By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
SAN FRANCISCO -- Listen as Bill Means, cofounder of the International Indian Treaty Council, remembers Raymond Yellow Thunder. Speaking during the AIM-West 40-year Reunion on Nov. 28, Mean's memories are followed by the AIM song.
In 1972 Raymond Yellow Thunder, Lakota from Porcupine, S.D., was brutally murdered in the border town of Gordon, Nebraska. When Yellow Thunder's relatives sought justice, they found none.
"They stripped him from the waist down and they took him into the American Legion Hall on Saturday night dance," Means said. "They told him to dance Indian."
Raymond Yellow Thunder's feet were burned with cigarettes. "They beat him to death and they found him two days later in a trunk of a car. Nobody would help him."
"That is the way Indian people used to face justice," Means said, from coast to coast, wherever there were border towns, there was racism.
Gordon, Nebraska was "the Mississippi of the north." The signs read, "No dogs or Indians allowed," when four-thousand people Indian people marched into town.
"We marched and we took over the town, we took that town for four days."
During four days of Red Ribbon Grand Jury hearings, AIM recorded over 200 civil rights violations with the US Justice Department and Civil Rights Commission.
It was a turning point for the American Indian Movement. The days of just carrying signs was over.
"They knew they couldn't kill our people anymore without us coming to challenge them," Means said. He said this AIM song was created in memory of Raymond Yellow Thunder and Indian people in all the border towns.
"Always remember Raymond Yellow Thunder."