Clyde Bellecourt

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Clyde Howard Bellecourt (born May 8, 1936) is a Native American civil rights organizer noted for co-founding the American Indian Movement (AIM) in 1968 with Dennis Banks, Herb Powless, and Eddie Benton Banai, among others. His older brother Vernon Bellecourt has also been active. Clyde was the seventh of 12 children born to his parents (Charles and Angeline) on the White Earth Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota.

His Ojibwe name is Nee-gon-we-way-we-dun which means "Thunder Before the Storm."

1 Biography
2 Past activism
3 Current involvement
4 References

[edit] Biography

Starting in grade school, Bellecourt was openly defiant, questioning the value of paying daily homage to George Washington ("Boy George," as he now calls him). "Here's this man, wearing high-heeled shoes and little silk stockings, with a ruffled shirt and a blond wig and rouge on his cheeks," Bellecourt says. "They would tell us he's the father of the country. Well, he didn't look like my father or my grandfather."

At age nine Bellecourt was sent to a Benedictine mission school on the reservation. His truency, in response to the strict discipline, precipitated his being sent to a military-style reformatory in Red Wing where he spent three years.

White Earth was the largest and poorest of northern Minnesota's Ojibwe bands and when Bellecourt was 16 his family moved to the Twin Cities. Bellecourt tried his hand as a professional boxer (compiling a 2-1 record as a light heavyweight), but had continuing trouble with the law. Over the years that followed, Clyde was arrested for a succession of offenses, including burglary and robbery, that ultimately landed him in prison in Stillwater.

In prison, Bellecourt learned about Indian history from a fellow inmate, in particular, the broken treaties and stolen land. He also began to explore native spirituality in pipe and sweat lodge ceremonies. "People always say that the American Indian Movement started in 1968," Bellecourt says. "But to me it started in the hole at Stillwater in '62."

In 1986, Bellecourt pleaded guilty to selling LSD to undercover agents for which he served 22 months in federal prison in Sandstone, Minnesota. Bellecourt speaks candidly of his drug and alcohol addictions in the mid-1980s but claims entrapment for the arrest.

[edit] Past activism

Bellecourt and the flegling AIM occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs Building in Washington, D.C. He participated in the 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973. And in December of 1974, he was the first American Indian to address the World Council of Church's at Montreux in Switzerland.

[edit] Current involvement

As well as being active in AIM, Bellecourt directs the Elaine M. Stately Peacemaker Center for Indian youth and the AIM Patrol which provides security for the Minneapolis Indian community. He is an organizer of the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and the Media and is founder and currently Chairman of the Board of American Indian OIC (Opportunities Industrialization Center) (a job program to help Native Americans get full-time jobs).

Bellecourt also is credited with the creation of Heart of the Earth Survival School, the Native American Community Clinic and the Women of Nations Eagle Nest Shelter.