Dialogues inside Wounded Knee
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Gary Phillips
Special to Variation
Editor's note: Gary Phillips, Carolina
Union President for 1973-1974, spent a
part of spring vacation this semester at
Wounded Knee, amidst the confrontation
between the Oglala Sioux and the federal
government.
Here is his eyewitness account of the
conversations and events experienced
during his brief stay within the Indian
encampment.
Dawn, and my second day at Wounded
Knee. A tall white steeple rises into the
morning sky from the frame church
beside me, symbolizing many things. I
remember thinking, the Indians don't
need tall white steeples, their gods would
laugh at them.
.Warming my hands over the barrel fire,
it was hard to believe that I was really
there. It was hard to believe that I had
just the day before stepped out of a tiny
Piper Cub some 35 miles away after
flying with an Apache friend. It was hard
to believe the armed and hostile federal
marshalls who roughed us up and
searched - us before allowing us to walk
into Wounded Knee, x .
Indian Demands - .
The first thing you notice entering the
Pine Ridge, South Dakota reservation is a
garish road sign saying "Wounded Knee
Massacre National Historic Site. Trading
Post. Authentic Arts and Crafts. See the
Mass Burial Grave and Indian Museum."
Soon after we hit the roadblocks,
spending several hours convincing the
federal marshalls to let us in and finally
having to leave the car and walk into the
reservation.
During the two or three mile walk,
David, who is one of the few living
full-blooded Apaches, and I discussed the
Indian's demands. Provoked by
conditions on the Pine Ridge reservations,
the Oglala Sioux had put forward three
demands:
That a full-scale investigation be made
by the Senate into the Bureau of
Indian Affairs.
That an investigation be conducted of
treaties broken by the United States.
That the present governmental system
in Pine Ridge (run completely by the
BIA) be abolished and Indians be
allowed to elect their own officials and
set up their government.
The Oglala Sioux at Pine Ridge are
caught in an extreme bind. The BIA does
not recognize that they own any land at
all, but are "trustees" of reservation land,
which means they are not eligible for any
federal grants that help support the white -ranchers
in the area. In essence, they are
forced to lease their land for as little as a
dollar an acre to survive, in many cases
losing welfare benefits by doing even
that.
The tribal .government is totally
controlled by the BIA. Richard Wilson,
the current tribal chairman is a prime
example of what this system produces.
On an $18,000 annual salary, Wilson has
$12,000 cars, a mansion, and hundreds of
acres of land purchased from Indians. He
has been indictedvfor larceny, but the
BIA kept him from going to trial.
Wilson's first act after his becoming tribal
chairman was to develop a "goon"
squad to destroy political opposition. Six
of the eight reservation districts have had
open meetings and voted to demand
Wilson's impeachment, but they have
been ignored.
Conversations
As the old Catholic church being used
as a stronghold came into view, several
Indians ran up to tell us to take cover
because the federal marshalls were firing
into the church, but the gunfire soon died
down.
How can I describe the feeling at
Wounded Knee? There was unity of a
people who share a common bond, a love
of their culture and pride in their lives. As
Young Bear told me, "You are pushed
and pushed and pushed until you have to
do something physical or destroy
yourself. I have committed everything I
am to this." That was the general
consensus at Wounded Knee, a total
committment.
Soon after arriving I began to talk to
various people. There was a small
communication problem because I was
white, but I knew various people there, so
I was fairly quickly accepted. One old
lady told me she was beaten by Wilson's
men because of speaking out in a tribal
meeting against his policies. Aaron
DeSevsa, longtime fighter for Indian
rights and editor of The Shannon County
Notes, an Indian newspaper, told me his
house had been firebombed by Wilson's
men.
It was growing dark by then, and
becoming bitter cold. The BIA decision
was made that afternoon to cut off all
electricity, fuel, and food supplies to
Wounded Knee, and we spent a cold
night. It began to snow about 1 1 o'clock,
but people came in all night, and, by the
morning, there were at least 300 Indians
i
and supporters in our camp. That night I
met Russel Means, the AIM leader, and
we talked.
By ten the next morning, the federal
i marshalls, frustrated by the Indians'
r stubbornness, had begun to fire
haphazardly into the camp in an attempt
to scare the Indians into leaving. It was
frightening, and there was a lot of talk
about a 2nd Wounded Knee Massacre, but
the shots soon died down. By that time,
there were a lot of determined people at
Wounded Knee from all over the United
States-Sioux, Apache, Navajo, Mohawk,
Shoshone and others.
1890 Massacre
I sat down and talked to an old
woman who remembered talking to her
grandfather about the 1890 massacre at
Wounded Knee, "they were doing a ghost
dance," she told me, "and the whites
came in and murdered them because they
were angry about the whites dying at
Little Big Horn. Even after the white men
murdered them, they couldn't leave their
bones at peace. They said "It would be
great for tourists that a lot of Indians
died here." So they built a trading post
and a museum. They're making money
off those people's bones. Now we are
wondering if in 50 years they will put up
a highway sign to say come and see the
ones w ho died in 1973."
Just then a tall gray-haired Indian man
in full Iroquois Indian dress walked by.
and I recognized htm from a workshop on
Indian awareness in Arizona. He was the
editor of Akwcsjsne Xotes. a well-known
Indian newspaper. I asked him a couple
of questions, but he had an urgent
meeting with AIM leaders. He was really
worried about something setting off the
federal marshalls, and. as I understand it,
did a lot to help avoid a real
confrontation between Indians and BIA.
He was well-respected by the people
there.
There was a feeling in the air that
something would happen that day. A
group of Apache and Sioux built a sweat
lodge to prepare for the battle they were
sure was coming. There was a great deal
of quiet at that time, and it seemed like a
depression had taken over. Suddenly a
small plane flew in, circled low. and
dropped several packages. It turned out
to be food supplies, which raised spirits a
good deal.
I'll never forget that afternoon.
Everyone suddenly figured out that there
were a lot of Indians there from many
different tribes, and everyone was
excited. Songs were sung and dances
danced; stories were swapped and cultures
compared. There was still a tension, but
many fine things were going on.
Ghost Bear
I recognized a face in the crowd
around a campfire. It was Ghost Bear,
known to the U.S. Census as Mike Boots,
an old man, very wealthy by Indian
standards, who lived in nearby
Akwasasne, Canada. We had met while he
was travelling with an Indian group that
did a seminar in Chapel Hill. His tribe was
lucky in that it was kind of isolated from
white influence, so he knew a great deal
about his own culture. He remembered
me and was really glad to see me.
Ghost Bear is a small man with
piercing brown eyes and grayish black
hair. He is a gentle man, proud of his own
heritage and sensitive to the problems of
his people.
.We sat down to talk. He was a little
sad because he wasn't sure it was right for
Indians to act this way. "I used to
believe," he said, "that we could just
ignore the white man and live our lives as
Iroquois, but we can't. You can't ignore
something when it is starving you, making
you less than a man. AH the white man
wants to do is to control, to rule. An
Indian is just a part of everything around
him; that's the difference."
I had to leave that night to get back to
Chapel Hill for classes, forced to take a
cycle and go over fields so 1 wouldn't get
arrested or shot at, Ghost Bear's words
were very close to my mind for a long
time.
"All the white man wants to to is rule
and control. The Indian is a part of
everything around him. He respects life.
That's the difference."
AND
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