Founded 1968
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Native American rights organization

The American Indian Movement (AIM) was the best-known and most militant Native American rights organization of the late 1960s and 1970s. (Although AIM still exists today, it commands far less media attention than it did in its heyday.) Comprised of Native American activists from many different tribes, AIM drew attention to the poverty and lack of opportunity plaguing Native American communities in cities and on reservations. AIM undertook militant actions in protest of the injustices inflicted on native people by U.S. government policies—particularly termination (the ending of treaty rights) and relocation (the resettlement of Indians from reservations to cities).

At the time AIM came into being, Native America was in a dismal state. Native American people only lived, on average, forty years, and died from alcoholism, malnutrition, or disease; infants died at a rate...