23 Facts About Clyde Bellecourt

Clyde Howard Bellecourt was a Native American civil rights organizer.

Clyde Bellecourt founded the American Indian Movement in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1968 with Dennis Banks, Eddie Benton-Banai, and George Mitchell.

Clyde Bellecourt founded successful "survival schools" in the Twin Cities to help Native American children learn their traditional cultures.

Clyde Bellecourt was the seventh of twelve children born to his parents, Charles and Angeline, on the White Earth Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota.

Clyde Bellecourt's parents told him to think about his education and do as well as he could.

Young Clyde 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.

Clyde Bellecourt was convicted and sentenced to the adult correctional facility at St Cloud for a succession of offenses, including burglary and robbery.

At the age of 25, Clyde Bellecourt was transferred to Stillwater Prison in the eponymous city of Minnesota, where he served out the remainder of his sentence.

Clyde Bellecourt helped found AIM during a Minneapolis meeting in July 1968 with Banks and George Mitchell of the Leech Lake Reservation.

In 1971, Clyde Bellecourt visited the Chicago Indian Village, an inter-tribal group protesting to raise awareness of and solutions for poor housing conditions for Native Americans in Chicago.

Clyde Bellecourt was steadfastly opposed to violence and did not carry a weapon at Wounded Knee.

Later Clyde Bellecourt wrote in his autobiography that he believed Camp was working with the FBI, an opinion shared with others; however Camp's name was since cleared in this respect.

Clyde Bellecourt defended AIM actions at the BIA and Wounded Knee.

In 1977, Clyde Bellecourt traveled to the United Nations where he testified on US mistreatment of Native Americans.

In December 1985, Clyde 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.

Clyde Bellecourt was arrested, along with a group of Indian and non-Indian associates, in possession of an estimated $125,000 worth of LSD and other "hard" drugs.

Clyde Bellecourt confessed, entering a guilty plea to lesser felonies.

Clyde Bellecourt had become addicted to drugs before his arrest; he later said that the conviction and imprisonment helped him break the addiction.

Clyde Bellecourt founded the Heart of the Earth Survival School in 1972, which was approved for 501 status in 1974.

Clyde Bellecourt coordinated the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and the Media, which has long protested sports teams use of Native American mascots and names, urging them to end such practices; the Washington Redskins finally dropped their mascot in 2020 in response to years of protests.

In 2016, Clyde Bellecourt participated in resistance to an underground oil pipeline at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.

Clyde Bellecourt died of cancer on January 11,2022, at the age of 85.

At the time of his death, Clyde Bellecourt was the last surviving co-founder of the American Indian Movement.