Bellecourt leaves behind dual legacy

By Kevin Abourezk

To some, Vernon Bellecourt was a champion for Native rights, an Indian leader in the classic sense. A man who stood up for his people, even when others saw no hope in the battle.

To others, he was a villain. A miscreant whose misdeeds never caught up to him and who cared more about the spotlight than true philanthropy.

I never knew Vernon Bellecourt, not personally anyway.

Like so many of the American Indian Movement leaders - Russell Means and Dennis Banks - I grew up hearing of his exploits. They were household names in the Jumping Bull home in Oglala, S.D.

They were folk heros to all young Lakota boys.

My grandmother knew Bellecourt.

Back when traditional and more progressive members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe went to war in the 1970s, Roslyn Jumping Bull and other tribal members called upon AIM for help.

Bellecourt came.

Like Wyatt Earp come to Tombstone, he and the rest of AIM brought hell's fury with them.

In their trail, they left smoldering ruins in Wounded Knee, two dead FBI agents and lingering hatred among the Oglala Sioux that remains to this day.

They also left pride.

My grandmother tells of young Native men - who long had worn their hair close-cropped after learning in the government boarding schools to fear any display of culture - starting to grow their hair long again for the first time in many years.

Ask others about the legacy Bellecourt leaves behind and the responses clash like the thunderous exchange of gunfire at Wounded Knee in 1973.

Robert Warrior, author of "Like a Hurricane: American Indian Activism From Alcatraz to Wounded Knee," understands AIM's and Bellecourt's dual legacy.

From the fight to secure religious rights for Native people to the murder of AIM activist Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash, AIM spread hope and pride as well as fear among Native people, Warrior said.

Bellecourt shares in that divided history.

That said, he went on forge his own history after AIM's founders split. His efforts to fight the use of Indian mascots became a rallying cry for many Native and non-Native people, Warrior said.

"A lot of people in the Indian world have never thought the mascot campaign would be as successful as it has been," he said. "I think he saw something there that other people didn't."

Russell Means saw a darker side of Bellecourt.

Means and Bellecourt differed to such an extent that Bellecourt and his brother, Clyde, eventually founded a new chapter of AIM, which they called the Grand Governing Council of the American Indian Movement.

The grandiose name of the off-shoot organization only proved Bellecourt's attitude of superiority over his fellow Indian, Means said.

In 2001, Means accused the Bellecourts of ordering the murder of Pictou-Aquash, a Mi'kmaq from Canada who was shot in the head and killed in December 1975 on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The brothers long denied the accusations.

Then, in February 2004, the controversy over who killed Pictou-Aquash took a new turn when Arlo Looking Cloud was convicted of killing her and was sentenced to life in prison.

From his home on the Pine Ridge Reservation this week, Means said he was sad to hear of Bellecourt's death on Saturday, though not for the reasons some may think.

"I wanted him to live long enough to be indicted and go to jail for Anna Mae's death," he said.

My grandmother remembers Bellecourt differently. She remembers a man who returned to Oglala nearly each year on the anniversary of the 1975 shootout on her parent's land that left two FBI agents dead and AIM activist Leonard Peltier imprisoned for life.

A kind man who would call her anytime he heard of unrest brewing on the troubled Pine Ridge Reservation, and offer a hand.

"He was ready to come in and help if we needed him," she said. "He was always there for his people."

Kevin Abourezk, Oglala Lakota, is a reporter and editor at the Lincoln (Neb.) Journal Star. He is a reznet assignment editor and teaches reporting at the Freedom Forum's American Indian Journalism Institute.