by Tim Slessor
The following year, 1970, on the other side of the country, a party of Red Skins (sic) boarded a replica of the Mayflower; they timed the takeover for Thanksgiving Day so that they could then pose an elegantly provocative question: for which particular benefits, apparently bestowed on them since the arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers, should all right-thinking Indians be expected to give Thanks? Again, it was a stunt, but it made people think.
The year 1970 also saw the publication of a book called Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown. This history of the Indian Wars (with a title from the last line of a well-known poem) quickly became a best-seller. Now Wounded Knee was not only back on the map but was also planted in the nation’s consciousness.
One year later, in growing militancy, a host of Indians were winding their way right across the country towards the nation’s capital. Some of them had started on the far side of continent; more joined along the way. They called the route of their motorized cavalcade “The Trail of Broken Treaties”. They pointed to the fact that they had long been the most forgotten and the most impoverished people in the nation; they had the highest infant mortality, the highest unemployment, the highest suicide rate, the highest level of diabetes and of alcoholic addiction, the lowest life expectancy. On any measure that mattered, they were at the wrong end of the scale.
By the time they reached Washington in early November 1972, their numbers had grown; estimates varied between 1,000 and twice that number. From the beginning there was, all too typically, a deal of infighting and ego-tripping among the different factions which, while having more or less common objectives, had very different ideas as to how best to achieve them. At the militant end were members of the American Indian Movement (AIM). They were in the lead when the procession broke into the headquarters of the white-dominated and deeply unloved Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Once inside, they barricaded all the entrances and refused to leave. There were reports that a minority was not only armed but was ready to soak some of the upstairs carpets with gasoline, to torch the place if the authorities should mount a heavy-handed assault to reclaim the building. Up the road in the White House, President Nixon declined to meet a Broken Treaty delegation; he was preoccupied with the early rumblings of the Watergate scandal. But fortunately someone on his staff had sense enough to advise the police and others to adopt a softly-softly, wait-and-see posture. In fact, it was eight days before an evacuation was negotiated in return for various promises that AIM’s list of demands would now be taken seriously. By then, the media and thereby the nation were losing interest in what was becoming an increasingly static story. And the occupants were very tired. It was later estimated that $1 million worth of damage had been done. As a gesture of goodwill, the Federal Government agreed to subsidize the cost of everyone’s journey home.
Today, around 40 years later, it is difficult to work out what, in any specific terms, was actually achieved. Certainly among the leaders of AIM, in the weeks and months that followed, there seems to have been as much impatience and anger as ever. In fact, only three months later, this pent-up frustration was to manifest itself at a remote crossroads hamlet far away on the Western plains. Yes, it was that “nothing place” called Wounded Knee. Given its place both in history and now in Dee Brown’s best-seller, it was the obvious place for a showdown. The leaders of AIM pointed to a long list of both national and local provocations...
High on the local part of that list was the hostility of the Oglala (Pine Ridge) Reservation’s Tribal Council towards AIM. By a narrow vote, not only had the council contributed nothing to help the Trail of Broken Treaties, but it had then gone out of its way to be deeply critical of what it called “the recent and unjustifiable actions in Washington DC”. In this, the council was voicing the personal views of its dictatorial half-blood president, Dick Wilson. He portrayed AIM as being led by Communist trouble-makers who, in the local Oglala context of “his” Reservation, were now out to subvert his authority. The problem was that Wilson had recently been elected by what were, without doubt, some murky procedures and intimidations. Russell Means, one of AIM’s leaders who had been prominent in the recent Washington “occupation”, was now calling for a properly monitored re-run of that election. Across the Reservation he was widely supported. In retaliation, and despite the fact that Means was an Oglala, Wilson ordered his immediate arrest if he should attempt to return to his homeland. In parenthesis, one has to say that, even today, the internal politics - the rivalries, the resentments, the jealousies, the antagonisms, the distrusts, the name-calling - that are endemic on some Reservations, and none more so than among the Oglala Sioux of the Pine Ridge Reservation, are incomprehensible to any outsider. If one were foolish enough to attempt even the most basic explanation, one might say that while there are serious tensions between many of the full-bloods and those of mixed-blood, those rivalries are relatively mild compared to those that can exist within the community of mixed-bloods. Intra-tribal factionalism is everywhere. Back in 1973 the very personal antagonism, hatred even, that had developed between Dick Wilson and Russell Means was to cost lives.
In that incendiary atmosphere, it was not going to take much to ignite real conflict. The immediate detonator was the killing in the small white community of Buffalo Gap (about 15 miles outside the Reservation) of a 22-year-old Sioux, Bad Heart Bull. But this was not the first time that an Indian had died in a recent encounter with whites; only a few months earlier, a 51-year-old Sioux called Yellow Thunder had died of a head wound inflicted by some drunken rowdies who had been roaming the small Nebraskan town of Gordon looking “to bust an Indian”. So tempers on the Reservation were already more than merely simmering.
Now from Buffalo Gap came news of this second killing, in a bar-side brawl. A few days later, in the county seat of Custer, the indictment against Bad Heart Bull’s white assailant was announced as manslaughter, because it was judged that the fatal stabbing had been accidental, rather than premeditated. In their fury at what they saw as an entirely inadequate charge, the leaders of AIM and several hundred of their local followers now attempted to storm the snowbound courthouse. The local police, already reinforced by officers from other Black Hills communities, held them off with night sticks (clubs) and tear gas. The Indians retaliated by torching two police cars. Arrests were made. The next day, the agitation spread to the nearest major town, Rapid City. Bars were sacked and shops damaged. The National Guard was alerted. White communities all through the Black Hills became frightened, some to the point of panic. Across the state, there was a marked increase in the sale of guns.
There must have been relief among those whites when, presently, they heard that the focus of Sioux anger had moved away, back onto Pine Ridge Reservation. Within a single evening, the remote hamlet of Wounded Knee was taken over by an armed force of more than 200 Indians. For the Sioux, the symbolism of the place was powerful. Further, they calculated that, over the days that followed, this same symbolism would be a gift to the writers of the nation’s headlines.
Among the Indians digging in at Wounded Knee were Vietnam veterans who well knew how to defend a perimeter. Urged on by Russell Means and other leaders of AIM, they took over and fortified the area around the same low hill on which, 83 years earlier, those Hotchkiss guns had been placed, and where their forebears lay in that mass grave. This was, whatever the rights or wrongs, an armed revolt: the first, some said, since the Civil War. So, given that Dick Wilson’s tribal police were too weak and possibly too divided among themselves to contain the insurrection, Federal forces of law-and-order, namely US marshals aided by FBI personnel, were flown in. They set up armed blocks on the several roads leading in and out of Wounded Knee. Amongst other weapons, heavy machine guns were mounted on a dozen or so Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs) commandeered from a reluctant Army. Despite the urgings of the by now paranoid Dick Wilson back in Pine Ridge Agency that the US marshals should go in, guns blazing, and “eliminate those AIM clowns”,
the authorities were well aware that news reports, let alone TV footage, of those APCs driving towards a second Wounded Knee confrontation would not play well across the nation, or the world. So over the next few days, then weeks, words like siege, stand-off, deadlock, impasse and stalemate found a central place in the vocabulary of every news report.
The official thinking seems to have been that if the belligerents inside Wounded Knee were “contained” - nothing in, nothing out - they would, within a week or two, crack from boredom, from hunger, and from the realization that they could not win. In short, they would have to surrender. But, among the leaders of AIM and their militant Sioux allies, the thinking was that they could afford to hang on. Provisions and weapons were not an immediate problem; there were hidden paths through the hills by which backpacked necessities could reach them almost every night; there was even a tip-and-run airdrop by three light aircraft. Meanwhile there were demands that they wanted met. These included an urgent Federal inquiry into the dubious election and subsequent nepotism of Dick Wilson and his cronies on the Oglala Tribal Council and in the Tribal Police. (Wilson is alleged to have once said that, under tribal law, “there’s nothing illegal about nepotism”.) Only slightly less immediate was a demand for a full-blown judicial investigation into the Laramie Treaty of 1868 under which the Black Hills had been formally recognized as Sioux territory “forever”. When would they be getting their Hills back? Next, and connected with the claim on the Black Hills, they wanted a thorough resolution of Indian sovereignty: Indian rights, tribal and individual, as they applied right across the nation. They wanted more tribal self-determination, in place of what they saw as the raggedy colonialism of Washington’s Bureau of Indian Affairs. Lastly, they wanted UN observers flown in, so that the world might know that this was more than an inconsequential spat somewhere deep within “interior America”. Many might say that these demands were unrealistic; but that, surely, is rather to miss their point...
The problem with such confrontations, the world over, is often much the same: governments, despite their usual superiority in resources and weaponry, feel that they cannot afford, with the media looking on, to be too heavy-handed. Yet, at the same time, until the “rebels” have agreed to give up their weapons and hostages (if any), the authorities cannot be seen to have been coerced into negotiations. At Wounded Knee, there was another complication: there were too many rival branches of government, local and national; all of them were jostling to push solutions which ranged from all-out assault to quiet containment. At times this led to a shameful (or farcical) lack of coordination between the FBI, the US Marshals Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Federal Justice Department, the Governor of South Dakota and, even more locally, the Oglala tribal police and Dick Wilson’s Tribal Council. And that says nothing of the lawyers, busybodies and assorted congressmen and senators who also came helicoptering in to make a contribution.
And all the while, the “rebels” were well aware that, as long as they stayed put, they were a continuing embarrassment to all the relevant arms of the Washington government. But, at the same time, they became aware that they were not making any progress.
Under a white flag, negotiators from Washington’s Justice Department eventually took the lead in trying to break the all-round impasse. Watched with some distrust by the other agencies, they passed backwards and forwards between the besieged and the besiegers several times; also, hundreds of live rounds were exchanged. Reports speak of a firefight, big or small, almost every night. Each side always accused the other of having fired the first shots. There were casualties and two deaths among the “rebels”.
It is difficult to work out what finally tipped the balance toward capitulation. Perhaps there was no specific catalyst, or perhaps there was a whole range of them. Perhaps, above all, there was the realization by those inside Wounded Knee that as time dragged on and media interest and national support dwindled, so too did their morale. Then inevitably, being Sioux, there was bickering among their leaders about what to do next. Further, the FBI was now across some of those clandestine supply paths. Ammunition inside Wounded Knee was short, and getting shorter. So, despite the fact that the authorities did not offer any amnesty for a long list of alleged offenses, nor did they offer any concessions in terms of that disputed election of the Tribal Council, the end came quickly. A so-called Accord, wherein the government agreed - once the rebels had disarmed - to discuss the 1868 Black Hills Treaty, was signed on 5 May. The stand-off had lasted 10 weeks.
In the months and years that followed, neither the Black Hills Treaty nor any of the other grievances were ever discussed in an effective way. Nor, in the months and years that followed was there any lessening in the tensions and conflicts across Pine Ridge (Oglala) Reservation. Indeed, instead of being concentrated around Wounded Knee, the contagion of hostility spread into even the remotest settlement. It was a time when scores were settled, sometimes in the most vicious way - by assassinations. Even on a conservative count, over the next two years more than 50 people were shot, beaten or stabbed to death. A few were simply “disappeared”. If homicide was the measure, Pine Ridge Reservation became (per head) by far the most violent place in the nation. The majority of the victims were people who, while they had not necessarily been inside the Wounded Knee perimeter during “the troubles”, had not held back in supporting those who had been. Dick Wilson’s tribal policemen, out of uniform and often working at night, were widely blamed for many of the murders. Even though the identity of many of the assassins was common knowledge, no charges were ever brought. Witnesses were too frightened. But there were deaths on the other side too, most notably two FBI agents who were ambushed and shot while trailing a van of AIM militants. The FBI quickly allocated more than 100 of its agents to track down the culprits. The chief suspect was found in Canada; he was extradited and eventually sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment. Inevitably, comparisons were made between the energy with which the FBI followed up on the death of two of its own officers, and its lack of zeal in chasing after a number of known killers living on and off the Reservation.
Among the erstwhile occupiers of Wounded Knee and other supporters beyond, more than 500 were apprehended on various state and federal warrants. Of these, 185 were formally charged with crimes that ranged from “assault with deadly weapons” to “crossing a state line to incite a riot”. In the end there were just 15 solid convictions, which would seem to point to some skillful defense lawyers or some unconvinced (or unwilling?) juries; or both.
Today, the sad but inescapable fact is that, despite all that happened at Wounded Knee, life for the Oglala Sioux and, as far as I know, their tribal cousins on the other Sioux Reservations across South Dakota is as bleak as it ever was. If one wants proof of that assertion, just go and stand on that hill where, once, those Hotchkiss guns were unlimbered. Then look around.
I have been to Wounded Knee four times, both before and after the uprising. When I first made the pilgrimage, back in 1963, there was a small, white clapboard Catholic church on the hillside near the mass grave; it dated back about 50 years. On the flat land below, by the road, there was a one-room general store owned by a rather uncommunicative white couple, Mr. and Mrs. Gildersleeve. One corner of the store was given over to a dusty montage of photographs and bits and pieces derived from that day in 1890. Another corner displayed various pieces of Sioux beadwork for sale. Outside, in summer, there might be a car or two with the out-of-state plates that indicated some tourist visitors. Today, more than 40 years on, the store and the church are long gone; the first was looted, trashed and then torched during the 1973 confrontation; the latter is said by some to have been set on fire by children playing with matches some days after everyone had gone home. But what, of course, is still there is the mass grave of early 1891. It is as forlorn and derelict as one supposes it has been since the day they shoveled the earth over those frozen corpses. The long rectangle of concrete laid later around the
grave is cracked and discolored. Its bordering margin is disjointed and broken. Weeds poke through. At one side, around the base of the small ornate memorial, are a few plastic flowers, ribbons and feathers. And there is a teddy bear: an almost inevitable part of such places nowadays. Every few years, on the Reservation, there is talk of lobbying Washington to declare the hill a national monument and, thereby, to pull Federal funds for a bigger and better memorial, a Visitors’ Center and, who knows, a few scholarships. Nothing has happened; nor will it.
It would be a cliché to say that the state of that mass grave and its memorial serves as a symbol of the Reservation as a whole. But, sadly, one does not need to spend much time on Pine Ridge to know that, cliché or not, that observation is near the truth. In parts, this is Third World territory. The Oglala people are, as I have written earlier, at the wrong end of any list that matters. Their Reservation, despite considerable injections of Federal money, and much hard work by various Oglala self-help groups, is still the poorest corner of America.
***
Back in 1963 I filmed an interview with an Oglala of about my own age. Since then, I had read that, at various times through the 1970s and 80s, Gerald One Feather had served as a campaigning Chairman of the Tribal Council and, at other times, he had stood against the Dick Wilson regime. Indeed, following the Wounded Knee confrontation in 1973 he was the target of at least two assassination attempts. Over the years, he had won recognition as a leading elder of the Oglala community. So, in the spring of 2011, I went back to see if I could find him. I enquired at the local office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Straightaway I noticed a change from my earlier visits: the place was now staffed not by whites, but by Sioux. Surely that was significant. When, with the prompt help of the Bureau, I found Mr. One Feather (“call me Gerald”), he remembered our earlier meeting. Indeed, he joked that we had both lost most of our hair. More importantly, he agreed that his people now had rather more control over their own affairs than when we had first met. And health and life-expectancy were improved; but not nearly enough. Housing was better; but not nearly enough: there were still too many homes without running water and reliable electricity, and there were still too many people crowded into broken and leaking trailer-homes. Yes, schools and education were more accessible, but, with job opportunities on the Reservation so sparse, it was difficult to “incentivise” young people. In short, there was still a long way to go - in every direction. Unemployment, he said, was by far the greatest single problem. Other than work for the Bureau, or the Tribal Council (and its police), or an occasional public-works program (e.g. road building), there were very few jobs. In any case, culturally there was no tradition among the Sioux of regular long-term employment, even if such opportunities existed on the reservation - which they didn’t. So, when young Sioux left home to look for work elsewhere, they were too often ill-equipped to compete against white job-seekers. They returned discouraged and discontented. Some, to drown their frustrations, even their despair, took to petty crime or drink or drugs. A few killed themselves. The Reservation has the highest suicide rate in the nation.