The thing is Tom, I don't believe you. I think that you are exaggerating, and that any contact you had with these AIM figured you invoke was slight and surface level, probably as part of a group. You having been in a sweat lodge doesn't change the fact that the only things you claim to have done are vague e support, at best. You claim to be an original 60's rabble rouser, but what you are is a pathetic social reject who, based on your timeline, turned towards the new age movement in his 30s to cover up his total failure at life. I never really thought it through, but even your hippiness is obviously a cosplay, since you have to have started in the 80s, by which point your rainbow, tye-dye aesthetic was literally a joke.
Did you participate in the 2nd Longest Walk? Did you go to Standing Rock? Did you send donations or anything? Or is it just that as a new age native imitator, you eventually fell into the orbit of real Indigenous people, and use the contact and the fact that they didn't instantly turn you away as proof that you somehow are one of the good ones, and that your life hasn't been a waste. Did you ever tell Crow Dog about the time you raped a 15 year old? Maybe he wouldn't have done a ceremony for you, had he known.
And there is plenty of disagreement and ideological difference within the branches of AIM, and the other organizations representing native issues in North America. You don't get to make blanket statements about who is following the correct politics, particularly when your personal vision is so warped and off from what even your supposed Native allies would believe.
E: Also, I'm trying really hard not to sperg with the politics. But I just can't let it go.
The Red Road is another fucking New Age term that was coined by a non-native hippie to communicate the teachings he supposedly "received" from Black Elk, a famous Lakota medicine man. It is basically exclusively used by people like Tom, and the handful of native activists who also buy into the New Age bullshit. It is, at best, a set of severely distorted ideas from Lakota spirituality, and in no way representative of the spiritual traditions of other peoples, especially outside of the Sioux peoples.
Once again, Tom shows his ignorance.