We are still waiting on that promise when we stood down our arms on our own country, under our own Treaty. We have subjected men and women and old people to these courts because we believe that somewhere, sometime, some place, this country is going to have some integrity and honesty in its dealings with Indian people. I will probably die chasing after that integrity and honesty. So be it.
—Russell Means
Last summer some people, tourists, were at Wounded Knee while I was there visiting my son's grave. They asked me where Wounded Knee was. "Right here," I said, "This is the church that burned down. The goons burned it down because there's a lot of evidence in that church. It's full of holes. It's just like a honeycomb in there. The people were in there so they shot at them. So this is it," I said. "And down the hill you can see that house over there. It's burnt down, and that church over there, that's where the people stayed. And this, all of this hill around here was where they surrendered, a handful of people."...
I thought it over, about the first massacre in 1890. My mother was twelve years old and she was right in there. She used to tell us what happened. She said they surrendered to the Government like that, and they took all their weapons, whatever they had. When they got through then they started shooting them, little babies on up, women, men....
I never had given it a thought that someday this would happen here again and my son was going to be next, lying in the Wounded Knee Cemetery. Before this happened he liked to joke. They were sitting around and he said, "If anything happens to me," he said, "bury me here in Wounded Knee." And he laughed. Later on he said, "Things are getting tough, I see, so if I get killed, I don't want to bother my people so just bury me in the bunker. That's where I want to be, fighting for my people. I don't want to go out of here, out of Wounded Knee. I want to be buried right here."
So that's where we buried him. My mother's uncle and aunt are buried there from the 1890 massacre.
I told the tourists, I said, that I never thought that my son would be next, that he would be lying here....
—Agnes Lamonte
Selected book bibliography
Anderson et al., Voices from Wounded Knee 1973 (Akwesasne Notes, 1974). ISBN978-0-914-83801-2.
Charles Eastman, Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains (Little, Brown and Company, 1918)text
Mario Gonzalez and Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, The Politics of Hallowed Ground: Wounded Knee and the Struggle for Indian Sovereignty (University of Illinois Press, 1999)
The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin are groups of Native American tribes and First Nations peoples in North America. The modern Sioux consist of two major divisions based on language divisions: the Dakota and Lakota; collectively they are known as the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ. The term "Sioux" is an exonym created from a French transcription of the Ojibwe term "Nadouessioux", and can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or to any of the nation's many language dialects.
The Wounded Knee Massacre, also known as the Battle of Wounded Knee, was a massacre of nearly three hundred Lakota people by soldiers of the United States Army. It occurred on December 29, 1890, near Wounded Knee Creek on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the U.S. state of South Dakota, following a botched attempt to disarm the Lakota camp. The previous day, a detachment of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment commanded by Major Samuel M. Whitside approached Spotted Elk's band of Miniconjou Lakota and 38 Hunkpapa Lakota near Porcupine Butte and escorted them 5 miles (8.0 km) westward to Wounded Knee Creek, where they made camp. The remainder of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, led by Colonel James W. Forsyth, arrived and surrounded the encampment. The regiment was supported by a battery of four Hotchkiss mountain guns.
The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, also called Pine Ridge Agency, is an Oglala Lakota Indian reservation located virtually entirely in the U.S. state of South Dakota. Originally included within the territory of the Great Sioux Reservation, Pine Ridge was created by the Act of March 2, 1889, 25 Stat. 888. in the southwest corner of South Dakota on the Nebraska border. Today it consists of 3,468.85 sq mi (8,984 km2) of land area and is one of the largest reservations in the United States.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West is a 1970 non-fiction book by American writer Dee Brown that covers the history of Native Americans in the American West in the late nineteenth century. The book expresses details of the history of American expansionism from a point of view that is critical of its effects on the Native Americans. Brown describes Native Americans' displacement through forced relocations and years of warfare waged by the United States federal government. The government's dealings are portrayed as a continuing effort to destroy the culture, religion, and way of life of Native American peoples. Helen Hunt Jackson's 1881 book A Century of Dishonor is often considered a nineteenth-century precursor to Dee Brown's book.
The Great Sioux Nation is the traditional political structure of the Sioux in North America. The peoples who speak the Sioux language are considered to be members of the Oceti Sakowin or Seven Council Fires. The seven-member communities are sometimes grouped into three regional/dialect sub-groups, but these mid-level identities are not politically institutionalized. The seven communities are all individual members of the historic confederacy. In contemporary culture, the designation is primarily a linguistic, cultural, and for some, political grouping.
Ella Cara Deloria, also called Aŋpétu Wašté Wiŋ, was an educator, anthropologist, ethnographer, linguist, and novelist of European American and Native American ancestry. She recorded Native American oral history and legends, and she also contributed to the study of Native American languages. According to Cotera (2008), Deloria was "a pre-eminent expert on D/L/Nakota cultural religious, and linguistic practices." In the 1940s, Deloria wrote a novel titled Waterlily, which was published in 1988, and republished in 2009.
Vine Victor Deloria Jr. was an author, theologian, historian, and activist for Native American rights. He was widely known for his book Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (1969), which helped attract national attention to Native American issues in the same year as the Alcatraz-Red Power Movement. From 1964 to 1967, he served as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, increasing tribal membership from 19 to 156. Beginning in 1977, he was a board member of the National Museum of the American Indian, which now has buildings in both New York City and in Washington, DC, on the Mall.
Native American studies is an interdisciplinary academic field that examines the history, culture, politics, issues, spiritual, sociology and contemporary experience of Native peoples in North America, or, taking a hemispheric approach, the Americas. Increasingly, debate has focused on the differences rather than the similarities between other Ethnic studies disciplines such as African American studies, Asian American Studies, and Latino/a Studies.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is an American historian, writer, and activist, known for her 2014 work An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States.
Frank Fools Crow was an Oglala Lakota civic and religious leader. 'Grandfather', or 'Grandpa Frank' as he was often called, was a nephew of Black Elk who worked to preserve Lakota traditions, including the Sun Dance and yuwipi ceremonies. He supported Lakota sovereignty and treaty rights, and was a leader of the traditional faction during the armed standoff at Wounded Knee in 1973. With writer Thomas E. Mails, he produced two books about his life and work, Fools Crow in 1979, and Fools Crow: Wisdom and Power in 1990.
Spotted Tail ; born c. 1823 – died August 5, 1881) was a Brulé Lakota tribal chief. Although a great warrior in his youth, and having taken part in the Grattan massacre, he declined to participate in Red Cloud's War. He had become convinced of the futility of opposing the white incursions into his homeland; he became a statesman, speaking for peace and defending the rights of his tribe.
The Red Power movement was a social movement led by Native American youth to demand self-determination for Native Americans in the United States. Organizations that were part of Red Power Movement included American Indian Movement (AIM) and National Indian Youth Council (NIYC). This movement sought the rights for Native Americans to make policies and programs for themselves while maintaining and controlling their own land and resources. The Red Power movement took a confrontational and civil disobedience approach to inciting change in United States to Native American affairs compared to using negotiations and settlements, which national Native American groups such as National Congress of American Indians had before. Red Power centered around mass action, militant action, and unified action.
The Oglala are one of the seven subtribes of the Lakota people who, along with the Dakota, make up the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ. A majority of the Oglala live on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the eighth-largest Native American reservation in the United States.
Henry Lyle Adams was an American Native rights activist known as a successful strategist, tactician, and negotiator. He was instrumental in resolving several key conflicts between Native Americans and state and federal government officials after 1960. Born on a reservation in Montana and based in Washington state for much of his life, he participated in protests and negotiations in Washington, DC and Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
Crow Dog was a Brulé Lakota subchief, born at Horse Stealing Creek, Montana Territory.
Ex parte Crow Dog, 109 U.S. 556 (1883), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that followed the death of one member of a Native American tribe at the hands of another on reservation land. Crow Dog was a member of the Brulé band of the Lakota Sioux. On August 5, 1881 he shot and killed Spotted Tail, a Lakota chief; there are different accounts of the background to the killing. The tribal council dealt with the incident according to Sioux tradition, and Crow Dog paid restitution to the dead man's family. However, the U.S. authorities then prosecuted Crow Dog for murder in a federal court. He was found guilty and sentenced to hang.
Leonard Crow Dog was a medicine man and spiritual leader who became well known during the Lakota takeover of the town of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1973, known as the Wounded Knee Incident. Through his writings and teachings, he has sought to unify Indian people of all nations. As a practitioner of traditional herbal medicine and a leader of Sun Dance ceremonies, Crow Dog was also dedicated to keeping Lakota traditions alive.
Gladys Bissonette, "the brave–hearted woman of Wounded Knee", was an Oglala Lakota elder who was one of the leaders of the traditional faction during the violent turmoil on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation during the 1970s. Dick Wilson became Tribal Chairman in 1972 and began a "reign of terror" on the reservation. Wilson favored mixed–blood residents and close family and friends for positions in his office and created a special enforcing unit, known as the "Goon Squad", to police the region. This Goon Squad soon began to terrorize the residents of the reservation who openly spoke out against Wilson or disagreed with him, especially those who were pure–blooded Indians. Many attempts were made at impeaching Wilson, but Wilson always interfered and subsequently kept his position by sending out his Goon Squad to stamp out the residents who dared try to impeach him. "The past administrations all along have been pretty sly and crooked with Indian funds," said Gladys, "but they weren't quite as hard on us as this drunken fool we got now."
"Now That the Buffalo's Gone" is the first song from the 1964 album It's My Way! by Canadian First Nations singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie. The song's title refers to the near-extinction of the American bison and serves as a metaphor for the cultural genocide inflicted by Europeans. A classic folk protest song, "Now That the Buffalo's Gone" has a simple arrangement with guitar and vocals by Sainte-Marie and bass played by Art Davis. The song is a lament that addresses the continuous confiscation of Indian lands. In the song, Sainte-Marie contrasts the treatment of post-war Germany, whose people were allowed to keep their land and their dignity, to that of North American Indians.
Paul Chaat Smith (Comanche) is an author and an associate curator at the National Museum of the American Indian. He writes and lectures frequently on American Indian art and politics.
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