As a youngster, Vernon Bellecourt heard
stories of how the people of his northern
Minnesota White Earth reservation lost
their land to unscrupulous
whites at the turn of the 20th
century and suffered profound poverty
as a result. His life would be
different, he decided.
And it was for a while. He opened a chain of
successful hair salons in
St. Paul, then moved to Denver to sell real
estate. "I was going to
become a millionaire," he told the Star Tribune
in 1999.
But his younger brother, Clyde, who stayed in
Minnesota and became
an activist, changed that. "I'm trying to win back
the land," Clyde told
Vernon, "and you're selling it."
Vernon Bellecourt soon came home for good.
The self-proclaimed "freedom fighter" and longtime
leader of the
American Indian Movement (AIM) died Saturday at
Abbott
Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis of
complications from
pneumonia, said Clyde Bellecourt. He was 75.
Vernon Bellecourt once said that the American
Indian Movement, an
often controversial group that led a series of
high-profile, sometimes
violent protests in the 1970s, was "respected by
many, hated by
some, but ... never ignored." The same might have
been said for him.
He spent most of his life protesting, often
drawing criticism for the
form it took, sometimes from within the Indian
protest movement
itself.
"He was very articulate in expressing the view
that American Indians
have not been adequately recognized and
remembered in history, or
adequately dealt with as political entities in
these United States,"
said Laura Waterman Wittstock, who met Bellecourt
in 1970 when
she was a reporter with the American Indian Press
Association and
he was representing AIM.
Takes cause abroad
While Clyde focused on the home front, Vernon
became a leader of
AIM's work abroad, meeting with controversial
leaders such as
Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, Libya's Moammar
Gadhafi and Palestinian
leader Yasser Arafat. As recently as four weeks
ago, he was in
Venezuela to talk with President Hugo Chavez about
his program for
providing heating assistance to American Indian
tribes.
Most pressing in recent years was his fight
against the use of Indian
mascots and symbols for sports teams, such as the
Washington
Redskins and Cleveland Indians. He was arrested
before Game 5 of
the 1997 World Series for burning Cleveland's
red-faced logo outside
Jacobs Field, and he protested in Atlanta at
Braves playoff games
throughout the 1990s.
"Because of Vernon and other activists, fewer
students in this country
will have to tolerate this problem when they go to
school," said
Brenda Child, associate professor of American
Indian studies at the
University of Minnesota.
"I don't think a lot of people in the Indian
community thought there
would be this kind of success in the mascot
campaign," said Robert
Warrior, author of "Like a Hurricane: American
Indian Activism From
Alcatraz to Wounded Knee" and an English
professor at the
University of Oklahoma in Norman.
While AIM succeeded in raising Americans'
consciousness of Indian
issues, it also participated in a number of
events that featured
violence and internal dissension.
"When you look at AIM actions ... mistakes were
made and there are
numerous criticisms [of their actions] and many
of them are fair,"
Warrior said. "But what you see Vernon and the
other AIM leaders
doing was work that other native organizations
were not doing. ...
They were reaching out and trying to respond to
the needs of people
whose needs were not being met."
Bellecourt grew up on the White Earth reservation.
"Although we all
lived in poverty, we lived a better life than
most people," he told the
Star Tribune in 1999.
He was a disciplined student who learned his
prayers from the
Catholic nuns of St. Benedict's parochial school
in White Earth. But
the lessons in life he learned were not always
pleasant.
"To this day, I can't stand the smell of Lifebuoy
soap, because a racist
teacher shoved a whole bar of it in my mouth," he
recalled.
In Minneapolis, where the family moved when he was
16, Bellecourt
quit school. After a series of odd jobs, he was
convicted of robbing a
bar in St. Paul and sentenced to St. Cloud prison
when he was 19.
Opens beauty salon
There, he learned how to be a barber. When he was
released, he went
to beauty school to become a hairdresser. He
opened Mr. Vernon
beauty salons in Highland Park and on the East
Side of St. Paul.
Married and already the father of three children,
he built a house in
White Bear Lake. "I thought I had really made
it."
In the mid-1960s, Vernon sold his salons and moved
his family to
Colorado, where he styled hair part time and
skied on his days off. He
moved to Denver to sell real estate before
returning to Minneapolis.
Around that time, Clyde responded to Indian
reports of police
brutality by joining Dennis Banks, Harold Good Sky
and George
Mitchell to form AIM in a storefront office on E.
Franklin Avenue.
Vernon's journey down "the Red Road" of Indian
spiritual awareness
led him to an array of causes and confrontations.
In 1972, he was an
AIM spokesman when 400 Indians occupied the U.S.
Bureau of Indian
Affairs headquarters in Washington. In 1973, as
AIM's national
director, he addressed the United Nations in New
York, pleading for
protection of Indian rights.
In January 1973, Bellecourt was one of several AIM
members indicted
after a riot at the courthouse in Custer, S.D.
Charges were dropped.
Later that winter, AIM members occupied the
historic hamlet of
Wounded Knee, S.D., for 71 days. Bellecourt got
the news of the
occupation from a TV broadcast while visiting
Dartmouth College in
New Hampshire. He continued his lecture tour,
reasoning that he
could serve the protest occupation better by
drumming up support
from off the reservation.
In the years that followed, AIM was plagued by
disputes among
leaders with ideological differences, including
the Bellecourts,
Russell Means and Dennis Banks. The disputes did
not, however, dim
Bellecourt's passion for activism on behalf of
his people.
"When the American Indian Movement resurfaced in
Minneapolis in
1968, a wildfire spread throughout other urban and
reservation
areas," he said in 1999. "It was a catalyst for
people to understand
that the roots of our tree of life had almost
withered and died.
"Now, I'm very concerned about the cycles of
alcohol and chemical
dependency that, in many cases, we ourselves have
perpetuated to
our youth. What we pass on to the children will
determine very
critically to our future.
"We've got to stop killing ourselves, and we've
got to speak out
against others, those who take advantage of us."
Gerald Vizenor, who taught Native American Studies
at the University
of Minnesota in the late 1970s and early 1980s,
said Bellecourt
"worked very hard to become a knowledgeable and
sensitive leader
for native people." Vizenor, now professor of
American Studies at the
University of New Mexico, recalled Bellecourt's
recent attempts to
appreciate contemporary American Indian art, by
attending openings
and "trying to talk to artists about what they
were thinking. I was
quite moved by that."
