"It's the end of the month, and your rent is due America"

Clyde Bellecourt in early years

             

 "Look at our flag and our logo, 

that's us,we have the red berets 

and that's our colors

that represent humankind.

That we'd be the ones to pull

all those groups together and

 we'd change the course of history."

                                                     

“It’s the end of the month, and your rent is due America”

The long journey begins…

“I am Clyde Bellecourt. I was born on White North reservation in Northern Minnesota, May 8^th, 1936. I am 79 years old. In the early mid-thirties it was pretty tough up there, ya know? You know we, we, we lived…didn’t know anything about property until I moved to Minneapolis. We always found a way to make it, a lot of fishing, a lot of hunting, we had our own gardens. There was no employmenter, only 2 schools one was a public school and another one was St. Benedict's mission ran by the catholic church a order of St. Benedict, they called it real strict. And if you didn’t make it into public school or had problems in a public school, they always threat you saying they send you to the mission and I was sent to it when I was a young boy. On Monday they’d line you up in front of the black boards if you didn’t go to church and they’d smack the ruler to your hand. They would turn your hands over and hit you with the ruler on your knuckles and split them wide open, I still carry those scars today, on my hands, on my knuckles so I ran away from that environment and eventually I was put in a state training school, a boarding school in a place called Red Wing, like 45 miles from here, southwest from here or southeast from here, toward Winona that way. I spent a lot of time there, I was there for 3 years and wasn’t allowed to go home. I was only 11 years old when I went there, in fact when they took me there from a county jail up in Becker county, Becker, Minnesota I was actually handcuffed between a guy that was a, we were in the Stillwater state prison 65 years and he had a raped a 12 of his grandchildren, granddaughters, ya know little girls and another guy was sent to St. Cloud state penitentiary for 35 years for armed robbery, robbing a bank…and I was only 11 years old and I was handcuffed between them. That was my introduction to the correctional system.

Clyde Bellecourt meeting with Nelson Mandela

Introduction to My Culture

            I actually, actually spent the first 14 years of my life in a state boarding school and a juvenile detention centers and St. Cloud reformatory and Stillwater state prison. It was in Stillwater state prison in the early 60’s and that I ran into a young man, a young man named Eddy Benton-Banai, he was a spiritual leader and he knew his history. He start telling me and teaching me what Ojibwe was all about, what our tribe was and how beautiful it was at one time before Columbus landed here, a pirate that was 18,000 miles of his course and he landed in this world, landed in some place he called india or indies, that’s where the name Indian comes from and from that point on things changed for my people. There was anywhere from 16 million to 36 million indian people resided in the western hemisphere, in the norther hemisphere and there was over 1500 tribes and at the end of indian wars in the 1890’s a place called “Oona Knee” in South Dakota there was only 240,000 of us left and there was over a thousand tribes that...were totally erased from the face of the earth in the whole western hemisphere and I didn’t know none of that, I learned it all in prison. Actually, I was in solitary confinement and this young man came to visit me and he asked me if I could help him, help you I told him ask a case worker and then asked him for what, he said everyone in this institution is in here for alcohol related crimes, there in here for the lesser crimes but they do more time than the rapist and murders and they never take advantage of their time, never go get higher education, never learn skills in technical trade. I was in solitary confinement when all this was going on. And they asked if I would come help out there an that, help put that together. I said, "why are you asking me…I don’t know anything, I know I’m indian, anyone says anything bad about Indians, they're gonna end up in a fight, but I don’t know who, I don’t know what I’m fighting for, I don’t know nothin about bein indian, they never taught us anything in the public and parochial school system." So I um they told me that’s what the what they wanted to do and me help them. The same people in prison here have been in all these institution with you, you always had the best baseball team, you always had the best basket, best football, best athlete, you excelled in all sports and you the guy that organized it all, you know all these inmates and we need ya to come out and help us out that together.

American Indian Movement (AIM)

American Indian Movement protesting

AIM's march to freedom

We were so successful at developing an Indian Studies Program in America that started in Stillwater state prison and I was the cofounder of it. All these programs were put together by the American Indian Movement but [pause] we never did anything without the elders consent. Nobody mentions the statistics, the conditions of Indians, so we’ll do it through confrontation politics, they said well what does that mean, well it means ya go down and knock on the mayor of the city of Minneapolis, ya knock on their door. You go knock on the door, they don’t let you in, you knock a little bit louder and if they don’t let you in, you push the damn door down an when you go in there you better, you gotta have it together, you gotta know exactly what you want and you gotta talk about treaty rights cause civil rights and human rights are embedded in our treaties. If they lived up to their treaties wit Indian people we wouldn’t be here knockin' on your door today. You didn’t get this land for nothing, ya know, there was commitments made. It’s like renting a house, you rent a house you agree to pay the owner of that house so much a month right? Well that’s where you are today America, you haven’t paid. So as far as I’m concerned, we are still the land, we are still the landowners of this country and it’s the end of the month and the rent is due and that’s how I carry myself since day one. The American Indian Movement is based on treaty rights cause human rights and civil rights are embedded in every one of our treaties. Our treaty said this land will be your as long as the grass grow green, rivers flow and the sun shines, that’s the way the treaties were written. And mine, ourgrandfathers set aside this land and that the wild life, the gold and everythin in that land belonged to us and nobody, nobody can just come along and, and take it and they guaranteed our children. Everywhere I go I remind em that they are in violation, in violation of our treaties and it’s the end of the month and the rent is due. We marched across America in 1972 all the way from San Francisco to Washington D.C. on the trail of broken treaties, and we, we tried to get the President of the United State to set up a, to set up a treaty commission so we negotiate our treaties so we can remind em what they have done to us and they haven’t paid us what they owe us, it’s the end of the month, again, and the rent is due. They ended up doing that they put American Indian on the ten most wanted list, it became the number one threat to the security and stability of the United States government. They targeted the American movement so 3 months later where’d we end up..in South Dakota, for the first time in history, not only the FBI, but 1500 branches of marshals and military surround us without out presidential or congressional approval [pause] you can’t do that anywhere in the world. We stood up to em, we went to trial right here in Minneapolis. After 9.5 months of trial , one juror, we knew we were going to be acquitted proved the government mis conduct, illegal use of military or illegal use of search and seizure, expose agents and they infiltrated their defense mechanism. And after spending 5 million dollars the federal government wanted the trial to start all over again, and the judge finally lost it, he was very racist judge against us, but he lost it and said it wasn’t the Indian people that were guilty here, it’s the united states government, your guilty of governmental misconduct, illegal use of military forces, and illegal search and seizure and the rivers of justice he said in my court room have been flowing for 9.5 months and I refuse it to go any further. He banged his gavel and threw out all the charges. The first Indian organization in history to accomplish that and we spent 30 years in United Nations to get the declaration of rights for Indian People in the whole world, not just here in Minneapolis but the whole world, passed.

The AIM symbol

We had suicidal rates almost 7x greater than the national average, places like the standing rock reservation in South Dakota is 20x the national average. When Indian kids commit suicide they go 4-5 at once…little children, 3-4 years old. They didn’t want to live like this anymore and thats what keeps the movement, that’s what keeps us going. I have honorary membership for life on the board of directors. We want the people to know what we’ve done, and what they must do to make sure it continues during the 5^th generation, that’s me, I’m the 5^th generation, 25 years is a generation…125 years later new people would stand up and they would demand, they would not beg, they would demand what is right for the Indians. Now I am 79 years old, and I tell, you know what I tell my grandaughter? I say that she’s 75 years ahead of me. They got schoalrships from the Clyde Bellcourt scholarship fund to go to college. Ones a teacher and ones a lawyer today. And that the generation that’s comin up they’re becoming lawyers and doctors.They had to give up their homes, schools, land, had to give up everything. Little children crawling under wire fences and stuff, they talked about all that to happen how people would be unsettled and how people would be taken out their own country and shipped all over the world. And now we got people running for president talking about immigration, they’re all immigrants! Every one of those people that are talkin are immigrants. They immigrated here.”

Footnotes:

●      American Indian Movement: aimovement.org

●      Eddy Benton-Banai: One of the original founders of the American Indian Movement. He is a full blood Ojibwe-Anishinabe of the fish clan from Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation in the beautiful northern Wisconsin.
●      Confrontation Politics: a hostile or argumentative meeting or situation between opposing parties.

Story Facilitators:

Carson Brolsma, Muna Ahmed, and Rita Duran