HURRICANE REVIEW:

Like a Hurricane Cuts Through Haze, Chronicles American Indian Movement  by Mark Trahant   Salt Lake City Tribune

When people write about their own community, the pressure is to celebrate, rather than chronicle. Indeed, most of America's history was written for what historian Donald Worster calls "my people.'' A record of what "we'' accomplished, a chronology of "our'' progress. Sometimes we have grown to trust myth more than the truth. But life is not a fable, and eventually we learn more from what really happened than our fanciful memory.   Such recollections now cloud the 1970s and the American Indian Movement. Many recall that era in a romantic haze no less thick than the one generated by Hollywood and its stories about American Indians in the 1870s. This is an era that defines much of Indian Country today. Tens of thousands claim solidarity -- if not actual presence -- with the militant takeover of Alcatraz, the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters or the village of Wounded Knee.   Now Like a Hurricane tells the truth. Authors Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior show how the leadership of the American Indian Movement was, all at once, brilliant, drunken, serious, flippant, traditional, modern, savvy and clueless.   "AIM seemed less a political organization than a force of nature,'' Smith and Warrior write. "It had become a kind of prairie hurricane, wreaking havoc on one place until seemingly defeated and spent, only to inexplicably reappear weeks later somewhere else.''   Like a Hurricane begins in the San Francisco Bay on Nov. 29, 1969, when boatloads of American Indians, many college students, land on Alcatraz -- the Rock -- as a rag-tag occupation force. The occupation focused attention on the appalling conditions facing tribal people. The Rock was a source of pride, and it showed that Indians were alive in the 1970s -- and could still defeat an enemy. But 19 months later, Smith and Warrior   write, "the symbol had become an embarrassment, a tasteless, even lethal joke and an insult to the lofty dreams of the early days.''   The spirit of the students on Alcatraz was captured nationally by the American Indian Movement. AIM had been an urban organization in Minneapolis but increasingly took on a national role. ``In 1972,'' Smith and Warrior write, ``the organization was reaching out toward a traditional Indian past, becoming a warrior society of old combined with the attitude and language of third-world rebels of the 1970s.''   But some of the rebellion was unplanned. For example, a civil-rights march to Washington, D.C., turned militant only because the planners had not found a place to stay for the arriving caravans of American Indians. ``What happened was not a political conspiracy but a logistics meltdown,'' Smith and Warrior write. A ramshackle church proved unworkable as a host, and soon protesters moved to the BIA building because, said one, ``we own that son of a bitch.'' A few hours later, hundreds of American Indians occupied the building, and over the next two weeks turned it into the Native American Embassy. The militants also trashed art, documents and the building itself.   The AIM action that captured the most attention was, of course, the siege at Wounded Knee.   It is a complicated story that starts at the reservation headquarters of Pine Ridge: The tribal government was reactionary, and many of its citizens felt alienated. AIM, to them, was an inspiration -- a force of fairness. To the U.S. government, however, the Indian political divisions were confusing and the policy was (and is) to support the elected tribal government. Thus, when machine guns were placed in front of tribal buildings, the government did not understand that it was taking a side in the dispute.   The government made other mistakes, too, including the illegal use of the military. The U.S. Marshals called the Pentagon and Gen. Alexander Haig who, the book documents, authorized the use of equipment and personnel.   "The military played a central role in determining government strategy, concealing its presence with the simple yet brilliantly effective strategy of insisting that the colonels and generals sent to Pine Ridge wear civilian clothes at all times,'' according to the book. One BIA official wrote in his diary about one Col. Potter. ``Deputy chief of staff of the Sixth Army. He is completely informal, sometimes looks like a duck hunter on vacation from hunting ducks. He has his desk clean all the time and never seems to be doing anything at all.'' Smith and Warrior cite military reports and memoranda that describe Operation "Garden Plot.''   AIM occupied Wounded Knee for 71 days that captured the world's attention. Smith and Warrior chart the ups and downs, the negotiations and the communication breakdowns. But Wounded Knee, say Smith and Warrior, "marked the high tide of the most remarkable period of activism carried out by Indians in the twentieth century.''   "Wounded Knee proved to be the final performance of AIM's daring brand of political theater. As quickly as Indian radicalism had exploded on the national stage, it faded, disintegrating under the weight of its own internal contradictions and divisions, and a relentless legal assault by federal and state governments.''   But if the movement failed, it also succeeded in capturing the myth of the 20th-century American Indian warrior. The movement made Indian leaders visible and relevant.   One twisted measure of this success is how the movement became a Hollywood icon. Movies such as "Thunderheart'' celebrate the notion of Indian radicalism. Even the star of the movement, Russell Means, has become a major actor and unlikely defender of Disney's "Pocahontas'' cartoon.   Finally, Like a Hurricane must have been a difficult book to write. The authors are from Indian country -- Smith is Comanche and Warrior an Osage -- and it would have been far easier to join the celebration. "The decision to write a book where not everything is red or white means some of what follows reflects negatively on the Indian struggle,'' authors Smith and Warrior write in the preface. "Indeed, much of Hurricane is a continual education in the missteps and errors of the movement, which like all others, often fell short of its goals. At the same time, it is also true that this undertaking has only increased our admiration for the imagination and daring displayed by so many courageous Indian people.''   But it is the criticism, along with the praise, that makes Hurricane an important book because it shows how the leaders of AIM were sometimes great, sometimes lucky, and unflinchingly human.   Mark Trahant, a member of the Shoshone-Bannock tribe, is editor and publisher of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

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