Our Purpose: A)First
and foremost to support and endorse the National American Indian Movement in all
directives; IE Sovereignty issues, Burial desecration issues, Sports and other mascot
issues, and obtaining the freedom of political prisoner, Leonard Peltier. B)
On a local level, our goal is to protect the welfare, both spiritual and physical of all
Indian people, and help to educate the non-Indian population on the conditions of the
American Indian today, as well as to promote understanding of the past histories that have
led to these conditions
Original Mission Statement
Pat Adams, Founding Chairperson
Things will never be same again and that is
what the American Indian Movement is about ...
They are respected by many, hated by some, but they are never ignored ...
They are the catalyst for Indian Sovereignty ...
They intend to raise questions in the minds of all, questions that have gone to sleep in
the minds of Indians and non-Indian alike ...
From the outside, AIM people are tough people, they had to be ...
AIM was born out of the dark violence of police brutality and voiceless despair of Indian
people in the courts of Minneapolis, Minnesota ...
AIM was born because a few knew that it was enough, enough to endure for themselves and
all others like them who were people without power or rights ...
AIM people have known the insides of jails; the long wait; the no appeal of the courts for
Indians, because many of them were there ...
From the inside AIM people are cleansing themselves; many have returned to the old
traditional religions of their tribes, away from the confused notions of a society that
has made them slaves of their own unguided lives ...
AIM is first, a spiritual movement, a religious re-birth, and then the re-birth of dignity
and pride in a people ...
AIM succeeds because they have beliefs to act upon ...
The American Indian Movement is attempting to connect the realities of the past with the
promise of tomorrow ...
They are people in a hurry, because they know that the dignity of a person can be snuffed
by despair and a belt in a cell of a city jail ...
They know that the deepest hopes of the old people could die with them ...
They know that the Indian way is not tolerated in White America, because it is not
acknowledged as a decent way to be ...
Sovereignty, Land, and Culture cannot endure if a people is not left in peace ...
The American Indian Movement is then, the Warriors Class of this century, who are bound to
the bond of the Drum, who vote with their bodies instead of their mouths ... THEIR
BUSINESS IS HOPE.
Words and thoughts by Birgil Kills Straight,
Oglala Lakota Nation.
Author, Richard LaCourse, Director,
American Indian Press Association 1973
