As one of the original founders of the American Indian Movement
(AIM), Clyde Bellecourt (born 1939) has long been an activist
for the rights of Native Americans. He was an essential
participant in the occupation of both Wounded Knee and a Bureau
of Indian Affairs Building in the early 1970s. Born on the White
Earth Reservation in Minnesota in 1939, Clyde Bellecourt was one
of the founders of a national activist organization called the
American Indian Movement (AIM) and a powerful force in major
activist struggles of the early 1970s. AIM was founded by Dennis
Banks, George Mitchell, and Bellecourt, all Ojibwa, in 1968. On
February 27, 1973, they and other leaders led an armed
occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, after Dee Brown's book
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1971) had established the site as
a nationally recognized symbol. Bellecourt also helped draft
twenty demands that were put before the government during the
Indian occupation of a Bureau of Indian Affairs building in
1972. Among other things, t