler told me, the AIM is today a grassroots movement that focuses its mobilization on smaller objectives such as the release of Leonard Peltier.
Anyway, it seems that in this task they are not getting too much success either, since as James Anaya explained to us, Peltier’s situation has had a greater following in the international sphere than the United States itself.
Today the only legal remedies left to Peltier to obtain freedom are: 1) That the Commission in charge grant him provisional release. 2) That the President of the United States grant him the amnesty. Neither route seems likely to occur.
A possible alternative that could unblock the current situation in which the Peltier case is found could arise if Leonard Peltier won the Nobel Peace Prize next October, since it would probably generate much stronger international pressure than It has occurred up to the present.
