(Cambridge, Mass. [13], About ten days into the occupation, the federal government lifted the roadblocks and forced Wilson's people away as well. Marshals to the Pine Ridge Reservation to be available in the case of a civil disturbance". [6][8] The U.S. In 1989, he told Congress that there was “rampant graft and corruption” in tribal governments and federal programs assisting American Indians. They gradually gained more arms.[6].
The protest followed the failure of an effort of the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization (OSCRO) to impeach tribal president Richard Wilson, whom they accused of corruption and abuse of opponents. He styled himself a throwback to ancestors who resisted the westward expansion of the American frontier.

Also helicopters, and APCs. Marshals offered him and his family protection at a time of heightened tensions and protected the BIA headquarters at the reservation. [11] With the decision made, many Oglala Lakota began to leave Wounded Knee at night, walking out through the federal lines.

Please enable cookies on your web browser in order to continue. Wilson won the election, even though he lost to Means in the primary.
You also agree to our Terms of Service. Russell Means, left, and Dennis Banks in 1973, when they led a protest at Wounded Knee, S.D. After his death, tribal elders called an end to the occupation. "[11] The fraudulent actions included voter fraud, a lack of poll watchers, and a lack of oversight.

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. 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 due to his race. [32] Trimbach and others have also suggested that AIM members murdered Anna Mae Aquash because they thought she was a spy. The jury had voted 12–0 to acquit both defendants of the conspiracy charge,[29] but before the second vote one juror suffered a stroke and could not continue deliberations. He reported Sandinista atrocities against the Indians and urged the Reagan administration to aid the victims. While they received international coverage, they did not receive recognition as a sovereign nation by the UN. [24], Following the end of the 1973 stand-off, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation had a higher rate of internal violence. "A Fire that Burns: The Legacy of Wounded Knee", Learn how and when to remove this template message, List of incidents of civil unrest in the United States, "Dennis Banks and Russell Means Cleared of Charges", James Parsons, "AIM Indians with ’story to tell’ made Wounded Knee the medium", "Harlington Wood Jr., 88, Siege Negotiator, Is Dead", "Petersburg judge to receive honor for legal career", Opinion: Stew Magnuson, "The 1973 disappearance of Ray Robinson", Carson Walker, "Widow Says Civil Rights Activist Killed During 1973 Wounded Knee Takeover", "United States v. Banks and Means (Wounded Knee)", Vicky Waltz (2009). [23] They also received support from the Congressional Black Caucus as well as various actors, activists, and prominent public figures, including Marlon Brando, Johnny Cash, Angela Davis, Jane Fonda, William Kunstler, and Tom Wicker. Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior. "[31], The legacy of the Siege of Wounded Knee is rife with disagreements, due to the controversial approaches of AIM and the FBI. [28], Despite the FBI's claims, there were many suspicious events surrounding murders of AIM activists and their subsequent investigations or lack thereof. [2] A member of the Cherokee tribe and a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe were both killed by shootings in April 1973. We did not see these things, or did not want to see them." [11] It has also been suggested that the FBI and the federal government in general were too focused on Watergate at the time to give the situation at Wounded Knee the attention it deserved. In 1985 and 1986, he went to Nicaragua to support indigenous Miskito Indians whose autonomy was threatened by the leftist Sandinista government.

In his 2007 book on 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. 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. Determined to resolve the deadlock without further bloodshed, he met with AIM leaders for days. [13] The nation granted citizenship to those who wanted it, including non-Indians. (P.d.D thesis, Ball State University, 1987). Marshal at the scene, said there were no persons between federal agents and the town, and that the federal marshals' firepower could have killed anyone in the open landscape.

Russell attended public schools in Vallejo and San Leandro High School, where he faced racial taunts, had poor grades and barely graduated in 1958. "Wocante Tinza: A History of The American Indian Movement." He also attacked the “Chief Wahoo” mascot of the Cleveland Indians baseball team, a toothy Indian caricature that he called racist and demeaning. R. A. Bonney, (1977). [13] Wounded Knee is now an important symbol of American Indian activism, fittingly building on its initial symbolic meaning of the atrocities committed by the US government against American Indian people. Others have recalled open conflict between Robinson and activists over FBI claims. Mr. Means also survived several gunshots — one in the abdomen fired during a scuffle with an Indian Affairs police officer in North Dakota in 1975, one that grazed his forehead in what he called a drive-by assassination attempt on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1975, and one in the chest fired by another would-be assassin on another South Dakota reservation in 1976. Mr. Means began his acting career in 1992 with “The Last of the Mohicans,” Michael Mann’s adaptation of the James Fenimore Cooper novel, in which he played Chingachgook opposite Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeleine Stowe.

He rose to national attention as a leader of the American Indian Movement in 1970 by directing a band of Indian protesters who seized the Mayflower II ship replica at Plymouth, Mass., on Thanksgiving Day. Millions in aid went to some anti-Sandinista groups, but a leader of the Miskito Indian rebels, Brooklyn Rivera, said his followers had not received any of that aid. According to former South Dakota Senator James Abourezk, "on February 25, 1973 the U.S. Department of Justice sent out 50 U.S. [7] 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". The FBI has faced criticism for their potentially underhanded attempts to undermine AIM through COINTELPRO-like methods, such as releasing false information and having undercover individuals sow disorder within AIM and Wounded Knee. Wounded Knee returned to US government control. But critics, including many Indians, called him a tireless self-promoter who capitalized on his angry-rebel notoriety by running quixotic races for the presidency and the governorship of New Mexico, by acting in dozens of movies — notably in a principal role in “The Last of the Mohicans” (1992) — and by writing and recording music commercially with Indian warrior and heritage themes. [7][8] The terms included a mandated meeting at Chief Fools Crow's land to discuss reinstating the 1868 Treaty. (1996). Busacca, Jeremy. [22], Public opinion polls revealed widespread sympathy for the Native Americans at Wounded Knee.