[3] He founded the American Indian Movement (AIM) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1968 with Dennis Banks, Eddie Benton-Banai, and George Mitchell.
Bellecourt founded successful "survival schools" in the Twin Cities to help Native American children learn their traditional cultures.
[4] Clyde Bellecourt was the seventh of twelve children born to his parents, Charles and Angeline, on the White Earth Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota.
[6] Young Bellecourt snared rabbits, and harvested wild rice and sugar beets until he was 11 when he was arrested for truancy and delinquency, and sent away to the Red Wing State Training School.
[11] After working together in prison, they decided to create a similar program in Minneapolis, to aid urban Indians through exposure to their history, traditional culture, and spirituality.
[6] Bellecourt helped found AIM during a Minneapolis meeting in July 1968 with Banks and George Mitchell of the Leech Lake Reservation.
[9] They began to monitor arrests of American Indians made by the local police department to ensure their civil rights were observed and they were treated with dignity and respect.
[17] In August 1972, tribal chairman Robert Burnette of the Rosebud Reservation proposed a peaceful march on Washington, D.C., which became known as the Trail of Broken Treaties.
[15] The group supported establishing a Federal Indian Commission as part of the executive branch and the abolition of the BIA, among their list of demands.
Organizers originally planned a peaceful tour of Washington landmarks and meeting with leading government officials to present their "20 points," as a list of their grievances and demands.
[citation needed] They allegedly caused extensive damage to treaty files and other records of the history between the federal government and the tribes.
They were also protesting the failed impeachment of the elected tribal chairman, Richard Wilson, who was opposed by many on the reservation, and poor living conditions.
[4] Eventually, he, Russell Means, and Carter Camp held a meeting with a representative for U.S. President Nixon,[25] when they negotiated an audit of Wilson's finances and an investigation of his private militia, the Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOONs).
[25] After being released on bond, Bellecourt went on a fundraising tour across the United States, trying to raise money for the activists still occupying Wounded Knee.
He claimed that "the seminar represents the beginning of an educational effort by AIM and a turning point for the organization, which hopes to avoid violent confrontations in the future."
Throughout the rest of his speaking tour about Wounded Knee and the BIA takeover, Bellecourt would maintain that Christianity, the Office of Education, and the Federal government were enemies to Indians.
[7] In December 1985, Bellecourt met with an undercover agent in a laundry room at Little Earth of United Tribes, a south Minneapolis housing development, and sold her LSD.
Bellecourt was arrested, along with a group of Indian and non-Indian associates, in possession of an estimated $125,000 worth (5000 "hits") of LSD and other "hard" drugs (cocaine).
It continued to offer a wide variety of independent cultural programs, awarded scholarships to Indian students, and developed indigenous language research.
[29] In 1993, Bellecourt and others led protests against police brutality in Minneapolis when two intoxicated Native men were driven to the hospital in the trunk of a squad car.
[36] Minnesota Governor Tim Walz stated, "Clyde Bellecourt sparked a movement in Minneapolis that spread worldwide.
Governor Peggy Flanagan, Neegawnwaywidung was a "civil rights leader who fought for more than a half-century on behalf of Indigenous people in Minnesota and around the world.