American Indian Movement

(noun)

An American Indian advocacy group in the United States, founded in July 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was initially formed to address American Indian sovereignty, treaty issues, spirituality, and leadership, while simultaneously addressing incidents of police harassment and racism against Native Americans forced to move away from reservations and tribal culture by the 1950s-era enforcement of the U.S. federal government-enforced Indian Termination Policies originally created in the 1930s.

Related Terms

Examples of American Indian Movement in the following topics:

  • American Indian Rights

    • The fight for American Indian rights expanded in the 1960s, resulting in the creation of the American Indian Movement.
    • The movement for American Indian rights in the 1960s centered around the tension between rights granted via tribal sovereignty and rights that individual American Indians retain as U.S. citizens.
    • One of the primary advocacy organizations for American Indian Rights, the American Indian Movement (AIM), was also formed during the 1960s.
    • The American Indian Movement (AIM) is an activist organization in the United States founded in 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by urban American Indians.
    • Explain the Native American rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s

  • American Indian Relocation

    • Indian termination policy of the United States (mid-1940s to the mid-1960s) intended to assimilate American Indians (herein referred to as "Indians" for historical context) into mainstream American society.
    • These actions affected more than 12,000 American Indians or 3% of the total American Indian population.
    • The lands belonging to American Indians, rich in resources, were taken over by the federal government.
    • Several crucial organizations were formed to help protect the rights of the Indians and their land (e.g., American Indian Movement, or AIM).
    • The American Indian Movement (AIM) is an American Indian advocacy group founded in July 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

  • American Indians and the War Effort

    • American Indians first saw action in the Pacific Theater along with the rest of the American army and navy.
    • American Indians were also among the first Americans to enter Germany and played a role in the Liberation of Berlin.
    • Many military awards offered to American Indian soldiers were later used during the termination period by the Bureau of Indian Affairs as proof that American Indians were eager to assimilate into white mainstream American culture.
    • The war's aftermath, says historian Allison Bernstein, marked a "new era in Indian affairs" and turned "American Indians" into "Indian Americans."
    • In the same period, the American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded in Minneapolis, and chapters were established throughout the country, where American Indians combined spiritual and political activism.

  • The Seven Years' War: 1754-1763

    • The French and Indian War (1754-1763) was the North American chapter of the Seven Years' War.
    • The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was the North American chapter of the Seven Years' War.
    • The name refers to the two main enemies of the British: the royal French forces and the various American Indian forces allied with them.
    • The French and Indian War was the last of four major colonial wars between the British, the French, and their Native American allies.
    • Schematic map of the French and Indian War showing territorial possessions and troop movement.

  • The Indian Independence Movement

  • Civil Rights of Native Americans

    • Relocating Indian populations to reservations during a period of American expansion is an example of what would today be considered a civil rights violation.
    • In an attempt to confine Native Americans to limited territory, thus clearing the way for westward expansion, the U.S. government created a system of Indian reservations.
    • Reservations were intended to reduce conflict between settlers and Indians without curbing American expansion, but they were controversial and largely unsuccessful from the start.
    • On the one hand, settlers objected to large portions of land being given to indigenous populations, and on the other, Native Americans objected to having their movement restricted and their territory reduced.
    • Today, there are still 310 Indian reservations in the U.S., but they remain controversial.

  • The Indian Response

    • The Indian nations west of the Appalachians were essential players in the War of 1812, often siding with the British against the Americans.
    • The Indian nations west of the Appalachians played an important role in the War of 1812.
    • In the South, American Indian resistance to white expansion intensified into the Creek War.
    • The war ended after a combined force of American state militias, Lower Creek Indians, and Cherokee Indians, under the leadership of Andrew Jackson, defeated the Red Sticks at Horseshoe Bend.
    • Before the Creek Civil War, in February, 1813, Tecumseh, leader of the Shawnees, came to the Southeast to encourage the Creek to join his movement to throw the whites out of Native American territories.

  • American Indians and the Revolution

    • American Indian tribes were divided over whether to support Great Britain or the Patriots during the American Revolution.
    • Most American Indians who joined the struggle sided with the British, based both on their trading relationships and hopes that colonial defeat would result in a halt to further colonial expansion onto American Indian land.
    • The first American Indian community to sign a treaty with the new United States Government was the Lenape.
    • The British made peace with the Americans in the Treaty of Paris (1783), through which they ceded vast American Indian territories to the United States without informing or consulting with the American Indians.
    • The Northwest Indian War was led by American Indian tribes trying to repulse American colonists.

  • In the West: The Native Americans

    • The various Indian tribes that composed the Western Confederacy also controlled this territory, and American leaders began to consider how to best exploit the territory for American advantage while avoiding conflict with the indigenous population there.
    • Such rapid exploration and expansion of migration into the Southeast in the 1820s and 1830s, and ongoing conflict with local Native American tribes, forced the federal government to deal with the so-called "Indian question. " Since the Greenville Treaty in the 1790s, Native Americans were under federal control but remained independent of state governments, which demanded control over the placement of Indian tribes in their territories.
    • With Jackson's election to presidential office in 1836, this policy for Native American displacement was a realized possibility, and by 1837 the "Indian Removal policy" was put into effect.
    • This law, on paper, provided for voluntary displacement of Indian tribes to the West and had safeguards for the rights of Indians.
    • Analyze the waves of westward movement in the early 19th-century and the displacements of native peoples that movement brought about

  • Changes in American Indian Life

    • The invasion of North America by European powers had widespread effects on American Indian life.
    • Smallpox proved particularly fatal to American Indian populations.
    • By 1832, the federal government established a smallpox vaccination program for American Indians, known as the Indian Vaccination Act.
    • It was the first federal program created to address a health issue among American Indians.
    • Colonists found that American Indian slaves could easily escape, as they knew the country.