Clyde Bellecourt

• Born: May 8, 1936
• Birthplace: White Earth Reservation, Minnesota
• Died: January 11, 2022

Clyde Bellecourt, also known as Nee-gon-we-way-we-dun ("Thunder Before the Storm"), was a founder and the executive director of the American Indian Movement (AIM), an organization promoting total sovereignty of Native Americans and their lands. Bellecourt was outspoken and often controversial in his crusade for greater rights and respect for Native Americans. Bellecourt often lead protests and marches on issues such as alleged broken treaties and sports teams and mascots that use Native American imagery.

Early Life

Clyde Howard Bellecourt was born on May 8, 1936, on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. The seventh of twelve children, Bellecourt was the son of a disabled World War I veteran. Growing up on one of Minnesota's poorest reservations, he became self-conscious of his heritage and skeptical of the lessons he learned in history class, which centered on White figures such as George Washington. Bellecourt had frequent disciplinary and truancy problems, and spent three years in a reform school.

Bellecourt's family moved to Minnesota's Twin Cities area when he was sixteen. After a series of criminal offenses, including robbery and burglary, Bellecourt wound up incarcerated at Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater. While there, Bellecourt met a prisoner who painted a dark picture of Native American history, including stories of broken treaties by the US government. Bellecourt spent a lot of time studying his heritage and culture and, while still in prison, began laying down the groundwork for a program of grassroots activism.

Starting AIM

After being paroled in the mid-1960s, Bellecourt worked as an engineer for a Minnesota utility company. He soon began organizing meetings with other Native Americans, and in 1968, officially founded the American Indian Movement. Two years later, Bellecourt founded the Legal Rights Center, an organization providing legal assistance to low-income people, and organized the South High Housing Project, later known as Little Earth of United Tribes Inc. Soon Bellecourt's prominence began to rise and his organizations became more powerful.

AIM has been described as a "Black Panthers-style" organization, taking its message to the streets and promoting its causes regardless of potential scrutiny. In addition to public marches and representation of Native Americans in court, AIM took action in improving education standards for Native American children. In 1972, Bellecourt and his supporters founded the AIM Survival School, now known as the Heart of the Earth Survival School, in Minneapolis.

In 1972, Bellecourt and AIM made their first march to Washington. They briefly occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and presented a twenty-point manifesto to President Nixon. The manifesto called for the restoration of treaty making, investigations into treaty violations, abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, protection of Native American religious and cultural freedom, and immunity from government regulations.

Wounded Knee and Aftermath

After two violent incidents involving White people and Native American people, AIM members and supporters gathered at the famous Wounded Knee hamlet in South Dakota in February 1973. The gathering escalated into a seventy-one-day standoff with state and federal agencies. Two Native American occupiers were killed, one US Marshal was paralyzed by gunfire, and about 600 people were arrested, including activist Leonard Peltier. Approximately 500,000 gunshots were exchanged between the agents and occupiers. Bellecourt was indicted on fourteen federal counts, including conspiracy and assault. He was cleared of all charges.

The Wounded Knee standoff catapulted AIM into the national spotlight, and brought unprecedented attention to the Native American rights movement. Bellecourt took advantage of the publicity to call for further reforms. In 1974 he became the first Native American to address the World Council of Churches in Montreux, Switzerland. Three years later, he represented AIM at a United Nations hearing on discrimination against Indigenous peoples, in Geneva, Switzerland.

Continued Activism

Following Wounded Knee, Bellecourt remained the leader of AIM as well as one of the most recognizable Native American activists. AIM continued its tradition of protests and marches, including The Longest Walk, a 3,000-mile trek from California to Washington, DC, in 1978. The purpose of the walk was to protest proposed legislation to nullify Native American treaties, and the legislation eventually failed in Congress.

AIM continued to be a leading voice for Native American rights throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The organization continued to focus on improving education and creating job-training programs for Native Americans. In 1989, Bellecourt founded the Elaine M. Statley Peacemakers Center, a center for troubled youth and their families. In 1985, Bellecourt was arrested on drug charges after selling LSD to an undercover officer. He served two years of a five-year sentence after pleading guilty.

Bellecourt gained later attention by protesting Native American-themed nicknames in college and professional sports, such as football's Washington Redskins and baseball's Cleveland Indians and Atlanta Braves. Bellecourt's brother Vernon founded the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and Media in 1991, and the organization has made headlines with its protests outside sports stadiums. The Bellecourt brothers contended that Native American mascots are demeaning and racist, and gave lectures at universities on their impact on Native American culture.

AIM remained active in the twenty-first century, though it suffered through financial difficulties and power struggles between Clyde Bellecourt and other members. Splinter groups such as Autonomous AIM formed out of these struggles, and renounced Bellecourt and his claim to AIM leadership. Bellecourt in turn discredited Autonomous AIM and did not consider it part of his movement.

In 2016, Bellecourt published Thunder Before the Storm, an autobiography. That same year, Bellecourt was vocal in his opposition of the Dakota Access Pipeline, a heavily protested 1,172-mile-long pipeline that connects the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota to Illinois while controversially passing through the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.

Bellecourt died on January 11, 2022, at the age of eighty-five.

Bibliography

"Clyde Bellecourt." Minnesota Public Radio Archive, archive.mpr.org/collections/people/clyde-bellecourt. Accessed 14 Sept. 2022.

Roberts, Sam. "Clyde Bellecourt, a Founder of the American Indian Movement, Dies at 85."The New York Times, 13 Jan. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/us/clyde-bellecourt-dead.html. Accessed 14 Sept. 2022.