American Indian Culture and Research Journal

INTRODUCTION Several times when I have served on a panel discussing gender or racial role expectations, the moderator has introduced me by asking the audience to guess which one of the panel members is a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM). If no one knows me, no one chooses me. I am the small strawberry blonde, blue-eyed, middle-aged woman wearing a black, dressed-for-success suit accessorized with (fake) pearl earrings and choker. Appearances can also be deceptive where social groups are involved. For example, the view that some people hold of AIM as a violent organization and the belief that its actions are nonproductive or even counterproductive serve as more examples of faulty perception based on stereotypes. The argument I will make in the next pages is based on personal experience and is not meant to be a comprehensive sociological treatise, albeit sociology is my professional area and certainly has shaped my personal view of the world. In addition, I grew up in Montana and, as a twenty-one-year-old bride, moved to the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Reservation in 1958. My home is still there. My son and my ex-husband still live there. Thus, both my professional training and my almost forty years of firsthand experience of reservation life have shaped my personal analysis of the impact of AIM. Based on this grounded perspective, I will argue that AIM was a primary facilitator in bringing rapid change as well as empowerment to many native people and communities. Until AIM was established, change in many areas of Indian Country had moved at such a slow pace that improvements in social conditions and alleviation of human suffering were, for all intents and purposes, nonexistent to both its residents and to the general public’s eye. AIM created a broad-based public awareness that helped to open long-closed doors and enabled major personal and institutional change.