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"Ich bin ein Berliner" ("I am a Berliner") is a quotation from a June 26, 1963 speech by U.S. President John F. Kennedy in West Berlin. He was underlining the support of the United States for democratic West Germany shortly after the Soviet-supported Communist state of East Germany erected the Berlin Wall as a barrier to prevent movement between East and West.

The speech is considered one of Kennedy's best, and a notable moment of the Cold War. It was a great morale boost for West Berliners, who lived in an enclave deep inside East Germany and feared a possible East German occupation. Speaking from the balcony of Rathaus Schneberg, Kennedy said,

Kennedy came up with the phrase at the last moment, as well as the idea to say it in German. Kennedy asked his interpreter Robert H. Lochner to translate "I am a Berliner" only as they walked up the stairs at the Rathaus (City Hall). With Lochner's help, Kennedy practiced the phrase in the office of then-Mayor Willy Brandt, and in his own hand made a cue card with phonetic spelling.(The cue card) According to Lochner, Kennedy's National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy felt the speech had gone "a little too far", and the two revised the text for a softer stance before repeating the speech at the Free University later that day.

This message of defiance was aimed as much at the Soviets as it was at Berliners, and was a clear statement of U.S. policy in the wake of the construction of the Berlin Wall. However, Kennedy was criticized for making a speech that acknowledged Berlin's status quo as reality. The official status of Berlin at the time was that it was under joint occupation by the four Allied powers, each with primary responsibility for a certain zone. Up to this point the U.S. had asserted that this was its status, even though the actual situation was far different. Kennedy's speech marked the first instance where the U.S. acknowledged that East Berlin was part of the Soviet bloc along with the rest of East Germany.

There are commemorative sites to Kennedy in Berlin, such as the John F. Kennedy German-American School Berlin and the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies of the Free University of Berlin. Also, the public square in front of the Rathaus Schneberg (where Kennedy made the famous speech) has been named "John-F.-Kennedy-Platz" and there is a small plaque dedicated to Kennedy near the entrance of the building.

In 1973, AIM activists barricaded themselves in the hamlet of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. They were alleged to have taken eleven hostages, which led to a seventy-one-day standoff with federal agents. In the ensuing trials most accused AIM members were acquitted.

The 1973 stand-off centered around AIM's allegations of federal and tribal police brutality on the Pine Ridge Reservation and allegations of brutality by a tribal group affiliated with the tribe's government Guardians Of the Oglala Nation (GOONS).

On June 26, 1975, a gun battle between AIM members and FBI agents resulted in the shooting deaths of Joseph Stuntz and two FBI agents, Jack Coler and Ronald Williams. Leonard Peltier was eventually convicted of the agents' deaths. Many AIM activists claim that the AIM members who shot at the FBI agents were engaged in self-defense, and thus the killing was not a murder. Indeed, two of Peltier's co-defendants in the murder case were acquitted on grounds of self-defense in a separate trial. Peltier's critics, on the other hand, point out that both of the agents were shot and killed at close range after being wounded, one of them with his hands up. This killing and the subsequent conviction of Peltier have been major bones of contention between activists and FBI agents.

US Court of Appeals Judge Gerald Heaney concluded that "Native Americans" were partially culpable for the 1975 firefight in which Stuntz, Coler and Williams died, but that the federal government had "overreacted" during and after the 1973 Wounded Knee stand-off. Heaney said that overreaction created a climate of terror that led to the fatal shoot-out.

As of 2007, the Sioux nations have yet to accept a settlement they were offered in compensation for the Black Hills. Since 1973, several AIM-affiliated groups have set up camp at the Black Hills to resist what they see as an arbitrary settlement.

AIM maintained that Wounded Knee residents had invited their assistance in 1973 to defend their homes against official and vigilante attacks, but that the FBI then surrounded them, effectively holding the AIM members hostage. Many Wounded Knee residents dispute this, and say that the AIM occupation led to the destruction of their community and homes. Several trials of AIM members resulted from the confrontation, which resulted in some court-room brawls with U.S. Marshals, but few AIM members were convicted for their roles in the standoff.

Attorney Larry Levanthal, who served as counsel for AIM said, "The courts found that there was illegal use of the military, illegal wiretapping, false testimony, bribing of witnesses, covering up of crimes, subornation of perjury, deception of the counsel and deception of the courts."

AIM has been the subject of much controversy, some of it centering around the 1977 trial of Leonard Peltier, the AIM member convicted of the 1975 Pine Ridge murders of two FBI agents. Some activists doubt that he was responsible for these killings, and Amnesty International, among dozens of others throughout the world, has called for his release. Other activists say the murders occurred in a war-like environment, and that Peltier's role in the killings should be reviewed in that context.

Another famous AIM member was Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash, for whose 1976 murder two other 1970s AIM affiliates, John Graham and Arlo Looking Cloud, were indicted in 2003. Looking Cloud was eventually convicted. Graham was extradited from Canada to the US in December 2007. His trial is scheduled for June, 2008. In the decades before the indictments, some activists alleged that the FBI played a part or covered up her murder. In his book, American Indian Mafia, Former FBI Agent Joseph H. Trimbach alleges that several of the original activists were themselves involved as co-conspirators. Folk singer Larry Long detailed the anti-FBI allegations in a song titled Anna Mae (re-released on Run For Freedom/Sweet Thunder, Flying Fish, 1997). Singer-songwriter Buffy Saint-Marie wrote Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, referencing both Peltier and Pictou-Aquash. The song was recorded by the Indigo Girls for the 1200 Curfews album.