Founded in 1923, the American Indian Defense Association (AIDA) was an organization of middle- and upper-class white people dedicated to Indian rights. The social worker John Collier served as the AIDA's executive secretary from 1923 and 1933, when Franklin Roosevelt appointed him Commissioner of Indian Affairs Under Collier's leadership the AIDA was praised for its advocacy of native interests and decried by in critics as a group of hopelessly romantic "do-gooders." Collier, the principal organizer of the group, created the AIDA because of a need to consolidate the plethora of Indian interest groups that had arisen in the 1920s to defend various Indian groups, most prominently the Pueblo people, who opposed legislation that promised strong public-relations skills, many white progressives joined the AIDA. By 1932 the organization reported a membership of seventeen hundred.
———During the 1920s, the AIDA maintained an office in Washington, D.C., where Collier had a team of professionals lobbied Congress to address problems associated with Indian poverty, to grant Indians greater cultural and religious freedom, and to recognize tribal organizations as legitimate actors in policymaking. Beginning in 1925, the AIDA issued American Indian Life, a periodic newsletter that was frequently critical of federal actions. Following Collier's appointment to the Indian Office, the association found it difficult to criticize the government. In 1936 it merged with the National Association of Indian Affairs to form the Association of American Indian Affairs, an advocacy group still in existence.

UNKNOWN
unknown