PACIFIC NORTHWEST FISHING WARS

'Most important Indian' Hank Adams dies

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Hank Adams, one of Indian Country’s most prolific thinkers and strategists, has died at age 77.

Adams was called the "most important Indian” by influential Native American rights advocate and author Vine Deloria Jr., because he was involved with nearly every major event in American Indian history from the 1960s forward.

He was perhaps best known for his work to secure treaty rights, particularly during the Northwest “fish wars” of the 1960s and ’70s.

Henry “Hank” Adams, Assiniboine-Sioux, died Dec. 21 at St. Peter’s Hospital in Olympia, Washington, according to the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.

“Hank’s a genius. He knows things we don’t know. He sees things we don’t see,” attorney Susan Hvalsoe Komori said when Adams was awarded the 2006 American Indian Visionary Award by Indian Country Today.

“Adams was always the guy under the radar, working on all kinds of things,” said the late Billy Frank Jr., Nisqually and chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.

Adams was born in Wolf Point, Montana. Toward the end of World War II, his family moved to Washington state, where he attended Moclips-Aloha High School near the Quinault Nation. He played football and basketball and served as student body president and editor of the school newspaper and yearbook.

In 1963, Adams joined the National Indian Youth Council, where he began to focus on treaty rights just as the fish wars were beginning and Northwest tribes were calling on the federal government to recognize their treaty-protected fishing rights.

Adams had so many personal connections with people from that era, such as Mel Thom, Clyde Warrior and Willie Hensley. It was while Adams was working with the youth council that he first met Marlon Brando. The actor would be prominent later in the Frank’s Landing protests.

Also through the youth council, Adams began working at Frank’s Landing, on Washington’s Nisqually River, with Billy Frank and others who were striving to advance the treaty right to fish for salmon.

“That turned into a civil rights agenda,” Adams said in an interview. “It had been brutal from 1962 onward, and there were just a few fishermen down there, fighting with their families for their rights.”

To make a point, Adams refused induction into the military because the U.S. was failing to live up to its treaty obligations. (He eventually served for two years in the U.S. Army.)

As Washington state’s fish wars heated up in the 1960s, Adam was often working with Frank and other Northwest leaders on a strategy of civil disobedience through “fish-ins.”

Frank told a story about a 1968 fishing protest in Olympia “where all the police are.” But not everyone was supposed to be arrested. Frank said it was the job of Adams, the “visionary,” to protect them all. But when the arrests were made, “here comes our visionary.”

"I said, ‘What are you doing here? You’re supposed to get us out. You’re the strategist, thinking way out into the future,’” Frank said.

It was from those many trips to jail that eventually treaty-protected fishing rights were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Boldt decision affirmed the tribal right to fish in the usual and accustomed places in common with other citizens.

Adams’ role in the trial, which took place in Tacoma, Washington, was unprecedented. He was a lay-lawyer representing tribal fishing people and the last person to speak at trial. The judge considered Adams the most informed person to explain both the treaty and the people.

As the court case made its way through the process, Adams and Billy Frank found a way to meet with Judge George Boldt in chambers.

“We don’t want to talk to you about the case,” Adams recalled at the 40th anniversary dinner of the Boldt decision. Instead, the pair met with the judge to tell them that Montana Sen. Lee Metcalf was an admirer of the judge, who was also from Montana. They swapped Montana stories. And, the joke was the case could be resolved if it was just Montanans in the room.

The Supreme Court affirmed treaty rights and the Boldt decision in a series of cases in 1975.

Shortly before the 1972 election, a caravan of American Indians travelled from points across the country to Washington to protest broken treaties. After failed negotiations for housing, the protest ended up at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. And when the bureaucrats left for the day, the protestors remained.

Adams was also instrumental in resolving the 1972 takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Richard Nixon’s special assistant, Leonard Garment, said Adams’ role was essential. He said the story could have been tragic, with some in the administration calling for a military assault on the building.

Adams was both a public foil and a behind-the-scenes negotiator. The Trail of Broken Treaties submitted a plank of 20 proposals. Adams called the Nixon administration’s response “almost totally devoid of positive comment.”

But privately Adams and Garment worked on a resolution. Adams’ reward for being an intermediary? He was arrested in 1973 and his home searched for “government documents.”

“Plus they took my typewriter, which I’d had since 1968 during our encampment on the Nisqually River,” Adams said.

A federal grand jury refused to indict Adams (along with journalists who had been reporting on the incident), and eventually Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus ordered the material returned. He “directed the FBI to return everything that they’d taken from me and particularly my typewriter,” Adams said with a laugh.

Adams played a similar role during the standoff at 1973 Wounded Knee. He said a government helicopter flew him to White Clay, Nebraska, where he was to meet with the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service.

After that meeting, Adams was set to meet in Denver with Marlon Brando. The Justice Department was supposed to drive Adams back to the airport, but “they ran out of gas within sight of the airport.” Adams laughed. “The federal government doesn’t run out of gas. They didn’t want me to meet with Marlon Brando” and stir up public support for the occupation.

Using social media, Adams was meticulous over the years in his documentation of family histories, often used to help people grieve over the loss of family, or to call out people who lied and claimed Indigenous ancestry. He continued to monitor and press for treaty rights. And for Leonard Peltier’s release from prison.

Adams' family said a funeral is not possible at this time, but it will co-ordinate a memorial in the near future.

___

Information from: Indian Country Today, https://indiancountrytoday.com/

Mark Trahant, The Associated Pres

BIDEN DID NOT PARDON LEONARD PELTIER

Biden Urged to 'Do Better' After Pardoning or Commuting Sentences of Just 78 People

"This early use of clemency power is a good first step in the long road to end mass incarceration, but there is a lot more work to be done if the president is to fulfill his commitment to justice and equity."


JESSICA CORBETT

April 26, 2022

After U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday used his clemency powers for the first time—well over a year into his presidency—criminal justice reform advocates called on him to go even further to tackle mass incarceration.

"If we are to be a nation of second chances and justice for all, then the president must lead through his action—and clemency is a powerful way to lead."

Biden announced in a statement that he was pardoning three people and commuting the sentences of 75 others with nonviolent drug offenses. The president also revealed new steps his administration is taking "to support those reentering society after incarceration."

Framing Biden's pardons and commutations as "just modest steps," Inimai Chettiar, federal director of the advocacy group Justice Action Network, encouraged him "to meet the urgency of the moment."

"President Biden ran on a promise to help end mass incarceration, and he has broad public support for that promise," Chettiar told the Associated Press.

Noting that many people impacted by Biden's moves fit into categories called for by the ACLU's Redemption Campaign, an effort to free 50,000 people from U.S. prisons, Cynthia W. Roseberry, deputy director of the group's Justice Division, also welcomed the announcement while urging him to take more action.

Various polls "have shown that voters support the president using his clemency powers in a bold manner," she pointed out. "This early use of clemency power is a good first step in the long road to end mass incarceration, but there is a lot more work to be done if the president is to fulfill his commitment to justice and equity."

"In a poll soon to be released by the ACLU, there is broad support for the president to grant clemency," she continued. "Americans from all political ideologies support giving people a second chance. If we are to be a nation of second chances and justice for all, then the president must lead through his action—and clemency is a powerful way to lead."

Roseberry highlighted that the United States is responsible for "20% of the world's prison population despite comprising only 5% of the global population, with Black people 10 times more likely to be incarcerated for drug offenses than anyone else."

"At a cost of $80 billion annually, the carceral system is a behemoth albatross for justice and equality," she said. "The grant of clemency plus the initiatives announced as wraparound services is essential to returning people to their communities and to their families."

As Biden detailed Tuesday, the services include "a new collaboration between the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Labor to provide job training; new grants for workforce development programs; greater opportunities to serve in federal government; expanded access to capital for people with convictions trying to start a small business; improved reentry services for veterans; and more support for healtcare, housing, and educational opportunities."

Biden granted pardons to Abraham W. Bolden Sr., an 86-year-old former U.S. Secret Service agent; Betty Jo Bogans, a 51-year-old convicted of possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine; and Dexter Jackson, a 52-year-old convicted for using his business to facilitate the distribution of marijuana.


The president explained that he was pardoning three people "who have demonstrated their commitment to rehabilitation and are striving every day to give back and contribute to their communities."

"I am also commuting the sentences of 75 people who are serving long sentences for nonviolent drug offenses, many of whom have been serving on home confinement during the Covid pandemic—and many of whom would have received a lower sentence if they were charged with the same offense today, thanks to the bipartisan First Step Act," Biden added, referencing legislation signed into law by his predecessor.

"While today's announcement marks important progress," he said, "my administration will continue to review clemency petitions and deliver reforms that advance equity and justice, provide second chances, and enhance the well-being and safety of all Americans."
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GLORIA LA RIVA/LEONARD PELTIER CAMPAIGN FOR POTUS

https://www.larivapeltier2020.org/

Air India and the Conservatives

The Air India tragedy lays at the feet of our last Conservative government under then PM Brian Mulroney. A not unimportant political fact.

It was then covered up by the Liberals, whom were indebted to the RCMP for being the political guard dogs of the State; burning barns in Quebec, deporting Leonard Peltier, etc. etc.

And while the gnu Conservative government put in place the public inquiry, they had no choice after Bob Rae's report to the Liberal government on their screw up. And like their Liberal predecessors they continue to cover up for the RCMP.

But it was the Conservative government of the day that screwed up. Chickens, home, roost.

From day one the Air India bombing was seen as an Indian affair, not a Canadian one. The racism that led to this tragedy and its cover up is now finally seeing the light of day.

The fact Mulroney first called Gandhi to express condolences on the loss of life on the plane when most of the passengers were Canadians has long been criticised.

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Canada, anti-terrorism act, Government, Liberals, Conservatives, terrorism, crime, liberalism, state, statism, libertarian, civil liberties
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Liberal Genocide; The Lubicon

Back in the early 1970's the University of Alberta student newspaper the Gateway was a radical collective of left and right wingers, all opposed to the War in Vietnam and pro-student democracy. This was part of the move to democratize institutions and work places that was the New Left. The university took exception to their publishing the FLQ manifesto during the October Crisis, and offence to their front page picture of Uncle Sam humping a Canadian Beaver with the headline Fighting for Peace is like F***ing for Virginity. This got the paper banned and the collective was disqualified from running the paper.

I was still in high school, and part of the high school student radical movement, we also produced our own underground newspapers, as well as a Radio Program on CKUA and were active in the embryonic Video Guerrilla movement.. We produced an underground paper for the city that was called The Orb, much like the Georgia Straight, and had followed after the demise of the city’s first underground paper, the Rice Street Fish Market.

The Gateway staff did something unheard of and never done before or since, they took the paper, its advertising revenues and its membership in Canadian University Press (CUP), off campus. They killed the Gateway on campus and were reborn as a radical people’s community newspaper called, appropriately; Poundmaker; named after the Cree Chief who fought with Riel. Those of us working on The Orb, who were also doing a Peoples Defence Fund, providing the inner city youth, poor, and druggies with free legal aid, were approached by the Poundmaker folks to join forces in one newspaper. So we did.

One of the people in the collective was Bob Beal, a noted journalist and Prairie Historian, who has co authored one of the best books on the Riel Rebellion; Prairie Fire.

The paper identified a common struggle in Alberta, between workers fighting to unionize the then embryonic Tar Sands, the native peoples struggles in the same region, and the corporate dominance of Alberta under the new Lougheed Government. One of the stories that we broke that made the news was the disaster at Buffalo Lake, the outbreak of TB and the extreme poverty of the Woodland Cree people who belonged to the Lubicon Nation.

Because the paper also had members of the collective working for the Mainstream Press we were able to get national coverage of this disaster. A disaster of the then genocidal policies of the Department of Indian Affairs of the Trudeau Liberals, under the Minister of the day; Jean Chrétien. It was a paper policy of assimilation at all costs and here it was in all its horrible reality Northern Alberta. The independence of the aboriginal peoples was being denied by the Liberal Government of the day, and native resistance was growing to the policies of assimilation or death.

The Lubicon have been without treaty rights and denied a historical and geographical existence because they remained autonomous from Treaty 6. There are other aboriginal groups across Canada who remain autonomous, outside of the treaties, though small in number they actively supported the American Indian Movement, and in Alberta they developed their own schools, and community services, without State funding or regulation. And during the seventies one of these autonomous aboriginal communities gave ‘sanctuary’ to Leonard Peltier who was later illegally kidnapped from this autonomous zone by the RCMP on behalf of the FBI.

The Lubicon and their rights to the land, land they never gave up, land that has been sold by the Federal and Provincial governments to the Oil Companies and to the Logging industry, remains the longest unresolved land deal in Canadian history.

And it belies the current Liberal governments claim to be dealing with Aboriginal rights. The recent Aboriginal round table and the accord, was between federations of treaty Indians, and Métis who the colonialist Department of Indian Affairs approves. Who led these 'first peoples' discussions, who set their agenda, none other than Phil Fontaine, Liberal flack and President of the AFN, a comprador ogranization that is just an extension of the Department of Indian Affairs. Nothing was said, or done for the Lubicon.

Blogger Dr. Dawg has done an exceptional job on documenting this history of injustice, and yes modern day genocide by the Liberal Government in its treatment of the Lubicon. I thought I would end this article and quote his closing comments from his excellent article; Paul Martin: Crossing the Lubicon

It is an issue as important as that of the recent disasters on reserves over the unhealthy living conditions they have been left in. And unless a boycott campaign, such as was launched by the Friends of the Lubicon, draws attention to them, the Federal Government continues to ignore the Lubicon, and continues to perpetuate this injustice.

Dr. Dawg says it’s an issue for this election. I agree. It is a disgrace, and it exposes the real scandal that is the historical role of the Liberal Government and its policies towards Canada’s aboriginal peoples; Assimilation or Death.

Successive federal governments have intervened shamelessly to break the Lubicon resolve. Using its power to create Indian bands under the Indian Act, the Liberal government under Prime Minister Jean Chrétien invented two other bands, hoping to lure away Lubicon; the members of one band, the "Woodland Cree," had been promised $1000 each if they voted for a federal offer of a pitifully inadequate reserve, but they later found out that this would be deducted from their welfare payments.

This brings us almost to the present day, and Paul Martin's shameful continuation of this miserable tradition. He promised to start negotiations with the Lubicon by the end of March 2004, but this never took place, and federal officials claim that they have been given no mandate to negotiate. It's been bad faith all the way with Mr. Dithers.

Amnesty International has denounced Canada for its treatment of the Lubicon; and the UN Committee on Human Rights, which heard the Lubicon complaint and found against Canada in 1990, repeated its concerns only last month.

Decency demands that we make Martin and his Liberal "team" accountable for this outrage during the current campaign campaign. But we ought to be even-handed about it. We should embarrass the Conservatives, whose own record has been nothing to be proud of on aboriginal affairs, and we should force the NDP to put this issue on the front burner. The survival of the Lubicon--those who are left--depends upon it. Let's stand up for them before it's too late."

The Largest Global Gathering of Indigenous Leaders at the UN. Here’s what you need to know.

Yahoo News

Grist / Getty ImagesBY JOSEPH LEE,

 GRIST APRIL 17, 2023
This story is published as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, and Native News Online.

Indigenous peoples have long argued that they have done little to contribute to climate change but that they’re the most affected and are expected to make steep sacrifices to fix it. Funding for green energy projects continues to skyrocket despite clear and growing threats to Indigenous peoples’ lands and rights. Indigenous leaders persistently express concern over global conservation programs that remove communities from their traditional territories, while record numbers of environmental, Indigenous, and land defenders are killed.

That context is sure to inform conversations at this year’s United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, or UNPFII, which opens its 22nd session today in New York with a key thematic focus: Indigenous peoples, human health, planetary and territorial health, and climate change. An advisory agency with the United Nations since 2000, UNPFII is one of only three U.N. bodies that deal specifically with Indigenous issues, with a major focus on advocating for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or UNDRIP, a nonbinding resolution that affirms international Indigenous rights but is irregularly followed or applied by nations, and sometimes even by U.N. agencies. UNPFII offers Indigenous peoples, leaders, organizations, and allies an opportunity to raise specific issues to the agency in the hope of winding those issues through the international system to world leaders and policy makers.

“We are going to the U.N. because in our countries they are not hearing us,” said Majo Andrade Cerda, Kichwa member of the Global Indigenous Youth Caucus from Ecuador. “It’s a way for us to say we are still alive, because we don’t know when the states and the extractive industries are going to kill us. We are threatened every day.”

With COVID-19 restrictions continuing to loosen around the world, the forum will be conducted completely in person for the first time in four years at the United Nations’ headquarters in New York. And while travel costs can be immense for many Indigenous leaders, forum members say that in-person is generally more productive as many communities have struggled with poor internet connections. It also offers a rare chance for collaboration and networking among Indigenous peoples around the world. More than 2,000 participants have registered to attend this year.

According to forum members, past virtual and hybrid sessions have seen a lower number of attendees. Cerda hopes that more women and youth will be here this year, noting that their voices are critical and often overlooked. “Women are the holders of the ancestral knowledge,” she said. “We want to live in our communities, in our lands, for the rest of our lives and for the future generations.”

One key report on Indigenous determinants of health will be discussed this session. Based on a study conducted by forum members in 2022, it highlights factors that influence Indigenous health outcomes, including food systems, intergenerational trauma, access to traditional foods and plants, and sovereign rights. The authors recommend the U.N. and member states adopt a raft of strategies and programs, including incorporating Indigenous traditions in health assessment, offering medical services in Indigenous languages, and launching national awareness campaigns to combat misdiagnoses of Indigenous health issues. How to get those recommendations adopted by world leaders will be the biggest question. Attendees are expected to address specific health concerns from their communities, which will inform the recommendations that the forum ultimately makes to U.N. agencies and member states.

“Our goal with this report was to provide a structure and a framework to not only define what Indigenous determinants of health are, but to also provide a guide for U.N. agencies and stakeholders, as well as member states and countries, on how you approach health with Indigenous people,” said Geoffrey Roth, a Standing Rock Sioux descendent, one of the report’s authors, and an elected member of the permanent forum.

Last year in its final report, UNPFII called on member states and U.N. agencies to create and implement mechanisms that would better protect Indigenous peoples’ rights and territories, specifically calling out the United States and Canada to create action plans to actually implement the UNDRIP within their borders. Both countries have signed on as supporters of the declaration, but have not braided its recommendations into law and regularly violate the declaration’s principles. For example, in the U.S. a major copper mine is on track to destroy Oak Flat, a sacred area to the Apache, with the backing of the Biden administration. For years, it has faced resistance from tribal nations and Apache Stronghold, a coalition of Indigenous leaders, activists, and allies. Last month, President Biden approved ConocoPhillips’s Willow project in Alaska, an oil-drilling project, despite some local Indigenous communities’ opposition and climate concerns. In Canada, Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs have been protesting the Coastal GasLink pipeline on their lands for years, facing violent reprisals and arrests.

In the previous session, forum members and Indigenous leaders also highlighted the importance of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent — an international human rights standard that gives Indigenous communities control over development projects that impact them. Last year, Sámi leaders flagged a major wind-energy project in their traditional reindeer-herding territories that was established illegally and without their consent. That project sparked protests in Norway last month, culminating in the shutdown of multiple ministries by Sámi and environmental activists for nearly a week. Norwegian representatives have apologized for violating the Sámi’s human rights, but the windmills are still operational.

Since the last session, Indigenous representatives say their advocacy sparked some progress. Agencies within the U.N., like the World Health Organization, will host side events on Indigenous women and mental health, issues raised at the Forum last year. However, more concrete recommendations, including calling on the United States to grant clemency to Indigenous political prisoner Leonard Peltier, have gone unheeded. “We do not have more power to really push them to come and to do the things in the right way,” Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, an Indigenous Mbororo forum member from Chad, said. “It is their responsibility. It is their mandate to work with the Indigenous peoples.”

This year’s UNPFII also marks the anniversary of a 100-year fight waged by Indigenous leaders for influence at the international level. In 1923, Chief Deskaheh of the Iroquois League went to the League of Nations in Geneva to advocate for Indigenous sovereignty but was turned away. In 1925, Maori leader T.W. Ratana was also blocked from the League of Nations, where he hoped to protest the breaking of a treaty that affirmed Maori control over their lands in New Zealand.

Establishing UNPFII has been an important victory, but the forum still has no enforcement power over other U.N. bodies and little sway with member states. This year may see another shift in the forum, however. This session, the president of the U.N. General Assembly, H.E. Csaba Kőrösi, will hold a hearing on “enhanced participation” — a move that could put UNPFII and Indigenous nations on the same level as member states and allow participation in major meetings, like the General Assembly. Currently, that ability does not exist for forum members and other Indigenous leaders without a specific invitation from member states to major meetings, agencies, or hearings. “I wish that we could move forward on that conversation and find a meaningful way for tribal nations to be respected and have a voice within the U.N. system,” Roth said.

R. Múkaro Agüeibaná Borrero, member of the Guainía Taíno Tribe and president of the United Confederation of Taíno People, who has attended every session of the permanent forum since it began in 2000, acknowledges that progress at the forum can seem slow, but believes that their efforts pay off in the long term. “We know that the struggle is long, but as Indigenous peoples we know we have to be in that struggle for the long haul,” Borrero said.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.

Legacy of Wounded Knee occupation lives on 50 years later

By KALLE BENALLIE, 

INDIAN COUNTRY TODAY

Madonna Thunder Hawk, 83, sits in her home near Rapid City, S.D., on Feb. 9, 2023. She was one of the four women medics during the occupation of Wounded Knee, which started on Feb. 27, 1973 and ended May 8, 1973. “I would crawl out there every night, and we’d just be out there in case anybody got hit,” she recalls. (Kalle Benallie/Indian Country Today via AP)


WOUNDED KNEE, S.D. (AP) — Madonna Thunder Hawk remembers the firefights.

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.

“I would crawl out there every night, and we’d just be out there in case anybody got hit,” said Thunder Hawk, of the Oohenumpa band of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, one of four women assigned to the bunkers.

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 like Thunder Hawk who were there.

Thunder Hawk, now 83, is careful about what she says today about AIM and the occupation, but she can’t forget that tribal elders in 1973 had been raised by grandparents who still remembered the 1890 slaughter of hundreds of Lakota people at Wounded Knee by U.S. soldiers.

“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.”

Other feelings linger, too, over the tensions that emerged in Lakota communities after Wounded Knee and the virtual destruction of the small community. Many still don’t want to talk about it.

But the legacy of activism lives on among those who have followed in their footsteps, including the new generations of Native people who turned out at Standing Rock beginning in 2016 for the pipeline protests.

“For me, it’s important to acknowledge the generation before us — to acknowledge their risk,” said Nick Tilsen, founder of NDN Collective and a leader in the Standing Rock protests, whose parents were AIM activists. “It’s important for us to honor them. It’s important for us to thank them.”

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.

“Collectively, they helped establish a sense of the permanence of Red Power in much the way that Black Power had for African Americans, a permanent legacy,” said Reinhardt, a history professor at Towson University in Towson, Maryland.

“It was the cultural legacy that racism isn’t OK and people don’t need to be quiet and accept it anymore,” he said. “That it’s OK to be proud of who you are.”

A series of events in South Dakota in recent days recognized the 50th anniversary of the occupation, including powwows, a documentary film showing and a special honor for the women of Wounded Knee.

___

“THUNDERBOLT’ OF PROTEST

The occupation began on the night of Feb. 27, 1973, when a group of warriors led by Oklahoma AIM leader Carter Camp, who was Ponca, moved into the small town of Wounded Knee. The group took over the trading post and established a base of operations along with AIM leaders Russell Means, of the Oglala Sioux Tribe; Dennis Banks, who was Ojibwe; and Clyde Bellecourt, of the White Earth Nation.

Within days, hundreds of activists had joined them for what became a 71-day standoff with the U.S. government and other law enforcement.

It was the fourth protest in as many years for AIM. The organization formed in the late 1960s and drew international attention with the occupation of Alcatraz in the San Francisco Bay from 1969-1971. In 1972, the Trail of Broken Treaties brought a cross-country caravan of hundreds of Indigenous activists to Washington, D.C., where they occupied the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters for six days.

Then, on Feb. 6, 1973, AIM members and others gathered at the courthouse in Custer County, South Dakota, to protest the killing of Wesley Bad Heart Bull, who was Oglala Lakota, and the lenient sentences given to some perpetrators of violence against Native Americans. When they were denied access into the courthouse, the protest turned violent, with the burning of the local chamber of commerce and other buildings.

Three weeks later, AIM leaders took over Wounded Knee.

“It had been waiting to happen for generations,” said Kevin McKiernan, who covered the Wounded Knee occupation as a journalist in his late 20s and who later directed the 2019 documentary film, “From Wounded Knee to Standing Rock.”

“If you look at it as a storm, the storm had been building through abuse, land theft, genocide, religious intoleration, for generations and generations,” he said. “The storm built up, and built up and built up. The American Indian Movement was simply the thunderbolt.”

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.

By March 8, the occupation leaders had declared the Wounded Knee territory to be the Independent Oglala Nation, granting citizenship papers to those who wanted them and demanding recognition as a sovereign nation.

The standoff was often violent, and supplies became scarce within the occupied territory as the U.S. government worked to cut off support for those behind the lines. Discussions were ongoing throughout much of the occupation, with several government officials working with AIM leaders to try and resolve the issues.

The siege finally ended on May 8 with an agreement to disarm and to further discuss the treaty obligations. By then, at least three people had been killed and more than a dozen wounded, according to reports.

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.

Another man, Black activist Ray Robinson, who had been working with the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization, went missing during the siege. The FBI confirmed in 2014 that he had died at Wounded Knee, but his body was never recovered. A U.S. marshal who was shot and paralyzed died many years later.

Camp was later convicted of abducting and beating four postal inspectors during the occupation and served three years in federal prison. Banks and Means were indicted on charges related to the events, but their cases were dismissed by a federal court for prosecutorial misconduct.

Today, the Wounded Knee National Historic Landmark identifies the site of the 1890 massacre, most of which is now under joint ownership of the Oglala Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes.

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.

The purchase, from a descendant of the original owners of the trading post, included a covenant requiring the land to be preserved as a sacred site and memorial without commercial development.

And though internal tensions emerged in the AIM organization in the years after the Wounded Knee occupation, AIM continues to operate throughout the U.S. in tribal communities and urban areas.

In recent years, members participated in the Standing Rock protests and have persisted in pushing for the release from prison of former AIM leader Leonard Peltier, who was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder despite inconsistencies in the evidence in the deaths of two FBI agents during a shootout in 1975 on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

___

A NEW GENERATION

Tilsen, now president and chief executive of NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led organization centered around building Indigenous power, traces the roots of his activism to Wounded Knee.

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.

“I grew up in the American Indian Movement,” said Tilsen, a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation. “It wasn’t a question about what you were fighting for. You were raised up in it. In fact, if you didn’t fight, you weren’t going to live.”

Tilsen credits AIM and others for most of the rights Native Americans have today, including the ability to operate casinos and tribal colleges, enter into contracts with the federal government to oversee schools and other services, and religious freedom.

He said the movement showed the world that tribes were sovereign nations and their treaties were being violated. And when AIM and spiritual leaders such as Henry Crow Dog, Leonard Crow Dog and Matthew King joined the fight, it became intergenerational.

“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.”

Tilsen appreciates that his parents were willing to participate in an armed revolution to achieve one of their dreams of establishing KILI radio station, known as the “Voice of the Lakota Nation,” which began operating in 1983 as the first Indigenous-owned radio station in the United States.

The Dakota Access Pipeline protest in 2016 became a defining moment for him and his brother. They had wondered, he said, what would be their Wounded Knee?

“What made it so powerful and what made it different was that you actually had grassroots organizers and revolutionaries and official tribal governments coming together, too,” Tilsen said. “I think that Standing Rock in particular actually reached way further than Wounded Knee because of how the issue was framed around ‘water is life.’”

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.

“The whole point of AIM, the American Indian Movement, was to bring back a sense of pride in our culture,” Fire Thunder, Oglala Lakota, told ICT.

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FUTURE GENERATIONS

For Thunder Hawk, the issues became her lifelong work rather than momentary activism.

She joined AIM in 1968 and participated in the occupation at Alcatraz, the BIA headquarters, the Custer County Courthouse and Wounded Knee, as well as the Standing Rock pipeline protest in 2016.

She said work being done today by a new generation is a continuation of the work her ancestors did.

“That’s why we were successful in Indian Country, because we were a movement of families,” she said. “It wasn’t just an age group, a bunch of young people carrying on.”

She hopes her legacy will live on, that her great-great-grandchildren will see not just a photo of her but know what she sounded like and the person she seemed to be.

It’s something that she can’t have when she looks at a photo of her paternal great-grandparents.

“Hopefully that’s what my descendants will see, you know?” she said. “And with the technology nowadays, they can press a button, maybe, and it’ll come up.”

Frank Star Comes Out, the current president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, also believes it’s time for the previous generation’s work to be recognized.

Some of his family members strongly supported AIM, including his mother and father. He said it’s important to fight for his people, who survived genocide.

“That’s why I support AIM, not only on a family level,” he said. “I have a lot of pride in who I am as a Lakota. … Times (have) changed. Now I’m using my leadership to help our people rise, to give them a voice. And I believe that’s important for Indian Country.”

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ICT producer Stewart Huntington, based in Colorado, contributed to this report.

AP WAS THERE: The occupation at Wounded Knee


By TERRY DEVINE

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 A man holds up a rifle in Wounded Knee, S.D., in February 1973. On Feb. 27, 1973, members of the American Indian Movement took over the town, starting a 71-day occupation on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. 

(AP Photo/Jim Mone, File)

EDITOR’S NOTE — On Feb. 27, 1973, members of the American Indian Movement took over the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, starting a 71-day occupation on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

The standoff with the federal government grew out of turmoil within the Oglala Sioux Tribe as well as a protest of the federal government’s treatment of Native Americans. It became violent at times, and two Native American men were killed.

The siege left a lasting impact on members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the future of Native American activism.

On the 50th anniversary of the start of the occupation, The Associated Press is republishing this 1973 story by reporter Terry Devine, in the language and style used by journalists of the era.

Russell Means is pictured in Wounded Knee, S.D., in February 1973. Means, an American Indian Movement leader, said they were well armed. “We have high-powered rifles, shotguns, explosives and 14 hand grenades." (AP Photo/Jim Mone, File)

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WOUNDED KNEE, S.D. (Feb. 28, 1973) — Militant Indians who took over this small town continued to hold 11 hostages Wednesday after one exchange of gunfire and unsuccessful attempts at negotiations, authorities said.

Gunshots were exchanged between the Indians and federal marshals earlier in the day, according to a Bureau of Indian Affairs official, but there were no reports of injuries.

An FBI spokesman said there were 11 hostages, ranging in age from 12 to 82.

John McCardy, an FBI agent at the scene, said attempts had been made to reach agreement on release of the hostages. However, he said, “At this time, there have been no meaningful negotiations.”

The Indians, who were demanding to see two U.S. senators concerning a list of demands, repeated earlier assurances that the hostages would not be harmed.

Spokesmen for the Indians also said a cease-fire had been arranged with the FBI.

Dick Wilson, president of the Oglala Sioux tribe that lives on the reservation, issued a statement accusing American Indian Movement members of “mob rule” and trying to “overthrow the tribal government.”

Wilson, 38, said the takeover of the historic community should be regarded as a criminal act and the demonstrating Indians should be “held responsible and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

The brief flurry of shots had come when a car carrying several Indians from Wounded Knee stopped about half a mile from a roadblock set up by the marshals, the FBI spokesman said.

He said the Indians, whose leaders said they were well-armed, emerged from the car firing rifles at the officers, and the marshals returned fire.

Indian leaders said there was other gunfire when Indians warned off cars that came too close to the village. Federal officers at the scene refused to discuss the shots and say whether they were returned. Another FBI official said only the Indians fired.

Marshals had personnel vehicles equipped with machine guns transported to Pine Ridge, 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Wounded Knee, Wednesday, but the marshals declined to say if the vehicles would be taken to the site of the demonstration.

Spokesmen for the Indians said the occupying force had grown from 200 when the trouble started to 400 by Wednesday.

The takeover of the community, site of a bloody battle between the U.S. Cavalry and Sioux in 1890, began at about 10 p.m. EST on Tuesday. By the middle of the afternoon Wednesday, an FBI spokesman in Washington said, “The Indians are in charge of the town, hostages are there, roadblocks are up, the demands are the same.”

Clyde Bellecourt, of Minneapolis, a leader of the American Indian Movement, said the exchange of gunfire occurred when Indians fired warning shots over cars that came within a quarter of a mile of the village of about 100. He said federal marshals returned the fire.

Carter Camp, of Ponca City, Oklahoma, a national coordinator of AIM, said warning shots were fired by Indians at a low-flying airplane, but claimed it was not hit. Camp said the cease-fire was agreed upon before 2 p.m. EST.

Camp said the hostages would not be hurt unless authorities — who had surrounded the village — came too close.




- American Indian Movement leader Dennis Banks leans into the casket of an AIM member killed by U.S. marshals in Wounded Knee, S.D., in February 1973. (AP Photo/Jim Mone, File)

The Indians — including members of AIM and of the Oglala Sioux tribe — held nine members of one family and a Roman Catholic priest. They demanded that Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, of Massachusetts, and J.W. Fulbright, of Arkansas, both Democrats, come to the 2,500-square mile (6,475-square kilometers) Pine Ridge reservation to discuss the Indians’ grievances.

The trouble allegedly started when the Indians broke into a trading post in the town 140 miles (225 kilometers) southeast of Rapid City and armed themselves with weapons and supplies. Their demands included an investigation of the dealings of the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs with the Oglala Sioux. They also sought an ouster of the current leaders, including Richard Wilson, tribal chairman, who has feuded with AIM members in the past.

Bellecourt and Russell Means, another AIM leader, said the Indians were well armed. “We have high-powered rifles, shotguns, explosives and 14 hand grenades,” Means said.

“The government has two choices: either they attack and wipe us out like they did in 1890, or they negotiate our reasonable demands.”

Wounded Knee was the site of the last major confrontation between Indians and whites in the campaign to settle the West. More than 200 Indian women, children and old men were massacred on Dec. 29, 1890, by troops of the 7th Cavalry. That was the regiment led by Gen. George Custer that was annihilated 14 years before at the battle of the Little Big Horn in Montana.

 A child stands in front of sayings written on a wall during the occupation of Wounded Knee, S.D., by members of the American Indian Movement in 1973. (AP Photo/Jim Mone, File)

Memories of Wounded Knee reflect mixed legacy after 50 years

By STEVE KARNOWSKI

1 Dwain Camp of Ponca City, Okla. speaks Friday, Nov. 16, 2007 in Oklahoma City, during the Oklahoma Indians Survival Walk and Remembrance Ceremony near the state Capitol. Camp, a member of the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, was in California when his younger brother, Carter, called to say he and other leaders of the American Indian Movement took a group of activists into Wounded Knee in 1973. “He was telling me they were in a hell of a fight,” Camp, now 85, recalled. “I heard the gunfire and that was all I needed. I went up there and stayed for the duration of the standoff.” 

(Jaconna Aguirre/The Oklahoman via AP, File)

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Tensions that had been smoldering on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota flared up 50 years ago Monday, when activists from the American Indian Movement took over the town of Wounded Knee.

In the view of the protesters, Oglala Sioux tribal chairman Dick Wilson was in cahoots with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and other federal authorities, and used threats of violence to intimidate his critics. But the 71-day occupation quickly morphed into an outpouring of anger with the federal government over decades of broken treaties, the theft of ancestral lands, forced assimilation and other injustices dating back centuries.

Two Native Americans died in the fighting, and a U.S. marshal was left paralyzed.

Wounded Knee had already been seared into history as the site of an 1890 massacre by U.S. Army cavalry troops in one of the last major military operations against Native Americans on the northern plains. Accounts vary, but the massacre left around 300 Lakota dead — including children, women and older people. Congress apologized in 1990.

Ahead of the 50th anniversary of the occupation, The Associated Press reached out to people who were at Wounded Knee or involved from a distance to hear their stories.

DWAIN CAMP

Dwain Camp, a member of the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, was in California when his younger brother, Carter, called to say he and other leaders of the American Indian Movement took a group of activists into Wounded Knee.

“He was telling me they were in a hell of a fight,” Camp, now 85, recalled. “I heard the gunfire and that was all I needed. I went up there and stayed for the duration of the standoff.”

Their brother, Craig, a Vietnam veteran, also joined them. Camp said the rifles and shotguns the occupiers took from the trading post in town were no match for the weapons and armored vehicles the feds had.

“We were going to make it very expensive should they go ahead and roll in,” Camp said. “It didn’t come to that, thank goodness.”

Camp remembers the occupation with pride as “a very vital time” that changed his life. He said he experienced “the freest feeling that I could ever imagine.” He met AIM leaders who became famous, including Dennis Banks,Clyde Bellecourt and Russell Means. It was also a spiritual awakening for many occupiers and visitors, he said, with sweat lodge ceremonies providing a chance for prayer and learning about their traditions.

And it helped change the way Native Americans across the country saw themselves, Camp said.

“The Native people of this land after Wounded Knee, they had like a surge of new pride in being Native people,” he said.

Camp said the takeover was a catalyst for policy changes that had been “unimaginable” before, including the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, the Indian Child Welfare Act, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act and the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, to name a few. And it provided a focus for his own activism.

“After we left Wounded Knee, it became paramount that protecting Mother Earth was our foremost issue,” he said. “Since that period of time, we’ve learned that we’ve got to teach our kids our true history.”

Camp sees the fight over the Dakota Access Pipeline — which drew thousands of Indigenous people and supporters to the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota in 2016 and 2017 — as a continuation of the resurgence fueled by Wounded Knee.

“We’re not the subjugated and disenfranchised people that we were,” he said. “Wounded Knee was an important beginning of that. And because we’re a resilient people, it’s something we take a lot of pride in.”

Camp said he wished he could return to Pine Ridge for the 50th anniversary observances, but traveling isn’t easy at his age. Instead, he plans to get together with his surviving brother, Craig, who lives near him in Ponca. They’ll burn some of the sacred sage that family members bring back every year from South Dakota.



JIM HUGGINS

FBI Special Agent Jim Huggins was on the other side of the roadblocks. He was one of several agents from the Denver FBI office who went to Wounded Knee to back up their colleagues.

“It was a dangerous situation,” recalled Huggins, 83, who’s retired and lives in Frankfort, Kentucky. “The people that took over the town of Wounded Knee were a group of militants, mostly out of Minneapolis. ... They were dedicated members of the American Indian Movement and were very anti-FBI.”

Huggins said there was often an exchange of gunfire between the two sides.

“Every time you were out on the roadblocks, you could anticipate a shot coming your way,” he said. “You could hear them whizz by pretty close sometimes. ... It seemed like every night just after sunset a few shots would ring our in our direction.”
MORE ON WOUNDED KNEE ANNIVERSARY– AP WAS THERE: The occupation at Wounded Knee

Unlike Camp, Huggins doesn’t think much good came out of the occupation.

“I think it was totally unnecessary on their part,” he said. “I base that on interviewing several Native Americans who lived for years on the reservation. They were totally against the takeover.”

And Huggins believes the ongoing tensions between AIM and authorities led to the killings of two FBI agents in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation two years later, one of whom was a good friend of his. AIM activist Leonard Peltier maintains he was wrongly convicted in their deaths, but successive presidents have denied requests for clemency.

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PHIL HOGEN

Phil Hogen was chief of staff to new U.S. Rep. James Abdnor, whose district included the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, when the occupation began just a few weeks after they moved to Washington.

“We were sort of on the front page of the Washington Post for 71 days while this was going on,” Hogen recalled. He said Abdnor “did not look kindly on that disruption. He was all for resolving differences.” But he said they worked hard to try to find a resolution, consulting with the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service and the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Hogen, 77, who lives off the reservation in Black Hawk, South Dakota, now has mixed, but mostly negative, views on the occupation.

“It was regrettable in many respects,” he said. “That is, the disruption of government, the confrontation, the loss of lives. I don’t know that all of those wounds have yet healed. But at the end of the day there was a greater awareness of American Indian/Native American concerns and injustices they had been exposed to.”

As a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, Hogen said he could identify with some of their concerns.

“But it didn’t start out from my perspective as a national confrontation, rather a national confrontation looking for a place to happen,” he said. Tribal leader Wilson “sometimes ruled with an iron hand, but sometimes on Pine Ridge that was necessary.”

Hogen went on to serve as U.S. attorney for South Dakota under President Ronald Reagan.

If any lasting good came out of the occupation of Wounded Knee, Hogen said, it was that it “reminded the whole country about what a tragedy the original massacre was, and how those concerns or wounds were probably never appropriately addressed. It probably steered some resources toward solving some of those problems. ... But it left a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of people, so it cut both ways.”

Hogen said it’s also unfortunate that relatively little has been done with the massacre site, which was mostly private land until last fall.

“It’s the site of a national tragedy, and its regrettable that it isn’t better memorialized there than it is,” he said.

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JIM MONE

Jim Mone had been a photographer with The Associated Press in Minneapolis for about 3 1/2 months when he was sent to cover the takeover. He packed a couple hundred pounds of equipment — including photo transmitters, a complete darkroom and a bulk pack of black-and-white film — and got on a flight to Rapid City, South Dakota.

The closest available motel room was in the town of Martin, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) east of Wounded Knee. He set up his darkroom in the bathroom and mixed his chemicals. His editor soon arrived and said, “Let’s go to Wounded Knee.”

But that wasn’t easy. The FBI and AIM had erected roadblocks. So they took backroads to get as close as they could, ditching their car about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) away, and started walking. Soon they came upon surprised AIM members who let them keep going.

“They were courteous enough to tell us how much farther we had to go,” said Mone, 79, of of the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington.

Entering Wounded Knee, they saw a ransacked church where activists and journalists had gathered — and men with rifles. But Mone said he developed good relations with AIM leaders in the seven weeks he was there.

“They knew they needed the media, so I don’t think any media people got hurt,” he said. “You could get inches away from them, and photograph them. They treated us quite well and respectfully.”

The most worrying moments, he said, included firefights when he could see tracer bullets overhead, and a when a jet buzzed the town just a few hundred feet overhead.

To get an edge on his competition, Mone said, he practically crawled into a packed tipi where AIM activists and federal authorities smoked a peace pipe to mark the deal to end the occupation. He developed his film using equipment in his trunk before driving back to his motel, where he used a bulky transmitter connected to his room phone to send in the key picture, which Mone said was used by The New York Times the next day.

Mone said the atmosphere as the deal was signed was courteous, tense and businesslike all at once, and he believed that the fact the final negotiations were conducted in a tipi was “a sign of respect to the Native Americans.”

Retired Associated Press Photographer Jim Mone sits with prints of his photos taken from his coverage at Wounded Knee, Friday, Feb. 24, 2023, in Bloomington, Minn. On Feb. 27, 1973, members of the American Indian Movement took over the town of Wounded Knee, starting a 71-day occupation on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Mone was there to capture images of the standoff as it stretched into weeks. 

(AP Photo/Abbie Parr)