The American Indian Movement (AIM) is a Native American grassroots movement which was founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota in July 1968, initially centered in urban areas in order to address systemic issues of poverty, discrimination, and police brutality against Native Americans. AIM soon widened its focus from urban issues to many Indigenous Tribal issues that Native American groups have faced due to settler colonialism in the Americas. These issues have included treaty rights, high rates of unemployment, Native American education, cultural continuity, and the preservation of Indigenous cultures.

AIM was organized by Native American men who had been serving time together in prison. They had been alienated from their traditional backgrounds as a result of the United States' Public Law 959 Indian Relocation Act of 1956, which supported thousands of Native Americans who wanted to move from reservations to cities, in an attempt to enable them to have more economic opportunities for work. In addition, Public Law 280, otherwise known as the Indian Termination Act, proposed to terminate the federal government's relations with several tribes which were determined to be far along the path of assimilation. These policies were enacted by the United States Congress under congressional plenary power. As a result, nearly seventy percent of American Indians left their communal homelands on reservations and relocated to urban centers, many in hopes of finding economic sustainability. While many Urban Indians struggled with displacement and such radically different settings, some also began to organize in pan-Indian groups in urban centers. They were described as transnationals. The American Indian Movement formed in such urbanized contexts, at a time of increasing Indian activism.

From November 1969 to June 1971, AIM participated in the occupation of the abandoned federal penitentiary on Alcatraz Island organized by seven Indian movements, including the Indians of All Tribes and Richard Oakes, a Mohawk activist.^[4] In October 1972, AIM and other Indian groups gathered members from across the United States for a protest in Washington, D.C., known as the Trail of Broken Treaties. According to public documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), advanced coordination occurred between federal Bureau of Indian Affairs staff and the authors of a twenty-point proposal drafted with the help of the AIM for delivery to the United States government officials focused on proposals intended to enhance US–Indian relations.

In the decades since AIM's founding, the group has led protests advocating indigenous American interests, inspired cultural renewal, monitored police activities, and coordinated employment programs in cities and in rural reservation communities across the United States. They have also allied with indigenous interests outside the United States.