Well, the Dog Soldier societies definitely pre-existed in tribal culture (although there were no Lakota Dog Soldiers - the Cheyenne, Hidatsa and Arikara had somewhat of a monopoly on the society initially), but AIM has rather, well, stolen the name. Bah.
Oh - went digging around earlier, and it turns out that AIM doesn't want Churchill, either. If you take a look at the following two website links, it'll take you to both pages of a flyer sent out regarding Churchill and his expulsion from AIM and other Indian organizations in the late 80's/early 90's.
http://www.aimovement.org/csi/Churchill/DisrupternotifyChurchill_01.jpg
http://www.aimovement.org/csi/Churchill/DisrupternotifyChurchill_02.jpg
AIM is divided into autonomous chapters. The Denver/Boulder AIM is the Ward Churchill group.
In Minneapolis is the other group.
Personally, both kind of scare me. They fight with each other for power and call their opponents FBI spies.
AIM was originally very left-wing 60s and 70s style.
Some of them were terrorists. Some were ex-cons and drug dealers. The same people still run things as always did.
Both AIMs claim to be "the one true AIM."
Both defend Leonard Peltier, who was convicted of shooting two FBI agents. I think Peltier was a criminal and that he shot those guys. It was his gun.
There is a lot of court testimony at http://www/noparolepeltier.com
There are a lot of nice Indians. There are educated articulate writers, educators, professionals, artists, and ordinary people. In my opinion, Indians have lots of better leaders than Leonard Peltier.
I remember hearing that he was an employee of S.O.F. magazine, and the SDHP... When I saw that years ago, I just figured he was some government schmuck who had infiltrated A.I.M. for some reason...
Either way, the Ward Churchill guy is a scumbag of the highest order...
This is about Ward Churchill's "reign of terror."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1351673/posts
