Clyde Bellecourt

The FBI was able to splinter the movement and as of the early 21st century it survives, weakened, in two factions, one in Colorado and formerly led by Russell Means, and the second in Minnesota and formerly led by the Bellecourt brothers, all now deceased.

Among those were Eddie Benton-Banai (Ojibwe, 1931–2020), who had started a prison cultural program called the American Indian Folklore Group for Native Americans, and Dennis Banks (Ojibwe, 1937–2017).

After working together in prison, they decided to create a similar program in Minneapolis, to aid urban Indians through exposure to their history, traditional culture, and spirituality.

Clyde Howard Bellecourt (May 8, 1936 – January 11, 2022) was a Native American civil rights organizer.

His Ojibwe name is Nee-gon-we-way-we-dun, which means "Thunder Before the Storm".

By the time he was released four years later, the Bellecourt family had moved to Minneapolis in the 1950s, under the Indian Relocation Act of 1956 whereby the federal government encouraged moves to settings where there might be more job opportunities.

They found the city difficult, and Bellecourt reacted to perceived discrimination and feeling out of place.

He received detentions at school.

Getting involved with bad influences, Bellecourt ultimately incurred criminal charges.

He was convicted and sentenced to the adult correctional facility at St. Cloud for a succession of offenses, including burglary and robbery.

At the age of 25, Bellecourt was transferred to Stillwater Prison in the eponymous city of Minnesota, where he served out the remainder of his sentence.

There he met numerous other Native Americans, many of them also Ojibwe.

He founded the American Indian Movement (AIM) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1968 with Dennis Banks, Eddie Benton-Banai, and George Mitchell.

His elder brother, Vernon Bellecourt, was also active in the movement.

Under Bellecourt's leadership, AIM succeeded in raising awareness of tribal issues.

AIM shone a light on police harassment in Minneapolis.

Bellecourt founded successful "survival schools" in the Twin Cities to help Native American children learn their traditional cultures.

Bellecourt helped found AIM during a Minneapolis meeting in July 1968 with Banks and George Mitchell of the Leech Lake Reservation.

Eddie Benton-Banai, who was raised on the Lac Courte Oreilles reservation in northern Wisconsin, was also one of the founders.

They were discussing how to raise awareness of issues American Indians faced in the Twins Cities, and to solve those problems.

Topics included police harassment and brutality against Native Americans, discrimination by employers, discrimination in school, poor housing, and high unemployment among American Indians.

At first they called themselves “Concerned Indian Americans,” but changed to "aim" at the suggestion of an elder woman.

In 1970, he led a takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) building in Littleton, Colorado, to demand that Native Americans be put in charge of the BIA.

The protest spread across the country, with eight BIA offices shut down.

In 1971, Bellecourt visited the Chicago Indian Village (CIV), an inter-tribal group protesting to raise awareness of and solutions for poor housing conditions for Native Americans in Chicago.

The CIV had occupied the former site of a battery of Nike anti-aircraft missiles at Belmont Harbor in Chicago.

In 1972, he initiated the march to Washington, D.C. called the Trail of Broken Treaties, hoping to renegotiate federal-tribal nations' treaties.

Non-profit groups he founded are designed to improve economic development for Native Americans.

Clyde Bellecourt was the seventh of twelve children born to his parents (Charles and Angeline) on the White Earth Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota.

Among his older siblings was brother Vernon Bellecourt.

The reservation was impoverished and his home had no running water or electricity.

In his youth, Bellecourt fought against authorities, believing that they did not treat his family and other Indians with respect.

His parents told him to think about his education and do as well as he could.

The years in school were not pleasant.

As a boy, he attended a reservation Catholic mission school run by strict nuns of a Benedictine order.

Young Bellecourt snared rabbits, and harvested wild rice and sugar beets until he was 11 when he was arrested for truancy and delinquency, and sent away to the Red Wing State Training School.

Banks wrote in 2004 that Bellecourt was a "man in a hurry to get things done," who "spoke with such intensity that his enthusiasm swept over us like a storm. In that moment, AIM was born."

Bellecourt was elected the group's first chairman, Dennis Banks field director, and Charles Deegan vice chairman.

They began to monitor arrests of American Indians made by the local police department to ensure their civil rights were observed and they were treated with dignity and respect.

Benton-Banai had also worked on this issue before serving time in Stillwater Prison.