AIM: A Long Way From Franklin Ave.

BIG FOOT Trail, the only paved east-west road on the Pine Ridge reservation, stretches across the southern portion of the reservation and leads directly into Wounded Knee. Back in 1890, Big Foot and his Oglala followers marched along this gently rolling road toward their death at Wounded Knee.

Access to Wounded Knee in the final days before the accord was not quite so easy. Three separate road-blocks sprawled across Big Foot Trail, two of them manned by Indians who opposed each other. The Oglala Tribal Council maintained the outermost checkpoint, while the militant American Indian Movement handled the innermost roadblock. AIM demanded the ouster of Richard Wilson, the Oglala Tribal president. It was fitting that the U.S. government roadblock stood between the two Indian checkpoints, serving both symbolically and realistically as a buffer zone.

Over 650 miles from the wind-swept hills that surround Big Foot Trail is a crowded city street known as Franklin Ave. Here on this Minneapolis avenue, the American Indian Movement began. From its modest initiation as an organization founded to protect Minneapolis's young Indians from police harrassment, AIM has grown to a movement with chapters in 37 states.

AIM has come a long way from Franklin Ave. Russell C. Means and Dennis J. Banks, AIM's major spokesmen at Wounded Knee, were not members when AIM organized in 1968, and the movement itself did not become a national one until 1971.

In the beginning, AIM's thrust was intentionally narrow. Rita Rogers, a director of the Minneapolis chapter and an AIM member from its inception, said last week that the necessity for self-protection gave birth to AIM.

"The police were giving the teenagers around Franklin Ave. a hard time," Rogers said. "We had an open meeting, and that's how it all started."

Five hundred Indians joined at that first meeting, and the membership has climbed steadily since. AIM spokemen boast 125,000 members, a figure that by the best estimates seems too high. The movement, however, does have support-over 10,000 Indians joined the "Trail of Broken Treaties" caravan to Washington last November, which ended with a takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs office.

After Means and Banks-both national AIM coordinators-joined AIM, the movement took a decidely militant turn. As early as March 1970, AIM gave warning that building takeovers might prove to be a useful tactic. On March 23, 1970, Means, then chairman of AIM's Cleveland chapter, was arrested for "trespassing" in the Cleveland BIA.

Since that incident, AIM has been fighting on two fronts. The movement's primary target has been the BIA and the power structure in Washington. The militants have issued a 20-point proposal that would redefine the nature of Indian affairs in the United States.

At the same time, AIM is also fighting a war against hundreds of Indian Tribal Councils, which it claims are only puppets of the BIA. The attack on Richard Wilson's Oglala Council and the takeover of Wounded Knee was not a caprice. AIM and Wilson have been at odds since Wilson's election 11 months ago.

The 33-year-old Means is a resident of the Pine Ridge reservation, although he spent most of his life in the city. He was born on this reservation, the nation's seventh largest, and moved away when he was one year old.

AIM's local actions have revolved primarily around the South Dakota reservations and the Black Hills. Of all the Indian treaties, AIM points to the 1868 Laramie treaty, which supposedly guarantees Indian control over the Black Hills. But the United States, through a series of shady maneuvers, took this scenic land from the Indian grasp.

The 20-point proposal issued by the "Trail of Broken Treaties" calls for the U.S. to honor its treaty commitments and to abolish the BIA, substituting an alternate agency that would revitalize Indian-U.S. relations.

But to reinforce that broadly-based document, AIM conducts local forays to dramatize isolated injustices. The Wounded Knee area is ideal for this type of action. The site is located in the Black Hills, where the U.S. allegedly violated the Laramie treaty, and it was here that the last battle between the Indians and the U.S. cavalry took place.

Over the past two years, the following incidents have occurred on or near the Pine Ridge reservation:

* In August 1970, AIM and other groups began a prayer vigil at Mt. Rushmore in the Black Hills to protest the Federal government's purchase of 150,000 acres during World War II for a gunnery range. The militant groups claimed that the U.S. promised to return the acreage after the war.

* Over 1000 Indians gathered at Gordon, Neb., in March 1972 to protest the death of Raymond Yellow Thunder. Yellow Thunder, a resident of the Pine Ridge reservation, was found dead in Gordon on February 20. The autopsy showed Yellow Thunder died of a cerebral hemorrhage, but AIM requested, and obtained, a Federal grand jury to investigate the death. Reliable reports said a few white youths had harrassed Yellow Thunder, forced him to dance in front of others, and threw him out in the cold. This incident occurred a week before he was found dead.

* Four days after AIM arrived in Gordon, 300 Indians left Gordon and headed for Wounded Knee, 40 miles north. The demonstrators stormed the museum at the historic site, causing $50,000 damage. The militants claimed that James Czywczynski, owner of the museum, touched off the incident when he allegedly roughed up an 11-year-old Sioux boy. Czywczynski, like most Pine Ridge residents who own businesses, is white.

AIM's Washington battle came to a climax just five months ago, when 500 Indians took over the BIA building on 19th St. and Constitution Ave., three blocks from the White House. The militant group held the BIA for six days, leaving after President Nixon established a Federal study group to examine the effectiveness of the BIA.

The Federal government made no move to evict the occupiers during the six-day takeover, although The New York Times reported that the Interior Department wanted to forcibly remove the militants from the building.

On December 1, 1972, one month after the BIA takeover, the Interior Department called for the resignations of Louis R. Bruce, commissioner of Indian Affairs, and John O. Crow, the deputy commissioner.

Bruce, a full-blooded Indian, came under fire from the Nixon administration for remaining in the BIA building during the takeover. AIM leaders respect Bruce, but they think Crow is an Interior Department bureaucrat appointed to "watch" Bruce.

AIM demanded that Rogers C.B. Morton, Secretary of the Interior, return full control of the BIA to Bruce. Morton responded by relieving Bruce of his post as Indian Commissioner. AIM considers Morton's action a direct slap in the face.

After Washington, AIM shifted from a political setting to a symbolical one. On February 27, the militant group seized Wounded Knee. During the long takeover, the Interior Department had little input into the situation. Interior spokesmen refused to take part in the negotiations unless the Indians put aside their guns.

In Interior's absence, the Justice Department assumed the bulk of the negotiating work, in addition to its efforts to maintain peace through the use of Federal marshals.

Kent Frizzell, an assistant attorney general, negotiated the pact to set up Washington talks. Although no one can predict with any certainly the consequences of the events at Wounded Knee, a shakeup at Interior and the BIA seems inevitable.