The Bureau of Indian Affairs building takeover occurred from November 3 to November 9, 1972. On November 3, a group of around 500 American Indians with the American Indian Movement (AIM) took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) building in Washington, D.C., the culmination of their participation in the Trail of Broken Treaties, intended to bring attention to American Indian issues including living standards and treaty rights. They had arrived at the BIA to negotiate for better housing and other issues; the siege began when a government snafu was interpreted as a doublecross.[1] The incensed protesters then began to vandalize the building in protest. They were not evicted on the first night. After a week, the protesters left, having caused $700,000 in damages.[2] Among the damage caused was lost, destruction, and theft of many records, including treaties, deeds, and water rights records, which some Indian officials said could set them back 50 to 100 years.[3]
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AIM researched, organized and prepared in 1972 after the brief BIA takeover in 1971. Understanding the law was essential to bringing the just claims of Indian tribes and the urban populations forward to policy makers and the courts. Volunteer attorneys and other scholars researched the laws, Executive Orders, and BIA budgeting and practice to inform the AIM agenda of exposing government misdirection and illegal practice. There was one issue for nearly all Indians: land. Land had been stolen and the BIA was the instrument of the theft. Making do on smaller and smaller sovereign nations, tribal chairman held onto their fiefdoms on with controls of association and small electoral bases. Smallness meant greater power but it also meant vulnerability to the federal government’s next termination tactic. There was nearly no one among them who would call the U.S. on its rough handling. Particularly among young Indians, tribal chairman were nearly as incompetent as the BIA because for both it was not who they were precisely, but what they represented as the image of defeat and irresponsibility. Momentum and support grew for AIM. Unlike 1971, the groups were prepared and focused on their target. Sympathetic groups joined the planning:
A new coherent action was prepared and Indians from all over the country swept into groups and converged on the BIA building on November 2, 1972. They stayed there for seven days. Richard M. Nixon celebrated a landslide presidential victory on November 7th as AIM’s twenty points were virtually flung on his desk. It was a sobering wake up, reminding Nixon how unprepared he was to deal with Indian issues across the country and how he had failed in his effort to quell Indian pressures for reforms. Now they were here at his doorstep. The twenty points were clear and potent reminders of the lack of faith set in motion in the early 1950s by Harry Truman’s malevolent BIA Commissioner Dillon Myer. They tell in twenty simple sentences with amazing clarity the story of everything that was wrong with the government’s supposed trust responsibility. Twelve of the 20 points directly or indirectly address treaty responsibility in which the U.S. fell dramatically short.
Meanwhile, as AIM was occupying the BIA building in Washington, D.C., representatives of the Nixon administration were meeting with tribal chairman at the other end of the country in rural Oregon. Using the president’s reelection funds (The Committee to Reelect the President - dubbed CREEP), the new organization was born, and called The National Tribal Chairman’s Association. NTCA was presumably an outgrowth of the National Congress of American Indians, founded in 1944. Nixon promised the support of the federal government for “federally recognized” tribes, which of course did not include all tribes, and it excluded the thousands of Indians Dillon Myer had so carefully removed from their native homelands during his tenure. The hope was to engage Indians in an intercine battle for legitimacy: Who would be a legitimate member of the tribe and who wouldn’t?
NTCA was given comfortable offices within the National Council on Indian Opportunity.” By helping to form NTCA, Nixon intended to divide Indian strength and thus weaken demands on the federal government. Sadly he was correct as one after another tribal chairman in his elite group spoke of excluding “urban Indians” from tribal benefits; these who were once their own tribal members before relocation and migration to cities for economic reasons.
One thing Nixon did not count on was AIM itself and its ability to organize and gather thousands of Indians and other supporters from the U.S. and around the world, bringing them right to the doorstep of the White House. When AIM left the BIA building on November 8 the White House had agreed to discuss all 20 points except amnesty, which was to be addressed separately. An “interagency task force” was created to be co-chaired by representatives of the White House and to include dozens of Indian organizations. In its usual fashion the Nixon administration hoped to drown the effort in large numbers. The occupiers agreed to leave the building with the assurance that the White House would examine: eligibility of Indians for governmental services; adequacy of governmental service delivery; quality, speed, and effectiveness of federal programs; Indian self-government; and, congressional implementation of necessary Indian legislation.
Unlike Truman, Nixon could not avoid the continuing pressure against his administration. In a year on December 22, 1973 Nixon would privately sign the Menominee Restoration Act and return Menominee Indians to full tribal status and return tribal assets to trust status. At that point he was headed for the crushing circumstances that would lead to his resignation on August 9 1974.[4]
