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The Center for Southwest Research, a division of the University of New Mexico General Library is pleased to announce the opening of two American Indian Movement collections, the Kay Cole Papers and the Robert E. Robideau Papers.

Kay Cole was the founder of the Dennis Banks Defense Committee, an organization that worked to gather support for and educate people about Dennis Banks, American Indian activist and co-founder of the American Indian Movement (AIM).

The collection contains 8 cubic feet of material, including the files, correspondence, and records of the Dennis Banks Defense Committee. Documentation of Banks' personal, professional, and legal activities includes a gamut of materials associated with Wounded Knee, Banks' extradition from California, his stint in prison, the Sacred Runs, Deganawidah Quetzacoatl University, and the First American Indian International Tribunal. The collection also contains a wealth of information about American Indian issues such as the struggle for land rights, religious and spiritual freedom, criminal justice, and against discrimination.

Robert E. Robideau is a prominent American Indian Movement (AIM) activist. In 1975 he was accused, along with Darell Butler and his cousin, Leonard Peltier, of killing two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents at Oglala. In 1976 Robideau and Butler were acquitted; Peltier was convicted. Since his acquittal, Robert Robideau has worked to free Leonard Peltier. He has served twice as the director of the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee and continues to lecture to groups of people around the world about Peltier's plight.

The collection contains twenty-nine cubic feet of American Indian Movement material, including reports, court documents, Freedom of Information Act releases, FBI files on AIM and Leonard Peltier, newspaper clippings, correspondence, flyers, handwritten notes, publications, and research pertaining to Robideau's life-long work as an AIM activist. Also contained in this collection are the only known recorded audio-cassette tapes of the Cedar Rapids Robideau/Butler murder trial of 1976.