Wounded Knee, 1973.

Study #15

In 1973 members of the American Indian Movement traveled to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to peacefully demonstrate for local Lakota rights. Their tribal chairman, Dick Wilson, was a corrupt conservative leader whom many wanted out along with a complete overhaul of the council. When Wilson learned of a planned AIM protest against his administration at Pine Ridge, he retreated to tribal headquarters to be under the protection of federal marshals and the Bureau of Indian Affairs police. Rather than confront the police in Pine Ridge, some 200 AIM members and their supporters decided to occupy Wounded Knee. Wilson, with the backing of the federal government, responded by besieging them.

Wounded Knee was a poignantly chosen location that served as a reminder of the massacre that took place in December, 1890. Fleeing towards what they perceived as safety, a band of almost 300 Lakota members made a camp looked after by Chief Big Foot. After the U.S. Army surrounded the camp and demanded all weapons to be surrendered, the army inexplicably opened fire and killed all Lakota men, women and children present. This marked an end to the Indian Wars and the 1890 U.S. Census declared the frontier officially closed.

The 1973 demonstration quickly turned combative as local authorities and FBI cut off all electricity, water and food to the occupiers. At one point, an outside sympathizer attempted to make a drop of 2,000 lbs of food to their shelter, but as the protestors rushed out for it the FBI opened fire and killed an AIM member. The siege lasted 71 days, the longest lasting American civil disorder movement in over 200 years.

The American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded in 1968 to stop police harassment of Indians in the Minneapolis area and to challenge the Federal Indian Relocation Program of the 1960s which attempted to assimilate and stamp out native culture. Mimicking tactics from the anti-war student demonstrators of the era, AIM gained national notoriety for its protests. Many mainstream Indian leaders denounced the youth-dominated group as too radical, but they gathered followers and continue to operate to this day.

Guernica to Wounded Knee, 2012 by Stan Natchez

In the three years following the 1973 demonstration, the Pine Ridge Reservation had the highest per capita murders in the nation as warring factions in the community continued to fight the unresolved issues. Even today, the reservation has one of the lowest life expectancies, highest drop-out rates, and lowest per capita incomes. Ways to help here.