300 Indians Seize Capital Building and Close Bureau
300 Indians Seize Capital Building and Close Bureau
A militant Indian group occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs building Thursday and later announced that government officials had agreed to let them spend the night in the building.
About 300 Indian men, women and children took over the building Thursday evening. Furniture, computers and windows were damaged and offices ransacked.
Clyde Bellecourt, executive director of the American Indian Movement, said the Interior Department would keep the bureau closed today and that employes [sic] would not come to work.
Minutes before Bellecourt's announcement, federal guards who had massed around the downtown Washington building were sent home.
Bellecourt said the police withdrawal was one of the requests made by the Indians at their meeting with officials.
He said that the Indians gave a list of 20 proposed solutions to Indian problems to White House representative Brad Patterson and that "he promised an answer within a few days."
Bellecourt said church and community spokesmen promised to find lodging for the Indians for the rest of the say in Washington. The Indians converged here from throughout the country in a "Trail of Broken Treaties" caravan to protest the treatment of American Indians.
Russell Means, one of AIM's founders, said they had renamed the BIA building the "Native American Embassy of Washington."
"We will leave the BIA (building) in as near original shape as possible," Means said.
He said the Interior Department auditorium, across the street from the BIA building, was proposed for temporary quarters, but that this was not totally satisfactory since the Indians had no showers or kitchens.
Means said he was confident "we won't be prosecuted, we are sovereign people."
The Indians had demanded the resignation of Asst. Secretary of the Interior Harrison Loesch and of John O. Crow, deputy commissioner of Indian affairs. Means said the federal officials' response was that Congress had confirmed Loesch in the position.
Means told a newsman the Indians agreed to leave the BIA building peacefully after alternate housing had been arranged and said he expected this to happen today.
Within an hour of taking over the building the Indians had hung American Flags upside down and broken several windows. They scuffled with General Services Administration armed guards and let go a handful of guards who had been trapped behind the barricades.
One Indian was reported injured, and screams and shouts were heard throughout the building.
At 8 p.m., the demonstrators chose 12 persons to go across the street to confer at the Interior Department.
BIA press officer Carl Shaw said earlier that four persons had barricaded themselves in the information office. "They forced our door. They hurled themselves against it time and again," Shaw said. "We looked up and saw bodies coming through it."
He said the protestors did not threaten them in any way, but told them to leave immediately.