Memories of the Wounded Knee occupation -- one in a string of protests from 1969 to 1973 that pushed the American Indian Movement to the forefront of Native activism -- still run deep within people who were there.
WOUNDED KNEE, S.D. -As a medic during the occupation of Wounded Knee in early 1973, Thunder Hawk was stationed nightly in a frontline bunker in the combat zone between Native American activists and U.S. government agents in South Dakota.
"That's how close we are to our history," she told ICT recently. "So anything that goes on, anything we do, even today with the land-back issue, all of that is just a continuation. It's nothing new." Akim D. Reinhardt, who wrote the book, "Ruling Pine Ridge: Oglala Lakota Politics from the IRA to Wounded Knee," said the AIM protests had powerful social and cultural impacts.
Within days, hundreds of activists had joined them for what became a 71-day standoff with the U.S. government and other law enforcement. The takeover at Wounded Knee grew out of a dispute with Oglala Sioux tribal leader Richard Wilson but also put a spotlight on demands that the U.S. government uphold its treaty obligations to the Lakota people.
Two Native men died. Frank Clearwater, identified as Cherokee and Apache, was shot on April 17, 1973, and died eight days later. Lawrence "Buddy" Lamont, who was Oglala Lakota, was shot and killed on April 26, 1973. The tribes agreed in 2022 to purchase 40 acres that included the area where most of the carnage took place in 1890, the ravine where victims fled and the area where the trading post was located.
His parents, JoAnn Tall and Mark Tilsen, met at Wounded Knee, and he praises the women of the movement who sustained the traditional matriarchal system during the occupation. "It became a spiritual revolution," he said. "It also became a fight that was about human rights. It became a fight that was about where Indigenous people aren't just within the political system of America, but within the broader context of the system; of the world."
Alex Fire Thunder, deputy director of the Lakota Language Consortium, said the occupation of Wounded Knee and other activism helped revitalize Indigenous languages and cultures. His mother was too young to have participated in the occupation but he said she remembered visits from AIM members in the community.
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