The Historic and Cultural Legacies of Bystander Public Opinion of the American Indian Movement, 1973-2014

• In Event: 463 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 16. Race, Ethnicity, and Resistance

Abstract

This paper investigates the conditions under which militant social movements are able to generate public sympathy through an analysis of American attitudes toward, and memory of, the American Indian Movement (AIM). The study proposes a contextually-embedded theory of bystander public opinion, by connecting the latter’s origins and subsequent trajectory to the historical and cultural legacies that shape the social contexts through which social movement activism is filtered. Empirical investigation into how varying sociocultural contexts structured interpretations and evaluations of AIM, both during the apex of its 1970s activism and in the public’s memory in 2014, is guided by a unique longitudinal research design that collects and analyzes attitudinal data on AIM and American Indians from the same individuals across an approximately forty-year time period.

Author

• David W. Everson, University of Notre Dame