The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee

by David Treuer

  “physically, religiously, socially”: John Collier, “Does the Government Welcome the Indian Arts?” The American Magazine of Art. Anniversary Supplement 27, no. 9, part 2 (1934), 10–13.

  “fanatical Indian enthusiast with good intentions”: Laurence M. Hauptman, The Iroquois and the New Deal (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1981), 28.

  “This Act shall not apply”: Wheeler-Howard Act (Indian Reorganization Act, June 18, 1934), Article 18, Sovereign Amonsoquath Band of Cherokee, http://www.amonsoquathbandofcherokee.org/ira1934_wheeler_howard_act.html.

  “Acoma is considered one of the oldest”: All quotations from Brian Vallo were recorded in May 2016.

  “We represent the oldest”: Jim Windle, “Six Nations Confederacy on the National Stage,” Two Row Times, September 21, 2016, https://tworowtimes.com/news/local/six-nations-confederacy-on-the-global-stage-in-1942/.

  “were not, had never been”: Todd Shaw, Louis DeSipio, Dianne Pinderhughes, and Toni-Michelle C. Travis, Uneven Roads: An Introduction to U.S. Racial and Ethnic Politics (Thousand Oaks, CA: CQ Press, 2015), 66.

  By comparison, the median income that year: Linton Weeks, “The 1940 Census: 72-Year-Old Secrets Revealed,” NPR, https://www.npr.org/2012/04/02/149575704/the-1940-census-72-year-old-secrets-revealed.

  In 1856, a small group: Johnathan L. Buffalo, “Meskwaki: A Brief History,” Meskwaki Nation, https://www.meskwaki.org/about-us/history/.

  After that he was shipped overseas: “Ira Hamilton Hayes, Corporal, United States Marine Corps,” Arlington National Cemetery, http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/irahayes.htm.

  “I was sick”: Viola, “Fighting the Metal Hats: World War II,” Warriors in Uniform, 93–94.

  “pomp and circumstance”: H. Paul Jeffers, The 100 Greatest Heroes: Inspiring Profiles of One Hundred Men and Women Who Changed the World (New York: Citadel Press, 2003), 135.

  Combat stories, stories about fighting: Author conversation with Rick Berg, 2014.

  Part 4. Moving On Up—Termination and Relocation: 1945–1970

  By 1900, there were fewer than two thousand: Annual Reports of the Department of the Interior of Indian Affairs for the Fiscal Year ended June 30, 1900: Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1900), 1.

  “Red William Hall,” he began: All quotations from Red Hall are from author interviews with him in October 2014.

  “like a millstone”: Dorothy Crisp, The Dominance of England (London: Holborn, 1960), 22–26.

  More than half of those who lived on farms: S. Mintz and S. McNeil (2016), “Overview of the Post-War Era” (ID 2923), Digital History, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/era.cfm?eraid=16&smtid=1.

  By 1970, six million African Americans: “World War I and the Great Migration,” History, Art & Archives, U.S. House of Representatives, http://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/BAIC/Historical-Essays/Temporary-Farewell/World-War-I-And-Great-Migration/; and “The Second Great Migration,” In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, http://www.inmotionaame.org/print.cfm;jsessionid=f830444661458729315793?migra tion=9&bhcp=1.

  “the chosen people of God”: Thomas Jefferson, The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia: A Comprehensive Collection of the Views of Thomas Jefferson Classified and Arranged in Alphabetical Order Under Nine Thousand Titles Relating to Government, Politics, Law, Education, Political Economy, Finance, Science, Art, Literature, Religious Freedom, Morals, etc., ed. John P. Foley (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1900), 323.

  “a relationship which the State”: 507 U.S. 99 (1993), 107, retrieved from Negonsott v. Samuels, Justia, US Supreme Court, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/507/99/case.html.

  “the freeing of the Indian”: Renée Ann Cramer, Cash, Color, and Colonialism: The Politics of Tribal Acknowledgment (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005), 20.

  “The more I go into this Indian problem”: Carolyn Grattan-Aiello, “Senator Arthur V. Watkins and the Termination of Utah’s Southern Paiute Indians,” Utah Historical Quarterly 63, no. 3 (1995), 281.

  Often when a jurisdictional act: Nancy Oestreich Lurie, “The Indian Claims Commission Act,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 311, no. 1 (May 1, 1957), 56–70, https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/66718/10.1177_000271625731100108.pdf?sequence=2.

  “(1) claims in law or equity arising”: Indian Claims Commission Act of 1947, in Charles Joseph Kappler, ed., Kappler’s Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties: Compiled Federal Regulations Relating to Indians, vol. 6 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1971, http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/vol6/html_files/v6p0323b.html#mn3. Also available on the Library of Congress website: 79th Congress, section 2, chap. 959, https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/79th-congress/session-2/c79s2ch959.pdf.

  The last claim on the docket: “Lead Up to the Indian Claims Commission Act of 1946,” US Department of Justice, https://www.justice.gov/enrd/lead-indian-claims-commission-act-1946.

  “broad waiver of the United States’ sovereign immunity”: Ibid.

  Tribes in states not covered: Ada Pecos Melton and Jerry Gardner, “Public Law 280: Issues and Concerns for Victims of Crime in Indian Country,” American Indian Development Associates, http://www.aidainc.net/publications/pl280.htm.

  “Whereas it is the policy of Congress”: House Concurrent Resolution 108, 67 Statute B122, August 1, 1953, Native Media Center, University of North Dakota, https://arts-sciences.und.edu/native-media-center/_files/docs/1950-1970/1953hcr108.pdf [inactive].

  Never mind that they had no authority: “The McCumber Agreement,” North Dakota Studies, https://www.ndstudies.gov/content/%E2%80%9C-mccumber-agreement%E2%80%9D [inactive].

  They are the only Indian tribe: “Menominee Culture,” Indian Country Wisconsin, http://www.mpm.edu/content/wirp/ICW-54.html.

  “After we had advanced five or six leagues”: Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix, Journal of a Voyage to North America, ed. Louise Phelps Kellogg (Chicago: Caxton Club, 1923), retrieved at https://archive.org/stream/journalofvoyaget02char/journalofvoyaget02char_djvu.tx.

  The Menominee formed their own modern tribal government: “Menominee Culture.”

  Four Indians sat on the board: Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin report, 2010/2018, http://witribes.wi.gov/docview.asp?docid=19079&locid=57.

  Indians with jobs could expect to bring in: Nancy Shoemaker, American Indian Population Recovery in the Twentieth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999), 80. The 1939 wages are adjusted for inflation using the U.S. Department of Labor/Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator found at https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm.

  “In order to help adult Indians”: Public Law 959, in Kappler, Kappler’s Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties: Compiled Federal Regulations Relating to Indians, retrieved at https://dc.library.okstate.edu/digital/collection/kapplers. Also available on the Government Printing Office website, https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-70/pdf/STATUTE-70-Pg986.pdf.

  Daytime highs didn’t reach seventy degrees: Butch Larcombe, “The Flood of 1964,” Montana Quarterly, retrieved at https://www.scribd.com/document/212124250/The-Flood-of-1964.

  Under termination and relocation: Patricia K. Ourada, The Menominee Indians: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979).

  A total of 1,365,801 acres: “Land Tenure Issues,” Indian Land Tenure Foundation, https://iltf.org/land-issues/issues/.

  “This policy of forced termination is wrong”: President Richard Nixon, Special Message to the Congress on Indian Affairs, July 8, 1970, retrieved from Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=2573 [inactive].

  Part 5. Becoming Indian: 1970–1990

  “Welcome to my office!”: All quotations
from Bobby Matthews are from author interviews with him, 2014–2015. Sections of this chapter first appeared in “Off the Land: What Subsistence Really Looks Like,” Harper’s Magazine, November 2014, https://harpers.org/archive/2014/11/off-the-land/.

  “should never be instrumental”: Luigi Laurenti, Property Values and Race: Studies in Seven Cities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), 17 (emphasis in Laurenti).

  “ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality”: Mission statement, NAACP, Washington, DC, Branch, http://naacpdc.org/dcbranch.htm.

  “white man tends to rate the Indian”: Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Warrior, Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee (New York: New Press, 1996), 41.

  “negative image of the Indians”: Ibid., 70.

  “This is all I have to offer”: Mark Hamilton Lytle, America’s Uncivil Wars: The Sixties Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 308.

  “It was a major source of encouragement”: Bradley G. Shreve, Red Power Rising: The National Indian Youth Council and the Origins of Native Activism (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011), 120.

  “genuine contemporary creative thinking”: Quoted in Lisa Brooks, “Intellectual History,” in The Oxford Handbook of American Indian History, ed. Frederick E. Hoxie (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 529 (emphasis added).

  Their life expectancy was between fifty: S. Ryan Johansson, “The Demographic History of the Native Peoples of North America: A Selective Bibliography,” in Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 25 (1982), 145.

  And there were more than four times: C. Matthew Snipp, “The Size and Distribution of the American Indian Population: Fertility, Mortality, Migration, and Residence,” in Changing Numbers, Changing Needs: American Indian Demography and Public Health (Washington, DC: National Academies Press [US], 1996), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK233098/.

  For young blacks in places like Oakland: Jessica McElrath, “The Black Panthers,” retrieved at https://web.archive.org/web/20070407155740/http://afroamhistory.about.com/od/blackpanthers/a/blackpanthers.htm.

  “1. We want freedom”: “History of the Black Panther Party: Black Panther Party Platform and Program” (“What We Want, What We Believe,” citing The Black Panther, November 23, 1967, 3), The Black Panther Party Research Project, https://web.stanford.edu/group/blackpanthers/history.shtml [inactive].

  “the greatest threat to the internal security”: Quoted in “Hoover and the F.B.I.,” A Huey P. Newton Story, PBS, http://www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/people/people_hoover.html.

  Indians in Minneapolis also endured: S. Mintz and S. McNeil (2016), “The Native American Power Movement” (ID 3348), Digital History, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3348.

  Later, in 1973, Nordwall would fly: “The Discovery of Italy,” Miami News, September 23, 1973, retrieved at http://astro1.panet.utoledo.edu/~ljc/disc_italy.html.

  “I just decided to go”: Smith and Warrior, Like a Hurricane, 5.

  “What I saw”: Ibid.

  “It was almost as if a collective hallucination”: Ibid., 12.

  “I think I admired him more”: Quoted in Dean Chavers, “Richard Nixon’s Indian Mentor,” Indian Country Today, April 10, 2016, https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/history/events/richard-nixons-indian-mentor/.

  She was later instrumental in establishing: Dean Chavers, “How Alcatraz Helped Native American Students,” Indian Country Today, July 26, 2017, https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/education/native-american-students/alcatraz-helped-native-american-students/.

  “without meaningful change white America”: Robert Treuer, “Seven Days in November,” The Washingtonian, May 1978, 109.

  Loesch worked a minor miracle: Ibid.

  One pro-Indian lawyer was lowered: Ibid.

  “War paint traditionally means”: Ibid., 106.

  “1. Restoration of constitutional treaty-making authority”: Congressional Record of April 2, 1973, https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/GPO-CRECB-1973-pt8/GPO-CRECB-1973-pt8-5-1; see also “Trail of Broken Treaties: 20-Point Position Memo,” American Indian Movement, October 1972, www.aimovement.org/ggc/trailofbrokentreaties.html.

  The money was transferred in cash to Vernon Bellecourt: Treuer, “Seven Days in November,” 99.

  The number of wild rice licenses: “Inventory & Management,” Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/wildlife/shallowlakes/wildrice.html.

  Only 2 percent of those with licenses: Ray Norrgard, Gary Drotts, Annette Drewes, and Nancy Dietz, Minnesota Natural Wild Rice Harvester Survey: A Study of Harvesters’ Activities and Opinions (St. Paul: Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Division of Fish and Wildlife, 2007), retrieved at http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/fish_wildlife/wildlife/shallowlakes/wild-rice-harvester-survey-2007.pdf.

  Less than half of the roughly: Margaret Dexter, “2007 Trapper Harvest Survey,” in “Trapping Harvest Statistics,” Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Division of Fish and Wildlife, retrieved at http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/publications/wildlife/populationstatus2008/7_trapping_harvest.pdf; and Margaret Dexter, “2014 Trapper Harvest Survey,” in “Trapping Harvest Statistics,” Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Division of Fish and Wildlife, retrieved at http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/publications/wildlife/population2015/6-trapping-harvest.pdf.

  “rough and tumble”: Stew Magnuson, “Remember Raymond Yellow Thunder’s Life,” Native Sun News, posted at Indianz.com, February 13, 2012, http://www.indianz.com/News/2012/004568.asp.

  He was a hard worker: Smith and Warrior, Like a Hurricane, 112–13.

  Later, still joyriding around Gordon: State v. Hare (State of Nebraska v. Leslie D. Hare, State of Nebraska v. Melvin P. Hare), 208 N.W.2d 264 (1973) 190 Neb. 339, June 8, 1973, Justia, US Supreme Court, https://law.justia.com/cases/nebraska/supreme-court/1973/38761-1.html.

  “found him in an old pickup truck”: Ibid.

  The men paused and then took off: Ibid.

  By the end of the week: Smith and Warrior, Like a Hurricane, 115.

  Leslie was sentenced to six years: Russell Means, Where White Men Fear to Tread: The Autobiography of Russell Means (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 215.

  “It figures. All the Chippewas used to do”: Newsweek, January 31, 1972, quoted in Smith and Warrior, Like a Hurricane, 136.

  “The reasons are clear”: Russell Means to AIM chapters, January 31, 1972, quoted in Smith and Warrior, Like a Hurricane, 136–37.

  couldn’t “resign from being an Indian”: Smith and Warrior, Like a Hurricane, 137.

  Whatever the cause: Terry Devine, “Death of Bad Heart Bull Sets Off Riot,” Washington, Pennsylvania, Observer-Reporter, February 12, 1972, A12, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2519&dat=19730212&id=IMtdAAAAIBAJ&sjid=fl4NAAAAIBAJ&pg=972,2012037&hl=en.

  Schmitz was arrested: Means, Where White Men Fear to Tread, 151.

  In the meantime, hundreds of Indians: State v. Bad Heart Bull (State of South Dakota v. Sarah Bad Heart Bull and Robert High Eagle), Supreme Court of South Dakota, 257 N.W.2d 715 (1977), September 16, 1977, Justia, US Supreme Court, https://law.justia.com/cases/south-dakota/supreme-court/1977/11531-1.html; and Devine, “Death of Bad Heart Bull Sets Off Riot.”

  He appointed his wife as director: Smith and Warrior, Like a Hurricane, 196.

  Six previous tribal chairmen: Ibid., 195.

  “bums trying to get their braids”: Terri Schultz, “Bamboozle Me Not at Wounded Knee,” Harper’s Magazine, June 1973, https://harpers.org/archive/1973/06/bamboozle-me-not-at-wounded-knee.

  “conspiratorial cabal of internationalists”: Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort (New York: Guilford Press, 2000), 177.

  “The fact is, we as a group”: Smith and Warr
ior, Like a Hurricane, 208.

  “C. The main objective of the Indians”: Ibid., 213.

  “If any foreign official”: Ibid., 218.

  He had worked for the Pine Ridge tribal police: Ibid., 259.

  “war games without a war”: Ibid., 234.

  “the next thing,” the witness reported: Associated Press, “FBI Confirms Civil Rights Activist Was Killed in 1973 Wounded Knee Protest,” New York Post, February 19, 2014, https://nypost.com/2014/02/19/fbi-confirms-civil-rights-activist-was-killed-in-1973-wounded-knee-protest/.

  Bernie Lafferty, who claims: “FBI Confirms Black Activist Was Killed During 1973 Occupation of Wounded Knee,” CBS News, February 20, 2014, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-confirms-activist-ray-robinson-was-killed-during-1973-occupation-of-wounded-knee/. See also “Bernie Lafferty Speaks About Ray Robinson’s Killing Inside Wounded Knee 1973,” News from Indian Country, July 17, 2007, http://www.indiancountrynews.com/index.php/investigations/ray-robinson/889-bernie-lafferty-speaks-about-ray-robinsons-killing-inside-wounded-knee-1973.

  “shortly afterward and puzzled what to do”: Eric Konigsberg, “Who Killed Anna Mae?” The New York Times, April 25, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/magazine/who-killed-anna-mae.html.

  “really managed to keep a tight lid on that one”: “FBI Confirms Black Activist Was Killed During 1973 Occupation of Wounded Knee.”

  Even now, Indians drop out: “High School Dropout Rates: Indicators on Children and Youth,” Child Trends, DataBank, November 2015, https://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/01_Dropout_Rates.pdf; also see Patrick Stark, Amber M. Noel, and Joel McFarland, Trends in High School Dropout and Completion Rates in the United States: 1972–2012, Compendium Report, U.S. Department of Education, National Center of Education Statistics, NCES 2015-015, https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2015/2015015.pdf.

  “Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts”: Lyndon B. Johnson, Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union, January 8, 1968, retrieved from Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26787 [inactive].