Wounded Knee incident

Not to be confused with Wounded Knee Massacre.

Wounded Knee Incident
Date February 27 – May 5, 1973 Location Wounded Knee, South Dakota Result Siege ended Wounded Knee back to government control
Belligerents
American Indian Movement	United States Marshals
Casualties and losses
2 killed	1 killed

The Wounded Knee incident began February 27, 1973 when about 200 Oglala Lakota and followers of the American Indian Movement (AIM) seized and occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The grassroots protest followed the failure of their effort to impeach the elected tribal president Richard Wilson, whom they accused of corruption and abuse of opponents; they also protested the United States government's failure to fulfill treaties with Indian peoples and demanded the reopening of treaty negotiations.

Oglala and AIM activists controlled the town for 71 days while the United States Marshals Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and other law enforcement agencies cordoned off the area. The activists chose the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre for its symbolic value. Both sides were armed and shooting was frequent. An FBI agent was paralyzed from a gunshot wound early during the occupation, and later died from complications; a Cherokee and an Oglala Lakota were killed by shootings in April 1973. Ray Robinson, a civil rights activist who joined the protesters, disappeared during the events and is believed to have been murdered. Due to damage to the houses, the small community was never reoccupied.

The occupation attracted wide media coverage, especially after the press accompanied the two US Senators from South Dakota to Wounded Knee. The events electrified American Indians, who were inspired by the sight of their people standing in defiance of the government which had so often failed them. Many Indian supporters traveled to Wounded Knee to join the protest. At the time there was widespread public sympathy for the goals of the occupation, as Americans were becoming more aware of longstanding issues of injustice related to American Indians. Afterward AIM leaders Dennis Banks and Russell Means were indicted on charges related to the events, but their 1974 case was dismissed by the federal court for prosecutorial misconduct, a decision upheld on appeal.

Wilson stayed in office and in 1974 was re-elected amid charges of intimidation, voter fraud and other abuses. The rate of violence climbed on the reservation as conflict opened between political factions in the following three years; residents accused Wilson's private militia, Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOONs), for much of it. More than 60 opponents of the tribal government died violently during those years, including the executive director of the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization (OSCRO). In 1975 in the "Pine Ridge shootout", two FBI agents were killed, found to have been shot at close range. Three AIM members were indicted for their deaths, including Leonard Peltier, who escaped to Canada. In the first trial, the two AIM members were acquitted. Because of delays of the extradition process, Peltier was tried separately; he was convicted in a controversial case. Anna Mae Aquash, the highest-ranking woman in AIM, was murdered in late December 1975 at the reservation, but her body was not found until February 1976. Two Native American men were convicted in 2004 and 2010 in her murder, but many people believe that the execution was ordered by the highest leaders in AIM.

Occupation

On February 27, AIM leaders Russell Means (Oglala Sioux) and Carter Camp (Ponca), together with 200 activists and Oglala Lakota (Oglala Sioux) of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation who opposed Oglala tribal chairman Richard Wilson, occupied the town of Wounded Knee in protest against Wilson's administration, as well as against the federal government's persistent failures to honor its treaties with Native American nations. The U.S. government law enforcement, including FBI agents, surrounded Wounded Knee the same day with armed reinforcements. They gradually gained more arms.

Disputed facts

According to former South Dakota Senator James Abourezk, "on February 25, 1973 the U.S. Department of Justice sent out 50 U.S. Marshals to the Pine Ridge Reservation to be available in the case of a civil disturbance." This followed the failed impeachment attempt and meetings of opponents of Wilson. AIM says that its organization went to Wounded Knee for an open meeting and "within hours police had set up roadblocks, cordoned off the area and began arresting people leaving town… the people prepared to defend themselves against the government’s aggressions." By the morning of February 28, both sides began to be entrenched.

Background

For years, internal tribal tensions had been growing over the difficult conditions on the Pine Ridge Reservation, which has been one of the poorest areas in the USA since it was set up. Many of the tribe believed that Wilson, elected tribal chairman in 1972, had rapidly become autocratic and corrupt, controlling too much of the employment and other limited opportunities on the reservation. They believed that Wilson favored his family and friends in patronage awards of the limited number of jobs and benefits. Some criticism addressed the mixed-race ancestry of Wilson and his favorites, and suggested they worked too closely with BIA officials who still had a hand in reservation affairs. Some full-blood Oglala believed they were not getting fair opportunities.

"Traditionals" had their own leaders and influence in a parallel stream to the elected government recognized by the United States. The traditionals tended to be Oglala who held onto their language and customs, and did not participate in federal programs administered by the tribal government.

In his 2007 book on twentieth-century political history of the Pine Ridge Reservation, the historian Akim Reinhardt notes the decades-long ethnic and cultural differences among residents at the reservation. He attributes the Wounded Knee incident more to the rising of such internal tensions than to the arrival of AIM, who had been invited to the reservation by OSCRO. He also believes that the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 did not do enough to reduce US federal government intervention into Sioux and other tribal affairs; he describes the elected tribal governments since the 1930s as a system of "indirect colonialism." Oglala Sioux opposition to such elected governments was longstanding on the reservation; at the same time, the limited two-year tenure of the president's position made it difficult for leaders to achieve much. Officials of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, administrators and police, still had much influence at Pine Ridge and other American Indian reservations, which many tribal members opposed.

Specifically, opponents of Wilson believed he had sold grazing rights on tribal lands to local ranchers at too low a rate, reducing income to the tribe as a whole, whose members held the land communally. They also complained of his land-use decision to lease nearly one-eighth of the reservation's mineral-rich lands to private companies. Some full-blood Lakota complained of having been marginalized since the start of the reservation system. Most did not bother to participate in tribal elections, which led to tensions on all sides. There had been increasing violence on the reservation, which many attributed to Wilson's private militia, Guardians of the Oglala Nation (informally called the GOONs), attacking political opponents to suppress opposition.

Another concern was the failure of the justice systems in border towns to prosecute white attacks against Lakota men who went to the towns for their numerous saloons and bars. Alcohol was prohibited on the reservation. Local police seldom prosecuted crimes against the Lakota, or charged assailants at lesser levels. Recent murders in border towns heightened concerns on the reservation. An example was the early 1973 murder of 20-year-old Wesley Bad Heart Bull in a bar in Buffalo Gap, which the tribe believed was because of race. AIM led supporters to a meeting at the Custer, South Dakota courthouse, where they expected to discuss civil rights issues and wanted charges against the suspect raised to murder from second-degree manslaughter. They were met by riot police, who allowed only five people to enter the courthouse, despite blizzard conditions outside. Reinhardt notes that the confrontation became violent, during which protesters burned down the chamber of commerce building, damaged the courthouse and destroyed two police cars, and vandalized other buildings.

Three weeks before Wounded Knee, the tribal council had charged Wilson with several items for an impeachment hearing. He evaded trial, as the prosecution was not ready to proceed immediately, the presiding official would not take new charges, and the council voted to close the hearings. Charges had been brought by a coalition of local Oglala, grouped loosely around the "traditionals," the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization (OSCRO), and tribal members of the American Indian Movement. Wilson opponents were angered that he had evaded impeachment. US Marshals offered him and his family protection at a time of heightened tensions and protected the BIA headquarters at the reservation. Wilson added more fortification to the facility.

Incident

The traditional chiefs and AIM leaders met with the community to discuss how to deal with the declining situation on the reservation. Women elders such as Ellen Moves Camp, founder of the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization (OSCRO), Gladys Bissonette and Agnes Lamont urged the men to take action. They decided to make a stand at the hamlet of Wounded Knee, the renowned site of the last large-scale massacre of the Indian Wars. They occupied the town and announced their demand for the removal of Wilson from office and for immediate revival of treaty talks with the US government. Dennis Banks and Russell Means were prominent spokesmen during the occupation; they often addressed the press, knowing they were making their cause known directly to the American people. The brothers Clyde and Vernon Bellecourt were also AIM leaders at the time, who generally operated in Minneapolis.

The federal government established roadblocks around the community for 15 miles in every direction. In some areas, Wilson stationed his GOONs outside the federal boundary and required even federal officials to stop for passage.

About 10 days into the occupation, the federal government lifted the roadblocks and forced Wilson's people away as well. When the cordon was briefly lifted, many new supporters and activists joined the Oglala Lakota at Wounded Knee. Publicity had made the site and action an inspiration to American Indians nationally. About this time, the leaders declared the territory of Wounded Knee to be the independent Oglala Nation. They demanded to negotiate with the US Secretary of State.

A small delegation, including Frank Fools Crow, the senior elder, and his interpreter, flew to New York in an attempt to address and be recognized by the United Nations (UN). While they received international coverage, they did not receive recognition as a sovereign nation by the UN. This was the beginning of indigenous appeals directly to the United Nations and an international audience. Over the next decades, the UN would increasingly recognize indigenous issues and pass policy in favor of indigenous rights.

John Sayer, a Wounded Knee chronicler, wrote that:

"The equipment maintained by the military while in use during the siege included fifteen armored personnel carriers, clothing, rifles, grenade launchers, flares, and 133,000 rounds of ammunition, for a total cost, including the use of maintenance personnel from the National Guard of five states and pilot and planes for aerial photographs, of over half a million dollars."

The data gathered by the historians Record and Hocker largely concur: "...barricades of paramilitary personnel armed with automatic weapons, snipers, helicopters, armored personnel carriers equipped with .50-caliber machine guns, and more than 130,000 rounds of ammunition". The statistics on the U.S. government force at Wounded Knee vary, but all accounts agree that it was a significant military force including "federal marshals, FBI agents, and armored vehicles." One eyewitness and journalist described "sniper fire from…federal helicopters," "bullets dancing around in the dirt," and "sounds of shooting all over town" [from both sides]. William C. Keefer was a deputy US Marshal assigned from Los Angeles. At Wounded Knee for the last few weeks of the confrontation, he wrote about it in his book, In A Pig's Eye. Keefer was assigned to arrest AIM leader Russell Means at Deadwood, South Dakota; but Means got to Los Angeles, where he was arrested by the LAPD.

On March 13, Harlington Wood Jr., the assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the US Justice Department (DOJ), became the first government official to enter Wounded Knee without a military escort. Determined to resolve the deadlock without further bloodshed, he met with AIM leaders for days. While exhaustion made him too ill to conclude the negotiation, he is credited as the "icebreaker" between the government and AIM.

After 30 days, the US government tactics became harsher when Kent Frizell was appointed from DOJ to manage the government's response. He cut off electricity, water and food supplies to Wounded Knee, when it was still winter in South Dakota, and prohibited the entry of the media. AIM says that "the government tried starving out the [occupants]," and that its activists smuggled food and medical supplies in past roadblocks "set up by Dick Wilson and tacitly supported by the government." Keefer, the Deputy US Marshal at the scene, said there were no persons between federal agents and the town, and that the federal marshals' firepower would have killed anyone in the open landscape. The Marshals Service decided to wait out the AIM followers in order to reduce casualties on both sides. Some East Coast activists organized an air lift of food supplies to Wounded Knee.

Both AIM and federal government documents show that the two sides traded fire through much of the three months. The U.S. Marshal Lloyd Grimm was shot early in the conflict and suffered paralysis from the waist down. Among the many Indian supporters who joined the protest were Frank Clearwater and his pregnant wife, who were Cherokee from North Carolina. He was hit in the head on April 17 while he slept, less than 24 hours after arrival, and he died on April 25.

When Lawrence "Buddy" Lamont, a local Oglala Lakota, was killed by a shot from a government sniper on April 26, he was buried on the site in a Sioux ceremony. After his death, tribal elders called an end to the occupation. Knowing the young man and his mother from the reservation, many Oglala were greatly sorrowed by his death. Both sides reached an agreement on May 5 to disarm. With the decision made, many Oglala Lakota began to leave Wounded Knee at night, walking out through the federal lines. Three days later, the siege ended and the town was evacuated after 71 days of occupation; the government took control of the town.

Ray Robinson, a black civil rights activist, went to South Dakota to join the Wounded Knee occupation. He was seen there by both a journalist and a white activist. He disappeared during the siege and his body has never been found. There were rumors that he angered AIM activists by promoting non-violence. One AIM leader, Carter Camp, said years later that Robinson had walked away under his own power, seeking aid for a wounded leg. Other witnesses have recalled open conflict between Robinson and AIM activists.

His widow Cheryl Robinson believes he was murdered during the incident. In 2004, after the conviction of a man for the murder of Anna Mae Aquash, Robinson renewed her calls for an investigation into her husband's death. Paul DeMain, editor of News From Indian Country, has said that based on interviews, he believes "Robinson was killed because AIM thought he was an FBI spy."

Support for action

Public opinion polls revealed widespread sympathy for the Native Americans at Wounded Knee. They also received support from the Congressional Black Caucus as well as various actors, activists, and prominent public figures, including Marlon Brando, Angela Davis, Jane Fonda, William Kunstler, and Tom Wicker.

After DOJ prohibited the media from the site, press attention decreased. But, the actor Marlon Brando, who supported AIM, asked Sacheen Littlefeather, an Apache actress, to speak at the Oscar Award ceremony in Hollywood on his behalf, as he had been nominated for his performance in The Godfather. She appeared at the ceremony in traditional Apache clothing. When his name was announced as the winner, she said that he declined the award due to the "poor treatment of Native Americans in the film industry." She also spoke to many of the press afterward about Wounded Knee. This recaptured the attention of millions in the U.S. and world media. AIM supporters and participants thought Littlefeather's speech to be a major victory for their movement. Although Angela Davis was turned away by federal forces as an "undesirable person" when she attempted to enter Wounded Knee in March 1973, AIM participants believed that the attention garnered by such public figures forestalled US military intervention.

Aftermath

Agent Williams' AMC Ambassador after the shooting

Following the end of the 1973 stand-off, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation had a higher rate of internal violence. Residents complained of physical attacks and intimidation by president Richard Wilson's GOONs. The murder rate between March 1, 1973 and March 1, 1976 was 170 per 100,000. Detroit had a rate of 20.2 per 100,000 in 1974 and at the time was considered "the murder capital of the US." The national average was 9.7 per 100,000. More than 60 opponents of the tribal government died violently during this period, including Pedro Bissonette, executive director of OSCRO. AIM representatives said many were unsolved murders, but in 2002 the FBI issued a report disputing this.

• 1974 trial of Banks and Means

The U.S. District Court of South Dakota (Fred Joseph Nichol, presiding judge) dismissed the charges against Banks and Means for the 1973 Wounded Knee incident (both were defended by William Kunstler) due to its determination of prosecutorial misconduct. This decision was upheld on appeal in 1975.

Shootout at Pine Ridge

On June 26, 1975, two FBI agents, Ron Williams and Jack Coler, were shot at close range and killed in the course of a shootout near Wounded Knee on the reservation, at a ranch where AIM activists were living. Three members of AIM were charged, including Leonard Peltier, who had moved to the reservation after an arrest warrant against him was issued by the Eastern District of Wisconsin on charges of having killed a policeman (he was later acquitted of the Wisconsin charges). The first two defendants were acquitted at trial. Peltier had fled to Canada, from which he was extradited in 1976.

Peltier was later convicted in a separate trial for the Pine Ridge murders and sentenced to serve two consecutive life terms in prison. His cause became prominent among activists who believe he has been wrongly prosecuted and convicted. Supporters cite questionable tactics used by the FBI in the course of prosecuting Peltier, but to date, no appeals have been successful, and he was last denied parole in 2009.

Murder of Anna Mae Aquash

Main article: Anna Mae Aquash

In February 1976 after an uncharacteristic thaw, the body of Anna Mae Aquash, the leading woman activist in AIM, was found on the Pine Ridge Reservation. She had been shot execution style and murdered in December 1975. It was later found that she had been taken from Denver, Colorado to the reservation for this action.

Decades later, some former supporters have changed their minds about Peltier, since 2002 editorials in News From Indian Country and testimony in trials beginning in 2004 related to the murder of Anna Mae Aquash in December 1975 at Pine Ridge. Witnesses have testified that Peltier bragged to other AIM members about killing the two FBI agents, and that Aquash was interrogated by AIM leaders in 1975 about being an FBI informant. They suggest that AIM leaders ordered the execution of Aquash out of fear that she was an informant. In 2004 and 2010, two Native American men have been convicted in separate trials of the murder of Aquash.

21st century appraisals

The trials of the murderers of Anna Mae Aquash revealed information about internal AIM activities, including the fears of leaders in 1975 about possible FBI infiltration, and suspicions of one of their most highly regarded members. Douglass Durham, an FBI informant, was discovered and turned out of AIM preceding Aquash's murder. New studies of AIM and the Wounded Knee Incident have been more critical of activists and reveal the divisions among residents at Pine Ridge Reservation regarding the activities of AIM. In 2007 Joseph H. Trimbach, an FBI agent present at the standoff, and his son self-published a book about the events: American Indian Mafia: An FBI Agent's True Story about Wounded Knee, Leonard Peltier, and the American Indian Movement (AIM).

Paul DeMain, editor of News From Indian Country, whose writings helped reveal the Aquash suspects, wrote in his review of Trimbach's work:

"It's an ugly dark feeling realizing you were lied to. For many years I supported clemency for Leonard Peltier, and toed the line for leadership of the American Indian Movement. The facts, the anger, and the blame 'Mafia' puts on AIM, on its sympathizers, and even on the institution Trimbach once worked for [FBI], is from a law-enforcement perspective, and is revealing. See clearly through the foggy AIM alibis, the false cry of civil rights. From a tiny element of Native America we once looked up to, the people's Movement was hijacked by false warriors, murderers, and liars. Whether you support the FBI or thought of it as your enemy, 'Mafia' is a must-read for understanding the other side of the DMZ, established at Wounded Knee '73."

Nightwish's "Creek Mary's Blood" from their 2004 album Once featuring John Two-Hawks.

Charlie Parr, on his song, "1890" from the 2010 album When the Devil Goes Blind (Nero's Neptune Records 016, out of print, also on vinyl), sings about the original massacre.

Also: Uriah Heep; Primus; Toad the Wet Sprocket; Marty Stuart; and Bright Eyes have songs that refer to either the 1973 stand-off or the 1890 massacre.

See also

• Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890
• Lakota Woman

Further reading

• R. A. Bonney, (1977). "The Role of AIM Leaders in Indian Nationalism" [Electronic version]. American Indian Quarterly, 3, 209–224.
• Mary Crow Dog and Richard Erdoes (1990). Lakota Woman, Harper Perennial (ISBN 0-06-097389-7).
• Steve Hendricks (2006). The Unquiet Grave: The FBI and the Struggle for the Soul of Indian Country, Thunder's Mouth Press (ISBN 978-1-56025-735-6)
• Akim D. Reinhardt (2007). Ruling Pine Ridge: Oglala Lakota Politics from the IRA to Wounded Knee, Texas Tech University Press
• Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior. (1996) Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee, New York: The New Press
• Vicky Waltz (2009). "Interview with William Means: From Wounded Knee to Comm Ave", BU Today, Boston University, April 21, 2009
• Joseph H. Trimbach and John M. Trimbach, (2007). American Indian Mafia: An FBI Agent's True Story about Wounded Knee, Leonard Peltier, and the American Indian Movement (AIM), Outskirts Press (Note: Self-published)

External links

• "Records of Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee", available for research use at the Minnesota Historical Society
• Owen Luck Photographs Collection, 1973–2001, Princeton University, open for research. Luck was at the incident and took 39 photographs held in this collection.