Steve Russell: Indian Country can't win in shooting war with US

Whatever you think of the accomplishments of the American Indian Movement, Indian-on-Indian violence is a lasting stain on the organization. It was not good for health or longevity to be “bad-jacketed,” talked about as a “snitch.”

In the end, AIM’s penchant for brandishing and sometimes using firearms made it a target of FBI infiltration for the twin purposes of gathering intelligence and sowing paranoia. Instead of taking over tribal governments or building lasting institutions outside of tribal governments, AIM devolved into a criminal defense committee.

I must acknowledge that the Wounded Knee Legal Defense-Offense Committee, known in our circles as WKLDOC, pronounced “Wickledoc,” was uncommonly successful. The general criminal conviction rate in the federal circuit where the hundreds of Wounded Knee II cases were tried was 78.2 percent. The conviction rate of AIM and their allies was 7.7 percent, which reflected not only skilled lawyering but also prosecutorial overreaching. The government set out not just to enforce the law, but also to crush AIM.

While I disagreed with AIM’s tactics and priorities, AIM had to be defended from the government’s abuse of power. The civil rights law firm where I worked sent two lawyers to WKLDOC, who wound up doing state court cases, of which there were many, because the local authorities were out to get AIM as much as the feds were. Since I was a baby lawyer at the time, I got stuck handling the paying cases of the two lawyers we sent, leading one of my detractors to observe, “the biggest risk Russell took at the Knee was a paper cut.”