Vernon Bellecourt dies

Here are some links to well researched essays about the complicated history of the creation of AIM and split into factions.

In the 60s, many reservations still had regressive federally run schools, some counties didn't allow natives to vote, many children were taken away and adopted out in other cities and the federal government badly managed the economies of reservations and tried to resettle families in big cities. AIM was really important in regaining local control and fighting for basic esteem for american indians. Many of their earliest and most important successes occurred at focal points, such as the fight at Wounded Knee in South Dakota in 1973, and the symbolic retaking of Alcatraz island. Vernon and Clyde Bellecourt were 10-15 years older than some of the young participants who traveled from other reservations to Pine Ridge, and were considered leaders and good speakers.
http://siouxme.com/lodge/aim_73.html
http://www.aics.org/WK/index.html
http://www.dickshovel.com/AIMIntro.html

In the late 70s and 1980s, many activist struggles became decentralized to different reservations. Certain leaders in the midwestern movements developed strong grudges, suspicions, and irreconcilable differences.

Members of Colorado AIM, notably Ward Churchill and his ally Russell Means, a libertarian and an extremely visible activist at the Wounded Knee II event, didn't get along with the Bellecourt faction of AIM at all. http://www.russellmeans.com/read_02.html They famously hate each other. Some details include the feeling by Means et al that the Bellecourts had information about the death of Anna Mae Aquash, while the Bellecourt called Churchill a government agent.
http://www.dickshovel.com/time.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-02-06-aim-murder_x.htm
http://www.russellmeans.com/russell.html
They also held a tribunal in the San Francisco Bay area in 1994 to review transgressions of the Bellecourts.
http://www.coloradoaim.org/history/1994chargesagainstbellecourts1.htm
http://www.americanindianmovement.org/txaim/bellecourts.html

During the 1-2 year media phenomenon resulting from the discovery of a paragraph about Eichmann in a 2001 Ward Churchill essay, Vernon Bellecourt strongly advocated against him and gave critical quotes in the press
http://www.aimovement.org/moipr/USgovt-vs-AIMnov99.html

The Colorado AIM group has been fighting with a group which holds Columbus parades in Denver for decades, using really offensive imagery such as reenactments of the 7th Cavalry which slaughtered hundreds of indians http://www.transformcolumbusday.org/

This is the website for the incorporated 'national AIM', which was run by the Minneapolis group. It was criticized by some as undemocratic, and not representative of many participants around the country. However, they often were called by the press for quotations and radio comments when native issues came up in the national press. Deleterious sports mascots such as the Washington Redskins were one of their major issues.
http://www.aimovement.org/

Both the Minneapolis group and Colorado group have supported the campaign for release of Leonard Peltier, unjustly kept for 30 years in prison for a suspiciously timelined shooting at Wounded Knee
http://www.leonardpeltier.net/

Quite a few important thinkers and speakers such as Dennis Banks were allied with the national AIM, and there is lots of evidence that a broad section of the community became tired with the visible center-stage infighting among the few american indians given media exposure.