Wounded Knee Occupation
The Wounded Knee Occupation, also known as Second Wounded Knee, began on February 27, 1973, when approximately 200 Oglala Lakota and followers of the American Indian Movement seized and occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, United States, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The protest followed the failure of an effort of the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization to use impeachment to remove tribal president Richard Wilson, whom they accused of corruption and abuse of opponents. Protesters also criticized the United States government's failure to fulfill treaties with Native American people, and demanded the reopening of treaty negotiations with the goal of fair and equitable treatment of Native Americans.
Oglala and AIM activists controlled the town for 71 days while the United States Marshals Service, FBI 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. In March, a U.S. Marshal was shot by gunfire coming from the town, which ultimately resulted in paralysis. Frank Clearwater was shot and wounded on April 17, dying 8 days later on April 25, 1973, and Lawrence "Buddy" Lamont was shot and killed on April 26, 1973. Ray Robinson, a civil rights activist who joined the protesters, disappeared during the events. It was later determined that he had been buried on the reservation after allegedly being killed during a confrontation with AIM members.
Following Lamont's death the two sides agreed to a truce, which led to the end of the occupation. Remedial steps were part of the negotiated resolution.
The occupation attracted wide media coverage, especially after the press accompanied two U.S. Senators from South Dakota to Wounded Knee. The events electrified Native Americans, and many Native American 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 Natives. 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, of much of it. According to AIM, there were 64 unsolved murders during these years, including opponents of the tribal government, such as Pedro Bissonette, director of the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization, but this is disputed, with an FBI report in 2000 concluding that there were only four unsolved murders and that many of the deaths listed were not homicides or political.
Confrontation
Background
The Indian Relocation Act of 1956 was one law among others through the 1940s and 1950s that are referred to as Indian Termination. It was an effort by the U.S. government to hasten the assimilation of American Indians. Some scholars have characterized the law as an attempt to encourage people to leave Indian reservations for urban areas, which resulted in poverty, joblessness, or homelessness for many in the new urban environment. By 1968, the American Indian Movement was founded in urban Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other activist groups were established in cities after termination.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 United States since it was set up. Many of the tribe believed that Richard Wilson, just 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 Bureau of Indian Affairs officials who still had a hand in reservation affairs. Some full-blood Oglala believed they were not getting fair opportunities.
"Traditionalists" had their own leaders and influence in a parallel stream to the elected government recognized by the United States. The Traditionalists tended to be Oglala who held onto their language and customs, and who did not desire to participate in US federal programs administered by the tribal government.
In his 2007 book on the twentieth-century political history of the Pine Ridge Reservation, historian Akim Reinhardt notes the decades-long ethnic and cultural differences among residents at the reservation. He attributes the Wounded Knee Occupation 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 U.S. 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 long-standing 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 protested his sale of grazing rights on tribal lands to local white ranchers at too low a rate, reducing income to the tribe, whose members held the land communally. They also complained about 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, attacking political opponents to suppress opposition. The so-called "GOONs" were initially funded with $62,000 from the BIA to be "an auxiliary police force".
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 January 27, 1973, murder of 20-year-old Wesley Bad Heart Bull in a bar in Buffalo Gap, South Dakota, which the tribe believed was due to his race. On February 6, AIM led about 200 supporters to a meeting at the courthouse in Custer, South Dakota, 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.
Native American protests had only recently been receiving media attention regarding their civil rights. Preceding the Wounded Knee Occupation was the Occupation of Alcatraz that started November 20, 1969, lasted for two years, and inspired more indigenous activism. The 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties march ended with a six-day AIM-led occupation of the BIA offices in Washington, D.C.
Three weeks before the Wounded Knee Occupation, the tribal council had charged Wilson with several items for an impeachment hearing. However, Wilson was able to avoid a trial, as the prosecution was not ready to proceed immediately, the presiding official would not accept new charges, and the council voted to close the hearings. Charges had been brought by a coalition of local Oglala, grouped loosely around the "traditionalist", the OSCRO, and tribal members of AIM. Wilson opponents were angered that he had evaded impeachment. U.S. 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.
Occupation
After AIM's confrontation at the Custer courthouse, OSCRO leaders asked AIM for help in dealing with Wilson. The traditional chiefs and AIM leaders met with the community to discuss how to deal with the deteriorating situation on the reservation. Women elders such as OSCRO founder Ellen Moves Camp, 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 American Indian Wars.On Tuesday, February 27, 1973, about 200 armed AIM members formed a caravan and took over the town at gunpoint, raided the trading post, ransacked the museum and took eleven residents prisoner, including Fr Paul Manhart, the Jesuit priest at Sacred Heart Catholic Church. They announced their demand for the removal of Wilson from office and for immediate revival of treaty talks with the U.S. 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 public. The brothers Clyde and Vernon Bellecourt were also AIM leaders at the time, who operated in Minneapolis.
The following day, AIM leaders Russell Means and Carter Camp, together with 200 activists and Oglala of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, including children and the elderly, occupied the town of Wounded Knee to protest Oglala tribal chairman Richard Wilson's administration, as well as against the federal government's persistent failures to honor its treaties with Native American nations. U.S. government law enforcement, including FBI agents, surrounded Wounded Knee the same day with armed reinforcements. They gradually gained more arms.