Leslie Hunter Whitten Papers, Bureau of Indian Affairs

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For reasons of confidentiality, privacy, or security, not all government records are made available to the public. What government information could be made available and how it could be officially requested was codified in the 1966 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which has been amended and updated, accounting for personal privacy and electronic information. Despite this new level of transparency, the American Indian Movement (AIM) activist group staged an occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1972. This protest resulted in the removal of records that documented government mismanagement of resources belonging to various Native American tribes in violation of treaties. Soon after the occupation, journalist and Lehigh alumnus Leslie Whitten was arrested in possession of boxes of documents stolen from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Whitten claimed he was helping to return the documents to the government and legal charges were never filed against him. Whitten donated his papers to the Libraries Special Collections, including these documents relating to the Bureau of Indian Affairs protests.

Leslie Hunter Whitten Papers, Bureau of Indian Affairs. SC MS 0007.68

Lehigh University Archival Record: https://archivesspace.lib.lehigh.edu/repositories/3/resources/348

▶Preservation of Government Information
▷Leslie Hunter Whitten Papers, Bureau of Indian Affairs