American Indian Movement

When I first started writing my blog, it was to be full of stories for my children and my grandchildren. It also may possibly be read by great grandchildren some day.
When my daughter was about eighteen or nineteen months old, my husband and I decided to move to his hometown. This little town was built upon an Indian Reservation. The town had about two thousand people living there. Since his family had lived there for years and years, he had lots of friends there. It wasn’t long before I made a lot of friends too and usually had a morning coffee for my friends at my kitchen table. After my second child was born, it seemed that even more friends arrived even in the afternoons. I could tell that in order to get my housework done, I needed to delegate it to my friends. It didn’t stop them from coming at all. We all had a very good time, folding diapers and towels, polishing my hardwood floors painting etc. I could go on for ever with the canning, and freezing vegetables that we did together. In those days we were all so poor that that was all we knew. We didn’t lament the fact that we were poor, we most often laughed about it. We went to the grocery store on Saturdays and after that, we went to the bakery. The bakery in that little town had the very best long johns in the nation. I can still smell and taste them.
On the outskirts of town we had a school for American Indian teenagers that had histories of being delinquents, and being in so much trouble that their parents had given up on them. This school was a campus. It had their own fields where they raised their own vegetables, milk cows, raised crops to feed their cattle, horses, etc. The campus had an industrial arts building, barns, stables, educational and office buildings. The purpose of this school was to teach them an occupation so they could support themselves someday. The school also had a beautiful landscape with many acres of trees and flowers.
When my children were very small one day, we were on our way to the bakery. Some of these teenagers attempted to force us off the sidewalk. I would not allow them to do this, and held on tight to my children’s hands and held my ground. There was no reason for this behavior from any race or creed. The expression on their face was one of anger, but I didn’t care. My little girl asked me why we didn’t go in the street and let them pass. I told her that we were there first and they should have waited for us to go before they did.
One day the rumor was that one of these teenagers stole some things from one of the grocery stores in town. The manager told him not to return. He was not welcome there anymore. Shortly after that the American Indian Movement came into town with rifles out of each window and shooting into the air. This was an activist group that was started in 1973 I believe. They were angry because the white men were not living up to the treaties that they had signed. I rushed my children into the house and bolted the doors. I was scared to death. Shortly before this incident they had started the prison on fire in a nearby town, so I knew that they were angry and out of control. I hid my children under blankets and pillows and soon the car with the angry people left town. My husband called to see if we were safe and told me that they had shot out windows of cars and buildings as a warning to townspeople that they meant business. I guess after that there was not as much laughter in my house for our coffee clutches, but when we did get together we did discuss politics more often than we ever had before.
You seldom hear about AIM any more, hopefully that means that they think that they are being treated better or that they are. If you want to know more about this organization, you can look up The Siege of Wounded Knee 1973. This is a place in South Dakota where some murders took place long ago. The trials have been delayed for years because the witnesses did not want to testify and they are very old and probably not competent to testify.
The Oglala Indians lived on a reservation called Pine Ridge. From what I remember, they were held hostage. There was no food, except what was smuggled in to them. It was a sad, but modern day war between the Indians and the White people, which neither one won. It is so difficult to imagine murder and mayhem being part of this beautiful Reservation.