Special thanks to:

The UCLA American Indian Studies Center Library
3214 Campbell Hall

& the UCLA University Research Library
for loan of materials from their collections.

Wounded Knee II

Between February 27 and May 8, 1973, a group of 200 Indians, led by the American Indian Movement (AIM), congregated at the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre. They demonstrated against the elected council head of the Pine Ridge Reservation, Richard (Dick) Wilson, whose administration, they charged, was rife with corruption and nepotism and silenced its critics through intimidation and violence.

The Sioux traditionalists, who did not accept the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) government as represented by Wilson, called AIM when Wilson and his administration began beatings and shootings to enforce “Wilson rule.”

Tensions between protesters and the local authorities grew until the situation became a siege of the town, drawing 2,000 Indians from around the area and lasting for 70 days. The Indian occupiers were surrounded by 300 federal marshals and FBI agents equipped with guns and armored personnel carriers (APCS).

On March 12, the Indians declared Wounded Knee a sovereign territory of the new Oglala Sioux Nation according to the Laramie Treaty of 1868, which recognizes the Sioux as an independent nation. The siege peaked when the two sides began firing on each other and two Indians, Frank Clearwater and Buddy Lamont, were shot and killed. The impasse ended after 67 days with a negotiated settlement and the withdrawal of both sides.

The occupation called national and worldwide media attention to the Native American civil rights movement. Although an AIM occupation, former occupiers of Alcatraz Island (Indians of All Tribes) also participated.

From Chronology of Native American History: From Pre-Columbian Times to the Present. Detroit: Gale Research, 1994

The Aftermath

When the siege ended, the government’s campaign to neutralize Indian resistance was launched. Of the 562 persons arrested, 185 were subsequently indicted by federal grand juries on the basis of evidence provided by the FBI. Only fifteen were ever convicted.

Key leaders of the American Indian Movement were tied up almost indefinitely. The classic illustration was Russell Means, charged with thirty-seven felonies and three misdemeanors. At one point he faced an aggregate sentence of triple-life plus eighty-seven years. Means was exonerated on all forty counts.

Between March 1973 and March 1976, there were a minimum of 342 physical assaults of AIM members and supporters on the reservation. Additionally, at least sixty-nine persons affiliated with the resistance were killed. Despite eyewitnesses who identified many assailants as known GOONS (Dick Wilson’s Tribal Ranger Group), none of the homicides were ever solved by the FBI.

From Native America in the twentieth Century: an Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Publishing, 1994.

Remembering 1973

Today, as American Indians commemorate the 25th anniversary of Wounded Knee II, different viewpoints and attitudes concerning what happened continue today. For some, it reaffirmed their Lakota heritage. For others, it is a bitter memory of a difficult time.