Frank LaMere

Frank LaMere
Born	c 1950
Occupation	Activist, politician
Political party	Democratic Party

Frank LaMere (born c. 1950) is a Winnebago Activist from South Sioux City, Nebraska. He was a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) in the 1970s and more recently is noted for his work opposing liquor sales in Whiteclay, Nebraska, a small town whose main industry is selling alcohol to residents of the nearby Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where alcohol sales are prohibited. LaMere is a leader in the Democratic Party, and has served as chairman of the National Native American Caucus and been a delegate to the Democratic National Convention seven consecutive times from 1988 to 2012.

LaMere was born March 1, 1950 and lived in Montana as a young man. Frank's brother, Anthony, died in Vietnam in 1971.

LaMere was a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) in the early 1970s and was active in demands for reform to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In November 1972, LaMere was a spokesman for a group of AIM members who assembled in front of the federal building in Billings, Montana. Armed guards were posted at the building in response to the assembly, which desired to present a list of demands to the area director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs whose office was in the building. In Billings, Lamere was director of the Wiconi Project in 1973 and the Montana United Indian Association in 1974.

LaMere speaks frequently about stereotypes in the media. In 1984, LaMere lost his sister, Michelle LaMere, in a hit-and-run. LaMere used the example of her treatment in the press as an example of the stereotypical treatment of Indians as drunks, rather than an innocent victim in his speeches in the late 1980s.

LaMere was a noted athlete as a young man, and helped found the all-Native "North Americans" fastpitch softball team in 1989. In the 1990s, LaMere organized 10,000 Sioux, Winnebago, and Omaha who lived in the Sioux City, Iowa area to protest against the proposed name for the Sioux City minor league baseball team, the Sioux City Soos, and that name was changed to the Sioux City Explorers.

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