[1] The AIF was an early Native American effort to influence national policies, and attracted harsh criticism for its affiliation with several extremist groups.
[4] The group was officially founded in Gallup, New Mexico, on August 28, 1934, where organizers drafted a preamble, elected Joseph Bruner president, and passed a resolution calling for Collier's removal.
Prominent members included Alice Lee Jemison, a Seneca journalist and activist; Rupert Costo, a Cahuilla leader and editor of the periodicals Wassaja and Indian Historian, Fred Bauer, Vice-Chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Elwood Towner, a Hupa attorney, and J. C. Morgan, a missionary for the Christian Reformed Church.
In its early years, several members of Congress critical of the BIA encouraged the AIF, including Representatives Alfred Beiter, Virginia Jenckes, Usher L. Burdick, John S. McGroarty, and Senator Burton K.
[12] The AIF continued to exist on paper through 1945, but had lost much of its national support: by 1945, only five of its nineteen leaders lived outside of Oklahoma.