Sunday Forum; Wounded Knee

When we, when we negotiated on this treaty, we were talking as nation to nation, we were a soonation in the United States, government, United States, with a nation. And this is how this treaty was drawn up. And at that time, they said that East banks of Missouri River, South Bank of the Pat River, dead of Big Horn, and up to Canada line, there was our soonation. Then that's how it's written down in our treaty. Then they start seeing some real fertile land where farmers could farm in. And gold and timber, all their natural resource that we had. And so they start diminishing our land on their public domain acts. So that 1868 treaty, where the government in a soonation is a supreme law. This treaty also provided that all changes had to be voted by three quarters of the adult

Sue males. This was never done. Instead, in 1871, Congress voted that all Indians came under Congress as words of the government. And later, in 1924, declared the U.S. citizens. Thus, without the consent of the Indians, they were legislated from free men into wards of the U.S. government and then into citizens. Many Indians never accepted this. Some, like sitting bull, a hunk-pop of Sue, refused to come into Pine Ridge Agency and be registered under the BIA. They were called hostile. The same bull was finally arrested and murdered, and the next year, 300 of his followers from the band of Bigfoot were massacred at wounded knee. In the morning, the soldiers began to take all the guns away from the Bigfoot, who were camped in the flat below the little hill, where the monument and going ground are now. The people had stacked most of their guns and even their nods by the T.B. were Bigfoot with lying sit.

Soldiers were on the little hill all around, and their soldiers across the dry gulp to the south, and over eased along wounded knee Creek, too. The people were nearly surrounded, and the wagon guns were pointing at them. Some had not yet given up their guns, and so the soldiers were searching all the T.B.'s throwing things around and poking into everything. There was a man called Yellow Bird, and he and another man were standing in front of the T.B. where Bigfoot was lying sit. They had white sheets around and over them, with eye holes who looked through, and they had guns under these. When Officer came to search them, he took the other man's gun, and then started to take Yellow Bird. But Yellow Bird would not let go. He wrestled with the officer, and while they were wrestling, the gun went off and killed the officer. While he chews and some others had said he meant to do this, the dog chief was standing right there. He told me it was not so. As soon as the gun went off, dog chief told me, an officer shot and killed Bigfoot, who was lying sit inside the T.B., then suddenly nobody knew what was happening. He said that the soldiers were all shooting, and the wagon guns began going off right among the people.

Many were shot down right there. The women and children ran into the goats in a breast, dropping all the time, so the soldiers shot them as they ran. They were only about a hundred warriors, nearly five hundred soldiers. The warriors rushed to where they had piled their guns and knives. They felt the soldiers with only their hands until they got their guns. Dog chief saw Yellow Bird run into a T.B. with his gun, and from there he killed soldiers until the T.B. caught fire, and he died full of bullets. It was a good winter day when all this happened, the sun was shining, but after the soldiers washed away from their dirty work, a heavy snow began to fall. The wind came up in the night, there was a big blizzard, and it grew very cold. The snow drifted deep into the crooked belt, and it was one long grave of butchered women and children and babies who had never done any harm, and were only trying to run away. With each treaty, the Sioux were forced to give up more land in return for supposed benefits like white education and rations, which in fact only made them more dependent. One of the Sioux's spiritual leaders in wounded knee was black elk.

Inside the trading post, he talked about the white man's attempt to assimilate the Indian. Now, we were civilized, that time we don't have no roads or hospitals or schools or jails or penitentries and policemen and patrols and marshals and FBI's and them kind. We don't have them, we were civilized, we were educated. These people, we never invite them in the first place, and they come over, and they want to survive. In fact, we welcome them with open arms and they survive with our philosophy. We tell them how to live, how to live by nature. Now they use force, they kill our buffles, and they use armament, military. In 1876, the sacred black hills were taken by whites for mining.

Then tribal land which had been held collectively was parceled out in an attempt to remake the Indian into the image of the individual white homesteader. Many couldn't pay the new taxes and had to sell or mortgage their land. All we had our government, our reservation, and they kept cutting us down and finally they established furniture reservation, and then they were presenting some good farm lands, and there's no other employment here on the reservation, so they start opening up land seal, they call it force pattern, and that's how modern non-ins are by Indian land. What kind of prices did people get? They get it on. At one time they were dollar and acre, and at one time we went up to five and ten, fifteen, now it's thirty-three thousand acre now.

The prices set by the government? Yes. The tenant praises us on from the area office, he walks on the land, and it looks so well, it's worth $17.00 in these units, I would surprise you. That's why we lost quite a bit of our reservation. Under this, to be consolidated, so many section of land into one unit, and the non-Indian Indian were bid for them, and the non-Indian could go to your bank and borrow money, so he will get down there, and we had a hard time getting the money. The new tribal council was a white form of government with elected politicians, instead of the old consensus government led by the respected elders. Inside the wounded knee trading post, Grace Blackok, Oglala Suh spoke about the old and new government. But this tribal government is a substitute for our way to try to take it over, but we're going back to where we used to be. Do you feel the tribal council is the product of the white men?

It's run by white people's laws at BIA, everything that they come up with laws has been made by the white people, and this BIA is just a puppet. It's just a puppet that they hold him by a nose and tell him what to do, so he tries to force his authority on the Indian people, whether they like it or not, and that's how to come, we're talking now, we don't want that, no more, we want to think for ourselves. We've got our minds, Grace to give us a mind, we've got our own way too. We can't live by somebody else's thinking. By dividing up the land, the government tried to destroy the collective basis of Indian economy and tribal life. The attempt was also made to destroy Indian culture. Indian religion was outlawed. Families got welfare checks only if their children went to the BIA or a mission school where they were forbidden to speak their own languages. Missionaries flocked in and built 137 churches on Pine Ridge reservations.

By the 1970s, Pine Ridge reservation had 54% unemployment, a growl-a-average life expectancy was 46 years, and white violence towards the Indians continued. In February 1972, Raymond Yellow's under from Porcupine on Pine Ridge reservation was beaten by two whites, the hare brothers. Throw a naked into an American-leting dance, beaten again, and locked in a truck. He was found two days later, sitting up dead in a parked car, covered with welts and burns. His convicted murderers received a three-month sentence and a suspended sentence for a charge of second-degree manslaughter. Raymond Yellow's under his uncle of mine and his sister's up, and he all lived in Porcupine. So when that happened, they went to BIA for help, they went to the trads for help, they went to some private attorneys for help, because they won't let him see the body,

they won't let him see the autopsy report, and you see the coffin when they brought it back. When A.M. came in and helped the family, looking to help him, and his death, and that made the older people that are living out on the reservation, I mean, out in the country, they kind of lifted up their head and they were kind of speaking out then, and they didn't talk and bond against BIA, tribal government, or a long-order system on the reservation, plus some of the non-Indian ranchers that are living on the reservation, been abusing Indian, and it was brewing, and it finally happened, it wanted me. At the same time, resentment of new tribal president Dick Wilson grew, and this is the most corrupt government you ever want to know about.

I grew up in a dirty corruption that there's no... I couldn't explain it any worse than that, there's a worse we have ever had. He just sold us down the river too, FHA, he was going to miss our lands, you know, two different cattle out there, it's clear down the Texas without us knowing it. People on the reservation organized the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization to fight Wilson, we were just beaten, so bad, we wanted to do something and try to get him out of there because we were abused, we were beat up, and she was just harassing like that has happened, and we just kept having meetings and meetings down in Calico and Cal somebody came up with the idea of civil rights, and we're out with a pretty good idea, so that's the song we went along with it, that's the time it was something we had to do and we had to do it, you know, real quick, right, because they beat people up and walk for us, for me they were always constantly harassment, they broke the windows out of the car,

they cut our tires, they chased my kids home from school, they call my kids all kinds of dirty names, when I go down tell them they follow me in the grocery store, and it was just things like that and that cop, it finally got the visa out, but in the front of our, you know, across the street, walking the house on that mall, and it just gets from bad to us, and that's why I just kept fighting, and I think what we're doing is not, really do, I mean, because I enjoy one that suffered, there's a lot of, in fact, I think there's a lot of people in time that suffering that are still suffering yet because of the mall. Starting last fall, the civil rights organization held a series of community meetings to bring impeachment proceedings for misuse of tribal funds against Dick Wilson. Based by growing opposition, Wilson and Stan Lyman, head of Pine Ridge, BIA, called in federal marshals in early February to back up the tribal police, but three council members backed by the civil rights organization and older tribe members brought impeachment proceedings

against Wilson on February 14, we talked with Ellen Moose Camp, civil rights leader from Pine Ridge. From that time on, we went on down the Calico to have our meetings and to decide what we were going to do next. We decided that we did need the American Indian Movement in here because our men were scared. They hung to the back. It was mostly the women that went forward and spoke out and we were practically pushing our men to make them help us. When we took this vote at Calico, it was voted in everybody voted that we invite the American Indian Movement in. This included many of the chiefs on the reservation. Yes, it did. We included all of them. Practically, all of them, there was just one minister and that wasn't there but he's all real old and he's sickly and he couldn't make it and he was, so he was the only one that wasn't there.

And when we kept talking about it, then the chiefs said, go ahead and do it, go to wounded me. Take, make your stand there. How many people came in originally? There were 54 cards when we counted them. That left Calico to come up, that came up here that night. All the cards were just packed. What did you expect to happen? Well, you know, this is the first time a lot of us has been on one of these, you know, a takeover of a building or a takeover of a piece of land. And most of us figured we'd probably be here one night or maybe a couple nights at the most or four nights. We thought we'd be able to drive back and forth and send messages back and forth freely. What did we do? We didn't think we was going to be the cage tin like a bunch of animals. Why do you think they turned so much fire power on you? Because I know that life to shoot us, we've been intimidated.

But and harassed, but this is something we couldn't bear it. Since we are here in wounded me, we've had, we've been shot at over and over. I always after dark, but last night we were hit the hardest. I guess the great spirit is with us and no bullets find their way into our bodies. We asked Stan Holder, head of security inside wounded me, about the kind of fire they were receiving from the government. Automatic weapons fire M60. It's a 7.62 NATO round. M16 weapon used in Vietnam by United States Armed Forces. 30 calibers which are either mounted or built into these armored personnel carriers are carrying. Naturally, they're 30 out of 6 with normal hunting rifles that the white ranchers use and the vigilantes use around here that they say aren't there.

Also shot guns used by the BIA policemen and 38, 44 Magnum, things of this nature. Also they've been using gas, which they say they haven't been using and they've been using explosive devices that throw shrapnel that they say they haven't been using. I don't know exactly what they are, I've seen them go off but I haven't been able to see one intact yet. Day after day, fire fights broke out between the government forces on the hills and the wounded knee bunkers built around the perimeter of the little valley. And under intense fire, the community of 300 and more people settled in for a while. Apartments in bunk beds were built inside the large empty trading post. A clinic was set up in one of the houses where medicine men, crow dog, took out the bullets from three people who were wounded. The three churches in wounded knee were used for meetings, sleeping in Indian religious ceremonies and a sacred ground with TP and sweat lodge were set up on the hill below the Catholic Church where the victims of the 1890 massacre were buried. As Indians, along with some whites and chicanos from all over North America, arrived over

the hills at night, communal kitchens were set up on a regular basis. Floralai, Asu Indian, in head of the clinics, talked to us about the Indian basis of wounded knee life. People go way back to like Indian culture, you know, Indian life as it was and it worked for thousands and thousands of years until the white men came, we all had to be changed. Like, Indian people, there's one with nature. And if we lose that, you know, like, look at white America today, they don't have what we have. We have our spiritualism. We have our beliefs. And even here at wounded knee, you know, this country, our new, this independent organization is run the Indian way. We have our spirituality, as Indian camp had, you know, every band, we have our medicine men. Like, here, you know, like the hospital, how it's set up, Indian people run it. We have Western medicine over there and Indian medicine roots, herbs.

And like, even the doctors, though, you know, you can wrap it, then they'll tell you, you know, that Indian's medicine is working better in Western medicine, here and in this, you know, in this camp. Even the Indian way of thinking, you know, sharing its here, you know, like the guys that go out in the underground train are like the hunters, like an Indian camp, you know. And we have the warriors, the guys out in the bunkers. We have the women, and the women are, you know, just are here, just like it was thousands of years ago, you know, when there was war. Men here are here with their families, and it's like one Indian camp, you know, and it's cool because there's so many different tribes represented here, tribes that were, you know, long time go over enemies. Two weeks after the occupation began, the aglala people declared the independent aglala nation. Well, this place is almost in the nation, it was always recognized as the nation, you know, and you go back into the 1868 treaty, it's all inner, that's why we took the

stand. Who was it that made the decision to declare a foul at the time the road blocks were up so there was people from the reservation that came in and they had a meeting in the city, and the people here on the reservation, it's the one that had that announced. Not the young people. No, it wasn't American Indian movement people, it was the people here on the reservation that done it. And do you feel that by the independent aglala nation we met the whole reservation? Well, it's going to be the whole reservation because all the people will stand with us. We know this. That's why we're here. In meetings we're held in the trading post every evening. All meetings began with singing around the drum and a prayer by black elk or crow dog. Important decisions were made by the aglala civil rights people and the aim leadership in other daily meetings. Well, when we have a meeting when we have something to decide, I mean to make a decision

like that, we call all the people together, I mean, you know, and we sit down and we talk about it, then we decide on it. Or if someone doesn't agree, we just keep going until it's an anonymous rule. As weeks went by, the government blockade on food in medicine grew tighter, as the government tried a modern version of the old tactic of destroying the Indian economy and starving the Indians into submission. But what there was was free, there was no use in wounded knee for money, or for the cars which quickly ran out of gas. All supplies had to be packed in by foot for miles over the hills, often through heavy gunfire from government roadblocks. For many of the younger Indians, especially those who had grown up in the cities, wounded knee meant a coming home to Indian community and Indian tradition. A major part of that influence was the continual spiritual guidance of Sue medicine men crow dog and black elk, both in general meetings and in the ceremonies and dances.

There's a mystery to wonders how the creation, how this green form, like now the greens are coming up and the living creatures take formation, there is fear working every day, every movement. So he's here, every movement, every second. And so we have, we need to never stipulate nothing, because of fear is here and we know he's a turn into you, and we know he's everything, and we are part of it, is creation. After weeks of trying to starve out the Indians, the government finally agreed to sit down and negotiate about the Sue treaty rights. This had been the major demand of the Indians all along. They felt it as major importance to sign an agreement in which the government recognized the treaty rights of the Sue Nation.

This was said an important precedent for the 371 broken treaties with Indians all over North America. The Indians agreed to end the occupation if a treaty commission was set up with a government and the traditional head men in chiefs of all the Teton Sue tribes. During the negotiations, wrestle means aim leader in a glala Sue, voice the feeling of many of the Indians. This is the last chance for Americans and people to get our treaty rights. Not only before the public of the United States and the public of the world, but into your courts and into substantial discussions with the federal government. We want the recognition as a people, as a sovereign people, by that White House, otherwise it's going to come down to the massacre. Now this is our last gasp as a sovereign people, and if we don't get these treaty rights, we can't recognize that as human beings, as equal to the Constitution of the United States, by law they are, then you might as well kill me, because I have no reason for living.

And that's why I'm hearing you underneath. Because nobody is recognizing Indian people, as human beings, to be dealt with as human beings, they're laughing it off in Time Magazine and Newsweek Magazine and the editors of New York and what have you, they treat this as a silly matter. Just as a tree that Indian people throughout history, and we're tired of being treated that way. And we're not going to be treated like it anymore, you're going to have to kill us. Because I'm not going to die in some boring, boring brawl, I'm not going to die in a car wreck on the lonely side of the road in the reservation, because I've been drinking to escape the oppression of this goddamn society. I'm not going to die when I walk in the Pine Ridge and Dickie's Goonsfield, I should be off. That's not the way I'm going to die. I'm going to die fighting for my treaty rights, period. One of the things I want to do is not just the lives of a few hundred Indian people. It's a way of life of Indian people that we believe could leave to the complete salvation of the United States and all the Western civilization. The Third World people have to know and they have to believe that the American Indian

movement, the Oblala Sioux people here, have every one of the various races here in America, you know, dream of having. We have a government here. We have the support of a mass of people, the 13,000 Indian people on the Pine Ridge reservation. We have a definite border and their government set up. We must succeed for any other group in the Third World to succeed. We have to make, we're trying to make everyone realize that from here, you know, a true revolution in a way that people live can start. When you remember the time, the time you held it had high, and you told all your friends and you said, oh, it's a red moon, and it looks a mint song, and we even miss a mint

did it too long, yet over and over I hear the same words from you, dear lady, from you, dear man. Well, listen to me if you care where we stand and you feel, and you are for these ones, when a war between nations is lost, the loser we know pays the cost, but even when Germany felt your hands considered, dear lady, consider, dear man, you left them there bright and you left them there lands, but what have you left, but these ones, oh, it's all the past you can see, but it's still going on here today, that I've ever been now once the Iroquois land, and that I'm the Seneca and the Cheyenne and it's here, and it's

now that the buffalo's gone. At the point we were there, people had been eating in it, inadequate diet. For several weeks, there are no fresh fruits of vegetables. People generally subsisted on a carbohydrate diet of oatmeal and beans, and we were seeing some of the early results of this. There were many viral illnesses from generally poor resistance, and lack of vitamin C, we can expect that more profound vitamin deficiencies might occur. There's a possibility that something like scurvy could appear at this point because there's been over 40 days when people have had a very lower absence supply of

vitamin C. There were many children in the village who have not had an adequate protein diet to newborn babies, whose mothers are inadequately fed. We were also able to observe that the sanitary conditions were very poor. They were outside latrines, which were overflowing, and the government did not allow lime into the village because they claimed that lime could be used as a weapon and hand-to-hand combat. At the point we were there, the water supply was still pure. There was some outbreaks of diarrhea, but we didn't suspect that there was any contamination by sewage of the water supply, but we really feel that this is a possibility at any moment. We've recently heard that electricity has been cut off in the village for a day now. This has severe consequences because the water supply is pumped by electric pump, and this means that

there's at this point none or very little water supply. So that means that health conditions will get worse, probably because the electricity has been cut off, and you can't use the water where you have to use the water when you're cooking, because I don't know if they can get any water up. The windmill works, but I don't think it can produce enough power to really pump the water. At that point, the people have no water or have to go to wounded and eat quick creek, which I'm sure is contaminated at this point from just the seepage of sewage, which has been a real problem in the village, is clear that the government... Health conditions could get quickly worse, in other words, because of the cutting-off you like this. Yeah, it really seems like it's a clear tactic of the government to use starvation and real, real siege tactics to bring the occupation to an end, or at least totally demoralize

the people inside. Well, the previous speaker was Barbara Zeller. My name is Alan Berkman, and I also recently returned from Wounded Knee. I have been inside from April 6th to 13th functioning as a doctor inside, and testified at a federal hearing in Pierce, South Dakota on April 16th, I believe. At that time, we were able to show through personal experience and testified to the general medical condition to the side that Barbara just outlined. At that time, government lawyers were unable or unwilling to rebut any of our description, facts, or charges. However, that same day, Mr. Halister and one of the chief negotiators made a statement that... That it was not the policy of the government to systematically start the people of Wounded Knee, and that there was more than ample food inside. I think

that this was a real example of the discrepancy between the government statements, the reportage by the general press and networks, and the real facts inside Wounded Knee, where it's clear that if you have a roadblock that allows absolutely no food in for now 60 days, that it seems that it's a clear policy of systematic starvation. At that same federal hearing, we were also able to prove, and the government was forced to corroborate the fact that we could demonstrate there at least 12 families representing some 75 or 80 people who were full-time residents of Wounded Knee and who were still inside Wounded Knee. During the same period of time, the government consistently reported that there were no real residents of Wounded Knee, and at some points even had quotes about there being no Indians left in Wounded Knee. And that obviously, this was a great discrepancy to what they were able to prove in a courtroom. At the same time, we also presented a petition signed by more than 50 percent, and I believe close to 80 percent of all the previous official residents

of Wounded Knee who are now out of the town in Pine Ridge, and that petition, and that petition, they has to be allowed to go back to Wounded Knee, express general support for the action that was going on inside and said that they would go back in spite of the blockade on food in spite of the government roadblocks. However, the government is consistently again contradicted this in their public statements and in their appeals to the general American public by saying that Wilson and his vigilantes represent the real Indians and the real residents of Wounded Knee who want the town retaken from aim. And this is just, they were completely unable to prove that while we could present authorized petitions with people's signatures. I think that there's a really critical situation going on in terms of the government both setting up in more recent days for a rapid massacre, but also the real danger of a slow massacre that results from prolonged malnutrition. I think it's very important

for people to understand that the United States government is systematically imposing those conditions and those diseases on the people inside Wounded Knee and that this certainly is a systematic policy that the United States government. Here's thoughts they are of how the queen and your snitches are quicksilver. I read your faces like the bones, kaleidoscope, the hate world.

It's me all that I want you in. I don't want you to feed out when I lie. As you feel your glasses with the wine that murdered migrant worker. Thank you not the beauty of that sunset that goes up. I don't want you to feed out when I lie. I'm the coldest I don't feel the windy and psalm all down my toy pin. The cavalry and the cowboys still shut them dead just so still in. See that light of

I don't want you to feed out when I lie. And I want a near-lightest game you're playing with your blackest queen. The damn yourselves and curse your grins I've spent here with a fading ring. I don't want you to feed out when I lie. I don't want you to feed out when I lie. We've heard some of the history of Wounded Knee and today we're talking with Perry

Winkle Johnson, Loco, Indian Boston folks and Michael Fogg and Betsy Dudley. And there with the Wounded Knee information and defense fund. One of the problems was the so-called straight press. When we went out there, Betsy and myself, we were about the 26th of March. And there were issuing press passes through the government blockades of Wounded Knee. Day passes. You could go in during daylight hours and come out. And I had credentials from Liberation Magazine and Betsy had them from BCN radio. And we went into the BIA building, the Bureau of Indian Affairs building,

which by the way was taken over by the government for the whole 70 days of the siege. The government siege at Wounded Knee, making it impossible for the regular functions of social service functions that the Bureau of Indian Affairs is supposed to carry out to happen. They just use their offices and kicked all the people who work for the BIA out. So, anyway, we saw this press officer from the Interior Department, and I think his name was Harpster. And he said, well, I saw we can't give you press passes. You're not full-time correspondence. And we've had so many people here and somebody from the, it wasn't a full-time correspondence. I ripped off some toilet paper and we have to lock the John's now and besides which, in a whole store like that.

And, but he invited us more or less to go into Wounded Knee by ourselves to go around the roadblocks. And we did. We did the next day and we're arrested coming out and charged with obstructing a federal officer in line of duty during a civil disorder. They dropped the charges the next day, but we spent a very interesting night in the Pine Ridge jail. Is that what they charge everybody with? It comes out of Wounded Knee? Yes. That's pretty much the standard charge unless there's, unless there are weapons involved. And then there's some other charges. That's, I think, a part of the wrap, wrap round wall. Well, it, it seemed to be a style that the FBI who is manning the roadblocks and had more people there than the BIA police would do the arresting. And that was the charge that they used. And then they would turn it over to the BIA police who would, that could then issue a court order ordering off,

you off the reservation. So you couldn't come back. It was, they were working in conjunction with each other. The FBI couldn't order us off the reservation that they could arrest us. And the Bureau of Indian Affairs then took it from there. And ordered us off from reservation. It was a convenient means of getting people far enough away. So if they thought they couldn't be, you know, be effective. It was, I think only three days after that that they stopped giving press passes all together. And the only, the only media people who stayed inside Wounded Knee were people from the underground press and a freelance filmmaker who were willing to live in the style of the people who were inside Wounded Knee. And those were the only ones that were giving reliable information about Wounded Knee from inside Wounded Knee. The rest of the press corps sat around in there, Winnebago trailers in the BIA parking lot.

And got the press statements every day from the government press officers or the Justice Department personnel in charge there. Who manipulated the information to suit their needs. And time and time again, they just manipulated the press. And maybe we should go into some of the things that happened and we can return to that thing. And one thing I'd like to mention is that the person from the Interior Department that we talked to gave us the impression that the Indians inside Wounded Knee in fact didn't want people from the quote fringe press, which we qualified under, to be in there, that we were bothering them and that we were bothering people from the straight press because we didn't know what we were doing. So what he was trying to do was to prevent us from going in by virtue of the fact that the Indians inside Wounded Knee did not want us in there.

As well as the fact that it was very clear that he didn't want people from the fringe press to go in. This in fact turned out to be absolutely not true at all when we got inside we were made to feel very welcome. Could you describe the conditions inside? What was it like being there? Well we were there at the end of March. At that point things were there was no vigilante roadblock up. It was much easier to get in and to get out again. So the pag trains hadn't even started yet. People were getting food in photographers would bring it in. Even people from the straight press would bring in enough for their whole crew to eat lunch and then not eat lunch. And leave the food there. Things like that. Conditions were very joyful there. There was heat. There was running water. There was electricity. There wasn't very much food.

But people were feeling very strong. We got the impression of a lot of strength and a lot of people being very together. There was a press conference right after we were there. It was given by Dennis Banks. And after that most of the people from the straight press left and went back to Pine Ridge. We talked with three men and two women and taped an interview with them. One of the women was from the Pine Ridge Reservation. It lived there and worked as a secretary in the BIA. And a lot of information that we got out of background information about what conditions were like on the reservation came directly from her. Things about the fact that most of the homes don't have electricity or running water. The way the funds were used, for instance, when a building was going to be built instead of using labor that could have been used and paying people who lived on the reservation,

the funds were contracted out to wealthy white contractors in Rapid City who would then come in with their labor. You know, it not use any of the facilities on the reservation. We also found out in that interview the three men that were involved in talking about this work all from AIM. And they explained a lot of the background of how they got involved in this. Which at that point, Mike and I didn't know that the whole thing started out at the instigation of civil rights group, which had been formed the previous fall on the reservation. It was made up entirely of a glass who, and what they had essentially been trying to improve the money arrangements with the, through the BIA. And the kind of control that the Indian people had on it was opposed to the kind of control that the Bureau of Indian Affairs had on the reservation.

They had gone through the legitimate sources. They had had petitions signed. They had taken the petitions to the proper officials in the BIA and in the tribal council, and hadn't been able to get anywhere doing any of that. But one of the federal officials through their proposal on the waste basket, because they were talking to him. It was only after several months of trying to improve conditions in this way that they asked and to come in. And one of the people who were talking to made it very clear that aim never goes on to a reservation or as it becomes involved in anything, unless they are asked by an already established group of Indians that have already been working trying to set something up. And the impression that we had gone from the press was that aim had sort of gone in and instigated this. And in fact, the whole rebellion or whatever its cold and the stray press on the reservation had been instigated and carried out by aim.

And that there were very few of Glala involved in it. And this simply wasn't true. Up until, while this week, they were saying that there were very few Indians involved in there. But there were very few Indians physically inside wounded me, and it wasn't an Indian fight. It turned into a communist fight with a lot of Vietnam veterans and a lot of white radicals involved. And in fact, this simply wasn't true. The news, the press also focused a lot on the fact that they were using Soviet weapons. Where does that come from? The final sweep that was carried out by the government after everybody had left. They found very, very few weapons, including no weapon that could have paralyzed, shot and paralyzed the marshal. And this is maybe one reason why it hasn't been pursued more, that the marshal was caught and crossfire from one of the other FBI roadblocks. That the kind of weapon that was used, they have never found inside wounded me.

And after that became fairly apparent to people who were involved, the story was not covered anymore by the press. Occasionally, hear about the marshal, one of the casualties being a marshal who was paralyzed. Nobody has ever released the ballistic attack. Nobody has ever released any concrete information about how that was involved. And why was an immediate issue made of the two of these that were murdered in cold blood, needed one of them on. And one of them was sleeping in a church and back of his head was blown off by a very high-powered automatic weapon fire. The other one that we understand, the story on the other person that was killed. This story will come out in a few weeks when I witnessed observers who are now out of there. Get back and talk to people, but what we heard is that he was shot and injured and they're trying to get a medic to him and the medic was pinned down by fire.

The Community Relations Service was running a radio kind of communication system that was trying to monitor and affect the ceasefire, and it was communicated to them that there was somebody injured. And it was a medic that was trying to get to them, but the government proceeded to lay down a kind of fire that this medic could not get to this man for Lamont. I think his name was for six hours, and that's probably the cause of his death. He was unable to receive medical attention. I think they had some medical supplies and trained doctors.

Not from the government, however. That is the kind of thing that what the government was doing at the point which we were there was sending in a few roasted bread and a couple of bottles of aspirin and announcing through the press that they had sent in or allowed to be sent in food and medical supplies. At that point, the people inside wounded me said, we don't want any of that because it's not doing us any good and all it's doing. It's tokenism, but it's also presenting to the public, you know, a falsehood that in fact we are not getting food and medical supplies from the outside. The kind of where we are getting it from is from people who are sneaking it in. This was an interview of a man by a name of Seever Young Bear. He's a 38-year-old oglala who was a tribal district chairman from the Porky Pine District of the Pine Ridge Reservation, which is about 10 miles north east of Wounded Me. He was arrested at a certain time and there were eight charges against him ranging from instructing and interfering with law enforcement officers and the performance of their duty destroying the Wounded Me post office during the seizure of the village and helping load ammunition weapons and food to be sent to the people at Wounded Me.

Yet today he was supposed to be have been loading the supplies at his house. That was March 7th. He wasn't even there. He was later on in March, not in March and April. His house was shot up. He wasn't there. He may have been there at the time, not sure, but luckily no one was injured. His house was shot into. And the interview asked about when did the resentment towards the tribal chairman, Richard Wilson, first begin. He had to write from the day he took office, April 10th, 1972. People have consistently been fighting him. Why were they fighting him? Because of his under the table dealings that he did when he was tribal council member before and when he was with the housing authority. He promoted liquor on the reservation without tribal authorization a couple of years ago.

And everybody knows that there are two white rich guys behind him. Did they put money into his campaign? They blew over $10,000. He was throwing money around. He used it to buy votes. And when he got elected, he fired all the people who were working on housing under the Avala Sioux construction company and awarded the contract to outsiders. Under the previous tribal chairman, Jerry one feather, we had established our own construction company and one of our own members had been the manager of it. It proved for the first time that we could build our own houses. That's the kind of dealing he's done. Now with the occupation of Wounded Knee, he says he's protecting the safety of the Avala Sioux people against the band of outsiders, outside agitators. So that's the story on the housing.