with the occult edge American audiences seem so hungry for.rnAnd on the other side of the line that divides hidian countryrnfrom what anthropologists call the dominant culture, no organizedrnpropaganda-making force exists to bring those issues beforernthe larger public and, in this instance, to warn Anglo societyrnthat the end is nigh. The reason is simple: the pan-hidianrnnationalist movement, so much a part of the eounterculturalrnnewsmaking machine in the late 1960’s and early to mid-70’s,rnhas disintegrated and very nearly disappeared as a result of externalrnpressures (like the FBI’s COINTELPRO operation) andrnthe internal dissension and the splintering tendency commonrnto dissident movements everywhere.rnAmerican hidian radical-nationalist politics first drew internationalrnattention in the early winter of 1969, when an unknownrnnumber of activists, eertainlv fewer than a hundred, occupiedrnAlcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. The AmericanrnIndian Movement (AIM), an activist organization prciouslyrnconfined to Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, grew tornprominence through that action, bringing fame (or notoriety)rnto Richard Oakes, Russell Means, Dennis Banks, BrowningrnPipestem, and John Trudell, among other leaders. It alsornhelped focus Indian activists on developing what movementrnstrategist Clyde Warrior called “true Indian philosophy gearedrnto modern times.” That promise was ne’er fulfilled, largely becausernAIM’S adherents could never cjuite figure out just whatrnconstituted that true Indian philosophy, apart from a vehementrndislike for the federal government and for the traditional tribalrnleaders in places like Pine Ridge and Wounded Knee who, inrnthe activists’ eyes, had sold out to the conquerors.rnIn their fine book Like a Hurricane, Native American historiansrnPaul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior chart AIM’srnfortunes through the three years culminating in both RichardrnNixon’s reelection and the infamous siege at Wounded Knee,rnwhere armed AIM members and sympathizers held off federalrnagents and soldiers for eight weeks, becoming an internationalrncause in the process. The period between Alcatraz andrnWounded Knee, the authors write, “was for American Indiansrnevery bit as significant as the counterculture was for voungrnwhites, or the civil rights movement for blacks.” Significantrnthough it may ha’e been, it had a far smaller impact on thernlarger world; AIM’s soung, untested leadership was simply unpreparedrnto take their struggle into the arena of reasoned discoursernand away from the cameras.rnSmith and Warrior make their case with admirable balance,rnnoting that the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, usuallv thernheavy in books of this sort, was full of well-meaning and sympatheticrnindividuals, and that AIM had its .share of bad actors,rnincluding people who at Alcatraz busied themselves “bootleggingrnliquor and thrashing residents who criticized the leadershiprnor who asked too many questions about finances.” Still,rnthe authors argue, most of the activists who put themselves onrnthe line at Alcatraz, Wounded Knee, and elsewhere ga’e powerfulrnvoice to the voiceless peoples hitherto tucked away onrnreservations, “the most ignored population in the UnitedrnStates.”rnThe glory days were few and short. As quickly as Indian radicalismrnhad exploded on the national stage, it faded, disintegratingrnunder the weight of its own internal contradictions andrndivisions and from the relentless legal assault by federal andrnstate governments. According to radical Indian scholar WardrnChurchill, this “relentless legal assault invoh’ed the FBI’s filingrn300,000 charges against AIM members, 140 against leader RussellrnMeans alone; the onslaught was unprecedented, and it hasrnnot since been repeated.” Gien the internationally favorablernpublicity accorded them, however, AIM might hae been ablernto withstand the FBI’s campaign—which, subsequent hearingsrnshowed, also involved infiltration bv agents provocateurs andrnharassment, at Pine Ridge, by members of the COONSrn(“Guardians of the Oglala Nation”), who are believed to havernkilled 342 AIM members between 1973 and 1976.rnGiven the absence of any otherrnnational political organizationrnrun bv and for Native Americans,rnmany observers believe that-at leastrnfor the moment-pan-Indianrnnationalism is a dead cause.rnBut AIM broke apart because of its own internal divisions,rnwhich came into sharp relief early on. One instance, as Smithrnand Warrior note, v’as Alcatraz, where competing factionsrnsought to seize leadership of the organization. (Means, now arnsometime actor in Disney movies, was one of the winners inrnthis struggle.) Another was the misguided seizure in 1972 ofrnthe Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington,rnwhich happened accidentally: AIM participants in a civil rightsrnmarch on the Capitol simply had nowhere else to stay, and theyrnoccupied the federal building to escape the weather. In the authors’rnwords, “what happened was not a political conspiraev butrna logistics meltdown,” hardly the stuff of a grand revolution.rnAIM lingers, but it is a shadow of its former self, its energiesrnlargely devoted to a campaign to free former leader LeonardrnPeltier, who is now serving a life sentence in Leavenworth FederalrnPenitentiary for his role in the 1975 murder of two FBIrnagents at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. As FergusrnBordewich, the sympathetic author of Killing the White Man’srnIndian, remarks, the present pan-Indian nationalist movementrnis crippled b “ethnic chauvinism, [an] instinct to confuse isolationrnwith independence, and a chronic habit of interpretingrnpresent-day reality through the warping lens of the past.” Suchrndamning words have made his book highlv unpopular in somerncircles, yet Bordewich is not unsympathetic, and he sees muchrnhope for a revitalized Native America that will someday determinernits own destiny, if only its leadership will attend to endemicrnproblems like gambling, alcoholism, suicide, and povert,rnand address the federal government’s inability to determinernhow Indian nations fit within the United States.rnA politically revitalized Indian America will ver’ likely havernto turn elsewhere than AIM for its leadership; AIM appears tornenjoy little support outside a fey college campuses, and certainlyrnit cannot claim to re]Dresent a majority of constituents onrnNOVEMBER 1997/19rnrnrn