Holy Road

By: Steve Karnowski - Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Vernon Bellecourt, who fought against the use of Indian nicknames for sports teams as a longtime leader of the American Indian Movement, died at age 75.

Bellecourt passed away Oct. 13 at Abbott Northwestern Hospital of complications from pneumonia, said his brother, Clyde Bellecourt, a founding member of the American Indian rights group.

Just before he was put on a respirator, Vernon joked that the CIA had finally gotten him, his brother said.

''He was willing to put his butt on the line to draw attention to racism in sports,'' his brother said.

Vernon - whose Objibwe name, WaBun-Inini, means ''Man of Dawn'' - was a member of Minnesota's White Earth band and was an international spokesman for the AIM Grand Governing Council based in Minneapolis.

Clyde helped found AIM as a militant group in 1968 and Vernon soon became involved, taking part in the 1973 occupation of the town of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. He was present only briefly during the 71-day standoff with federal agents, serving mostly as a spokesman and fund raiser, Clyde said.

Vernon was active in the campaign to free AIM activist Leonard Peltier, who was convicted of killing two FBI agents during a shootout in 1975 on the Pine Ridge reservation.

He was also involved as a negotiator in AIM's 1972 occupation of the BIA headquarters in Washington as part of the Trail of Broken Treaties caravan.