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(man speaking Native American language)
It is a story at the heart of America...
one richer and more surprising than we've been told.
(tribal drumming)
Tonight American Experience presents a story
that spans 300 years and a vast continent.
WOMAN: The greatest thing a person can have is the power.
Benegotsi. It's scary.
It is a story of hope...
courage...
and survival.
We were about to be obliterated culturally.
Our spiritual way of life,
our entire way of life, was about to be stamped out.
(roaring)
MAN: Every tribe in this country has a time of horror--
absolute horror-- when they were confronted by this invader.
MAN: What we did to the Southeastern Indians, it's ethnic cleansing.
MAN: It was done to them,
so they did it back.
But better.
MAN: Whatever means and manner we could,
since the Europeans arrived here,
we've had to fight for our survival.
Tonight an epic history of America...
(whooping)
seen through Native eyes...
too remarkable...
too inspiring...
to ever forget.
The master of life has appointed this place
for us to light our fires...
And here we shall remain.
NARRATOR: On a cold night in February 1973,
a caravan rolled through the Pine Ridge Reservation
in South Dakota.
The cars were packed with 200 Indians--
men and women, local Oglala Lakota
and members of the urban militant group
the American Indian Movement.
They headed toward the hallowed ground of Wounded Knee,
the site of the last massacre of the Indian Wars.
CARTER CAMP: Going into Wounded Knee that night,
when it was dark and scary,
we were clinging to our weapons tightly.
There was a full moon and we knew
that a battle was going to come.
I was sitting there thinking
of some of these young men that are around me,
am I committing them to... to die?
MADONNA THUNDER HAWK: I was ready to do whatever it takes for change.
I didn't care.
I had children,
and for them I figured I could make a stand here.
JOSEPH TRIMBACH: They were up to no good.
I mean, why would they be traveling in a caravan
with all these weapons and all these Molotov cocktails
if they weren't going to engage
in some kind of destructive activity?
NARRATOR: By the 1970s, Native people, once masters of the continent,
had become invisible, consigned to the margins of American life.
Their anger and frustration would explode in Wounded Knee.
We were about to be obliterated culturally.
Our spiritual way of life-- our entire way of life--
was about to be stamped out,
and this was a rebirth of our dignity and self-pride.
NARRATOR: For the next 71 days, Indian protesters at Wounded Knee
would hold off the federal government at gunpoint.
(gunshots)
Media from around the world would give the siege
day-by-day coverage.
And Native Americans from across the nation
would come to Wounded Knee to be part of what they hoped
would be a new beginning.
The message that went out
is that a band of Indians could take on this government.
Tecumseh had his day, Geronimo, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse...
And we had ours.
NEWS ANNOUNCER: We have tonight
one of the strangest stories to come along in a long time.
A group of American Indians has taken over the town
of Wounded Knee in South Dakota
and they have been holding it for nearly a whole day.
This afternoon the FBI said
the Indians are in charge of the town.
We had just finished eating our dinner
and so I looked out the window and I said,
"Well, for heaven's sake, who opened the store?"
And they're carrying things out,
bringing things out by the carload.
And I was floored, just floored.
NARRATOR: After stripping bare the Wounded Knee Trading Post,
the village's only store,
the protesters took over a local church,
holding the minister and other white residents hostage.
They quickly blocked all roads leading into town.
TRIMBACH: On Tuesday, February 27,
I received a telephone call from some news outlet.
I was told that the caravan forcibly took over the village,
were holding hostages and causing destruction there.
So I immediately got my agents together
and I proceeded to the main entrance to Wounded Knee.
JIM ROBIDEAU: We saw a Fed car coming.
And then it... then it was a... it kind of came...
drove just right up not too far off.
So when they come on, they got out of their car,
they went looking around.
And as soon as they put their glasses up, we opened up on 'em.
(gunshots)
We let them know, "We are here, and that's far enough."
(gunshot)
TRIMBACH: I called inside Wounded Knee
and I said, "Look, let's get together and have a meeting
"so we can stop the potential for bloodshed here.
Let's talk about this."
As I walked up to them, I see all these rifles pointed at me
and it gives you an uneasy feeling.
Yes, sir, Joseph Trimbach with the FBI.
Trimbach came to that roadblock.
And you could tell he'd been up all night
and he's very irritable.
We have law enforcement back here that's armed,
and we have hostages here...
TRIMBACH: I had no idea what's going to happen next.
They came out and gave me this list of demands.
NARRATOR: The protesters called for a federal investigation
of corruption on reservations in South Dakota,
and immediate Senate hearings on broken treaties
with Indian nations.
The headquarters of the...
CAMP: We were angry about losing our land,
losing our language,
being ripped off of our ability to live as Indian people.
Our parents was telling us, "You have to walk the white man road.
"The Indian ways are going to be gone.
Be a Christian," you know?
"Go to school and learn that English
but don't learn your own language."
We wanted to give our lives in such a way
that would bring attention to what was happening
in Indian country
and we were pretty sure
that we were going to have to give our lives.
(speaking Lakota)
NARRATOR: The protesters demanded one change close to home.
(speaking Lakota)
Through a translator, the Lakota chief Fools Crow
called for the immediate ouster of Dick Wilson,
the elected head of the tribal government there on Pine Ridge.
Wilson molest the Indians,
sometimes threatening them and so forth.
Before the sunset, we want him out of office
and there will be no trouble.
TRIMBACH: My initial reaction was,
"This is something way beyond my pay grade.
Someone in Washington's going to have to handle this."
(laughter)
NARRATOR: The standoff was unfolding on the Pine Ridge Reservation,
home to the Oglala Lakota,
not far from where chiefs like Red Cloud, Sitting Bull
and Crazy Horse had once led their people into battle.
ROBERT WARRIOR: The Lakota, who Americans call the Sioux,
are iconic in American history, in the American imagination.
These are buffalo hunters who lived in teepees,
who were at the battle with General Custer.
Nearly everything about the Lakota life is firmly implanted
in the way that Americans think about Indians.
NARRATOR: By 1973, the Lakota way of life on the plains
was largely in the past.
The Oglala Sioux tribal government ran things
on Pine Ridge,
and where traditional chiefs had once sought consensus,
elected chairman Dick Wilson ruled with an iron hand.
STEVE HENDRICKS: He was like
a Chicago ward boss from the 1930s,
big flour sack of a guy, wore dark glasses inside and out,
was fond of drinking
and brought all his friends and family and cronies
into office with him, effect.
Gave them jobs on the federal payroll.
JAMES ABOUREZK: On the Pine Ridge Reservation, as with most reservations,
the tribal chairman and the council
have a great deal of power to spread money around,
to spread food around, or to withhold it.
Or to favor one part of the reservation over another,
which is what was happening.
NARRATOR: Wilson favored mixed-race, assimilated Indians
like himself, and slighted the traditional Sioux
who spoke their language, practiced their religion
and remained loyal to the traditional Oglala chiefs.
REPORTER: Do you get any help from the tribal council?
WOMAN: No.
Dick Wilson's the president here.
He's the worst one, I think.
He's the... I don't know, he gets the most of everything.
PAUL CHAAT SMITH: The federal census, I think, every decade
through the mid to end of the 20th century,
show Pine Ridge as the poorest jurisdiction
in the United States.
So there's poverty and then there's reservation poverty.
(dog barking)
NARRATOR: When traditional Oglalas challenged corruption
in tribal government, Dick Wilson responded with force.
REGINA BRAVE: He had his own army,
which intimidated the full-bloods mostly,
the traditional people.
His GOONs started beating up the people
and no charges were ever pressed.
And if they did, it got thrown out of court.
He controlled the whole reservation.
MARVIN STOLDT: Some of the officers hated to arrest any of Dick's people
in spite of the fact that they did break the law.
He helped me a number of times,
so I felt that I owed him a loyalty.
And... and so I didn't support everything he did,
but irregardless of what he did, I still felt that loyalty.
There's been a lot of accusations made here lately,
and one in particular that upsets me
is the fact that I am using a goon squad, so to speak.
They are respectable and honest citizens of Pine Ridge.
We're all sharpshooters.
Tell 'em the GOON squad's comin'.
Let's go and get 'em.
NARRATOR: In late 1972, traditional Oglalas came together
to push for Wilson's removal.
They started a civil rights commission--
Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Commission--
and from there they got the documentation of the corruption,
of the misuse of funds.
They got the evidence.
And eventually the civil rights...
they had a stack about an inch-and-a-half thick
of all the testimony and violations,
civil rights violations.
Nobody ever got charged.
NARRATOR: Prompted by the dissidents,
the tribal council held impeachment hearings
in February 1973.
But Wilson intimidated witnesses,
strong-armed council members, and managed to survive.
Many Oglalas felt they had one last, desperate option.
WOMAN: We've always been peaceful
and pretty much mind our own business,
making our living and raising our family, law-abiding.
Well, I believe that the time has come
that we have to commit violence in order to be heard.
I don't want to see anybody killed or anything,
but the time is going to come
when violence might have to be committed
in order to wake the people up.
NARRATOR: By the second day of the siege,
the spectacle of armed Indians holding a town and 11 hostages
had put the U.S. government on full alert.
NEWS REPORTER: By this morning,
the entire area was blocked off by police.
There were roadblocks as far away as the Nebraska state line.
On the far rise is roadblock one.
We have further roadblocks around the perimeter,
which encompasses approximately a 15-mile area.
TRIMBACH: The director said,
"Tell Trimbach he can have anything he wants,"
which was pretty neat because that was like a blank check.
So I had agents go up to Rapid City and buy every rifle
that they could find in the city because we needed them,
like, right now.
So they came down, and now we at least had rifles for protection
instead of just side arms.
ROBERT WARRIOR: The military response is overwhelming.
It involves plans using the U.S. army to put down this rebellion.
Clearly there are people within the federal government
who see a need to take it to the limit.
BANKS: I was awakened.
There was a deep rumbling, droning noise.
And we were looking around and we were surrounded
by armored personnel carriers, APCs.
All of a sudden we saw these two fighter jets coming,
and they circled around,
and from the south they just came right at us.
We thought it was over, "That's napalm."
Dennis Banks pulled out his pistol
and he started firing, boom-boom-boom-boom.
Then they were gone.
You know, it was that proverbial, uh,
last act of defiance, you know?
Here's that little mouse and here comes the big, huge eagle,
and the little mouse is standing there like this.
NARRATOR: On the afternoon of the second day,
South Dakota senators George McGovern
and James Abourezk arrived.
They hoped that if they could resolve the issue
of the hostages,
the crisis at Wounded Knee could be ended quickly.
MEANS: When they came in,
it was very newsworthy.
They came in with the news media.
That's how the networks got in.
And they said, "We want to see the hostages."
ABOUREZK: The agreement I'd had with Russell Means
was that if we landed at Pine Ridge,
he would release the hostages.
I have an indication through an intermediary
that they will release part of...
And I said, "Well, where are the hostages?
"You're supposed to release them.
You agreed to release them."
So they're standing over there.
So I went over and I said, "You folks, we've rescued you.
You can leave now."
...but not anywhere...
ABOUREZK: If you wanted to leave
the Wounded Knee area, could you go?
We're sitting there on pins and needles.
CAMP: Ask Trimbach.
We had people with him and said that they can leave.
MEANS: And Mrs. Gildersleeve, the matriarch...
"We're not hostages, we're going to remain here!
"It's your fault that these Indians are here!
"Have you listened to them?
We're not leaving, because you'll kill them if we leave!"
NARRATOR: Once they realized no one was being held hostage,
the senators hoped to persuade the protesters to stand down
by offering to convene hearings on their concerns--
sometime in the future.
MEANS: We knew that a put-off,
a stalling tactic, would happen once there was no threat
to any other lives other than Indian lives.
You are going to walk away from here and say,
"After awhile," doksha-lo, you know?
And we're not going for doksha anymore.
We're not going for later anymore, Senator.
Now I told you over the phone that I bet--
and everybody here and down there--
have bet with their lives.
ABOUREZK: AIM decided that their strategy would be
to confront the government
and try to win the public relations battle.
Prior to that time,
being a mister nice guy didn't really work with the government;
they didn't give a damn.
So that's the reason
that AIM thought this was the way to do it.
NARRATOR: 250 armed U.S. personnel now surrounded
the village of Wounded Knee.
BANKS: I felt good.
This is why AIM was alive.
This is why we came to be,
to stand up against the FBI,
stand up against the U.S. marshals,
stand up against GOONs, you know, tribal police,
and inside we've got freedom.
Don't let nobody in.
NARRATOR: Since its founding in 1968,
the American Indian Movement had been divisive,
its militant tactics controversial
even among Native people.
Created in Minneapolis by young urban Indians fed up
with police harassment,
the group had shown a knack for generating publicity.
Members had seized high-profile symbols--
Plymouth Rock, the Mayflower, Mt. Rushmore--
and in November 1972,
had occupied and vandalized the Washington headquarters
of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Weeks later, in early 1973,
AIM took its campaign into the reservation border towns
of South Dakota.
ABOUREZK: In those days there was
a tremendous amount of racism,
especially in the border towns around the reservations.
I mean real racism where Indians are practically invisible.
THUNDER HAWK: There was towns you didn't drive through,
you didn't go through.
Especially women.
You didn't walk down the street of any border town
by yourself because you'd be
accosted by any white man
that felt like it.
NARRATOR: Just weeks before the occupation of Wounded Knee,
a white man killed an Indian near Custer, South Dakota,
50 miles from Pine Ridge.
When local officials charged him with manslaughter, not murder,
200 angry AIM protesters came to town.
You charge a white man, premeditated murder,
you charge him with second-degree manslaughter!
And we ain't going for it anymore.
And I know this whole damn town is an armed camp.
Hey listen, white man!
I have had all the bull (bleep) from your race
as I can take!
NARRATOR: When police barred them from entering the courthouse,
AIM members forced their way in.
Open them doors up.
Just as we walked in through the door,
then we were attacked by law enforcement.
(glass breaking, protesters yelling)
We were fighting and they come at me with a nightstick,
so I blocked it and took it away and started using it on them.
EDGAR BEAR RUNNER: I know I was right on the steps, you know,
and things were happening.
We bloodied the guy; we took the helmet away.
We bloodied him up.
Then I ran across
to help get gas from the filling station.
We were filling up and making Molotov cocktails
and busting the bottles on the building,
and the fire just started on the wall and everything.
(sirens wailing)
NARRATOR: Protesters set the courthouse ablaze,
and left Custer in shambles.
There was absolutely an element in AIM
that considered itself a revolutionary organization
who were comfortable being around guns,
who absolutely loved the idea of AIM being outlaws,
who just wanted to get it on.
NARRATOR: The confrontation in Custer caught the attention
of the Oglala dissidents on Pine Ridge.
Three weeks later, when their campaign
to impeach Dick Wilson failed, they asked AIM for help.
ROBERT WARRIOR: Calling in AIM is attractive, but it's a roll of the dice.
It's a roll of the dice because where AIM goes,
chaos often follows.
So that when those traditional chiefs bring in AIM,
they're doing this in full knowledge
that as they go down the road,
they don't know exactly what's going to happen.
NARRATOR: The Oglalas had exhausted all legal options.
They believed that to put an end to Wilson's harassment
and intimidation, they needed what AIM could offer.
ROBERT WARRIOR: AIM can bring bodies.
They can bring people.
They have the phone numbers of people at TV networks
who can get on airplanes and bring television cameras out.
None of the established national Indian organizations
can do what AIM does.
BANKS: The American Indian Movement's motto was,
"Anytime, anywhere, anyplace."
And that was the most important job that we could do,
is to be where there was injustice and to confront it.
NARRATOR: At a crowded community meeting,
dissident Oglalas, five traditional chiefs,
and AIM representatives finally arrived at a radical plan:
together they would seize the town of Wounded Knee.
They would force Dick Wilson from office, and,
for the first time in nearly a century,
draw national attention to Indian concerns.
The Oglala Nation is at a crossroads that...
that can change the course of history
for Indian people all across the nation.
And I would like to ask that the chiefs listen very closely
to what is being said here.
CAMP: There was this hesitation.
No one could make a decision,
and no one would endorse us and then the women started to talk.
NARRATOR: Ellen Moves Camp,
a founder of the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization,
argued in favor of occupying Wounded Knee.
ELLEN MOVES CAMP: This has been going on for a long time before we invited
the American Indian Movement here.
Because the people were scared and they are scared
of Dick Wilson and all his men.
I don't see why... all these people come from all over.
I don't see why they... they can't take him and throw him out
or throw him in jail or something,
the way he's been terrorizing people here on the reservation.
And I live in Pine Ridge at that gunpoint,
but I'm not scared of them anymore.
She was pushing.
She was pushing to spark something.
And, oh, it did.
NARRATOR: Finally, Fools Crow,
the oldest traditional chief present, spoke.
"Go ahead and do it," he said.
"Take your brothers from the American Indian Movement
and go to Wounded Knee and make your stand there."
REPORTER: Today a teepee was set up
in what is now called the Demilitarized Zone.
Both sides are meeting there
to negotiate an end to the takeover,
but the progress is agonizingly slow.
ROBERT WARRIOR: There were negotiations going on almost always
during the occupation,
attempts on both sides to reach some sort of agreement.
NARRATOR: Government negotiators were uncompromising.
They rejected demands to uphold treaty rights,
and insisted that they were powerless to remove Dick Wilson,
regardless of the charges against him,
as he was chairman of a sovereign Indian nation.
Talks stalled completely when the protesters demanded to deal
with the U.S. secretary of state.
REPORTER: I understand they want Henry Kissinger out here.
Do you think this is realistic?
Do you think he'll come?
Why not?
I don't see why the North Vietnamese should take precedent
over the American Indian people.
You know, we've been fighting this war for 400 years.
And if he can spare the time to go over there,
he should be able to spare the time to come here.
REPORTER: But it would be correct to describe the current situation
as an impasse?
If there's such a thing as an impasse on an impasse,
then that's what we have.
NARRATOR: Officials from the Departments of Justice and the Interior
took the lead in negotiations.
The attention of the White House was elsewhere--
on the unfolding Watergate scandal.
ABOUREZK: There's no question that the White House was distracted
during this Wounded Knee siege.
Although they sent midlevel officials out
to run this siege operation,
they didn't have their mind on it.
Nixon had his mind on trying to survive the Watergate thing.
Things might have turned out a lot differently
had they not been distracted.
Turn that (bleep) light out!
NARRATOR: Within Wounded Knee, the days were relatively calm,
while the nights exploded with gunfire.
Just take these unarmed men and tell them...
Turn that (bleep) damn light out or I'll shoot the (bleep) out!
(gunfire)
ROBIDEAU: They were shooting machine gun fire at us,
tracers coming at us at nighttime just like a war zone.
We had some Vietnam vets with us, and they said,
"Man, this is just like Vietnam."
BILL ZIMMERMAN: There was actually a third force at Wounded Knee
in addition to the Indian activists
inside of Wounded Knee and the federal marshals and FBI agents
surrounding Wounded Knee,
and that third force was the GOON squad.
What is the mood among your people at this time?
They're very ticked off.
What are they doing right now?
Shining their guns up.
NARRATOR: As tribal chairman, Wilson wielded supreme authority
on Pine Ridge.
He erected his own roadblocks outside the federal perimeter.
Even U.S. officials had to go through him.
This is as far as you're going.
Well, I want him to go in.
Well, you'll have to get Wilson out here.
Well, you'll have to get him, because I'm taking them in.
And you're who?
I'm Wayne Colburn, the director of the U.S. Marshals Service.
Hmm.
Well, what do you think? Should we let him in?
(unintelligible murmurs)
ZIMMERMAN: These GOONs were armed
and they frequently got in between the federal lines
and the Wounded Knee perimeter and shot--
and in both directions--
with the intent of provoking firefights
because they were angry that the government didn't go in
and take over Wounded Knee.
NARRATOR: Inside the village,
the protesters had their own military operation,
led by Indians trained by the government
they now took up arms against.
KEN TIGER: There was a lot of people there that had been in Vietnam.
And a lot of people had just been in the military.
Some older people had come in
and they'd actually been in Korea.
They knew how to give orders; they knew how to take orders.
And they knew how to do things
that they didn't have to be told twice.
THUNDER HAWK: I knew we were making history for our people.
It didn't all happen in the 1800s.
We're still fighting in the modern day.
I mean, that's how I felt.
That it was a continuation, and that's why I was not afraid.
I was not afraid.
NARRATOR: In the 19th century, the Lakota fought furiously to defend
their territory against relentless American expansion.
In 1868, embattled Lakota chiefs signed the Fort Laramie Treaty
to protect more than 30 million acres of their land.
But the United States soon reneged
and forced the Lakota onto small, desolate reservations.
CAMP: Americans like to think that American Indian history
is something in the past.
I'm one generation removed from the genocide of my tribe.
And every tribe in this country has a time of horror--
I mean a time of absolute horror--
when they were confronted by this invader.
And some of it happened almost 500 years ago.
But as they come across the plains,
our time of horror came in the late 1800s.
And we remember it very well.
NARRATOR: In the frigid winter of 1890,
Chief Big Foot was leading a group of Lakota,
mainly women and children,
to shelter on the Pine Ridge reservation.
On the morning of December 29, they were attacked
by the U.S. Army on the banks of Wounded Knee Creek.
CHARLOTTE BLACK ELK: My great-grandmother is Katy War Bonnet.
She was a survivor at Wounded Knee.
When the shooting broke out, she and her sister,
Ka-keek-sa-we, ran down into the ravine
and made it to some plum bushes.
And she could hear the firing and the firing and hollering
and then finally it was quiet.
NARRATOR: More than 300 Lakota people lay dead.
After remaining untouched in the ice and snow for three days,
they were buried in a mass grave.
The massacre would mark the brutal end
of centuries of armed Indian resistance.
For those who came nearly a hundred years later,
Wounded Knee was sacred land.
CAMP: I walked over to a gully and I picked up some sage
and I went and washed myself and I prayed to those ancestors
that were there in that gully.
And I said, "We're back.
We have returned, my relations. We-bla-huh."
REPORTER: This is where the television crews
await the hour-by-hour events in Wounded Knee.
This privileged position is protected by the Indian chiefs.
Clearly the chiefs are anxious that this rebellion
and its outcome receive as much publicity as possible.
It would have been very simple for the federal forces
to go into Wounded Knee and take over.
There would have been some casualties, but probably
the government would have considered them tolerable.
What made it so interesting was that the Indians existed
underneath a protective bubble of publicity and shame.
Because everybody knew that this was the site
of the last massacre of the Indian Wars
and the last thing the government wanted to see
was a massacre on the same site.
NARRATOR: One week into the siege, all three television networks
had stationed reporters in Wounded Knee.
Polls estimated that more than 90% of Americans
were following the crisis on the nightly news.
CAMP: If they came and killed all of us,
it would be recorded and it would be seen by the world,
where the 1890 massacre wasn't.
And if they didn't-- if they decided, you know,
that that media was there
so they don't want to murder all of us--
well then the media is there to tell our side of the story.
THUNDER HAWK: They wanted this...
stoic, you know, American Indian man with a gun--
America's picture of "The Indian."
We didn't care, as long as the word was getting out.
(reporter speaking French)
MIKE HER MANY HORSES: There was a lot of folks here.
A lot of foreign press were here.
And they made it out to be kind of a cowboy-Indian adventure, you know?
More people wanted confrontation.
That seemed to attract the viewers.
(gunfire)
MEANS: You guys get up so tight and start panicking
and you get down on the press.
Hell, we want 'em to film this bull (bleep)!
They all heard them fire first
and open up with automatic weapons.
We gotta get that filmed.
We got .22s in our hand against APCs.
So don't be jumping on the press.
NARRATOR: The news out of South Dakota
held Indians around the country spellbound.
Some were ashamed by AIM's armed display of defiance,
but many were inspired.
I left school and me and another guy left
and we drove in his car from...
we were in central California and we drove up to Oakland
and from Oakland we drove back to South Dakota.
Up until '73, when it started,
I was never involved in anything, politically,
dealing with either Native Americans
or any other organization.
I just felt like I should go up there and I did.
You all are not Oglala Sioux, I take it.
I am. I'm not. I'm Chippewa.
You're Chippewa? Where are you from?
Minnesota.
What about you sir, where are you from?
Winnebago.
Wisconsin.
Cheyenne. Oklahoma.
And you're not necessarily all members of AIM?
We didn't say that.
Are you members or AIM?
We didn't say that either.
We're here to support our Indian people that are in Wounded Knee.
CHAAT SMITH: This generation of Indians
in the late '60s, early '70s, who for the most part,
they had been to boarding school
or their parents had been to boarding school,
which was explicitly about getting Indians
off the reservations, to not be Indian,
to not speak their language.
For those Indian people, it was this moment in which
you could see, on television, there was another way,
there was another possibility.
It was electrifying.
(children singing "Ten Little Indians")
BANKS: There is one dark day
in the lives of Indian children--
the day when they are forcibly taken away
from those who love and care for them,
from those who speak their language.
They are dragged, some screaming and weeping,
others in silent terror,
to a boarding school
where they are to be remade into white kids.
NARRATOR: By the late 19th century, the Indian Wars were over.
The United States seized on a ruthless strategy
to assimilate Native children to a subordinate place
in white-dominated society: government-run boarding schools.
BANKS: I was five years old.
My mother was crying, and they were taking us off
and my sister, Audrey-- who also was like a second mother to me
and a very close friend as a sister--
and my brother, Mark, they were very sad.
Within two hours or so after the buses filled up
and we're down the road,
this is the furthest I've ever been from my home in my life.
And then, of course, it turns into evening
and we arrive at this place.
I ended up in a place where nothing... nothing...
nothing made any sense at all.
You know, it wasn't home.
It wasn't... I didn't know anything about school.
Nobody ever told me anything about school.
I didn't know what education was.
I remember that I wanted to go home.
Period.
I didn't want to be there; I just wanted to go home.
We all had to strip down naked, and then they put the DDT on us.
They line us up and they're cutting our hair.
You have long hair, you have braids,
and then that gets cut off.
And I would say within a matter of an hour and a half
we're standing there, all looking alike.
NARRATOR: Between the 1870s and the 1960s, over 100,000 Indian children
were sent to one of the nearly 500 boarding schools
scattered across the United States.
Through the agencies of the government,
they are being rapidly brought from their state
of comparative savagery and barbarism
to one of civilization.
(singing "Ten Little Indians")
BANKS: You couldn't sing any native songs or tribal songs.
They just started using English.
You could only... you could not use any other language.
We'd whisper, "Pass the bkwezhgan, bkwezhgan"--
pass the bread over.
It's like I had to be two people.
I had to be Nowa Cumig, and I had to be Dennis Banks.
Nowa Cumig is my real name, my Ojibwa name.
Dennis Banks had to be very protective of Nowa Cumig.
And so I learned who the presidents were.
And I learned the math.
I learned the social studies.
I learned the English, and Nowa Cumig was still there.
LITTLE MOON: This is education that was promised us,
that was guaranteed us through the treaties, but it wasn't.
It was torture. Brainwashing.
They called us many different names...
Savage.
Dumb.
I got beat for looking like an Indian,
smelling like an Indian, even speaking Indian.
Everything I did.
(cries)
BANKS: Their de-Indianization program, it failed.
But the toll was devastating.
It destroyed our family.
It destroyed the relationship we had with our mother.
I could never regain that friendship-loveship
relationship that I had with my mother.
It wasn't there anymore, and that's what, to this day,
I keep thinking, that, you know, damn this government,
what it did to me and what it did to thousands
of other children across this country.
MAN: If the leaders at Wounded Knee
are bent on violence, that is their concern,
but I call upon them now to send the women and the children,
both resident and non-resident,
out of Wounded Knee before darkness falls tomorrow.
REGINA BRAVE: The United States government sent an ultimatum
to the people in Wounded Knee
that if they didn't leave on a certain day,
that they were coming in, they would remove us by force.
We are going to reject any kind of condition
that pushes us out of the Wounded Knee area
until all of the issues of the Oglala Sioux are met.
BRAVE: I told Dennis, "Just burn it."
At that time, we all started making preparations
for making our last stand.
(chanting)
BANKS: We smudged everybody as they came up and painted them.
When you go off to war, if you get killed in battle,
then they'll... then that paint will signify
that you went there with the blessings of the pipe
and that you'll go to the spirit world with great honor.
I had this little bitty bag-- little bitty bag--
with little bitty fringes on it.
I had one bullet in there.
And I had a semi-automatic, and I only put one bullet in there.
Somebody said, "How come one bullet?"
I said, "I'm going to wait, 'cause if I'm going,
I'm going to take somebody with me."
(car tires skid)
The government just backed down on that 6:00 thing.
Beautiful.
NARRATOR: Two days after issuing the ultimatum,
U.S. officials shifted tactics.
(laughter)
Hoping the occupation would simply peter out,
they removed roadblocks around Wounded Knee
and persuaded Dick Wilson to remove his.
Federal officials would keep the inflammatory tribal chairman
on the sidelines for the rest of the occupation.
But when the roadblocks were lifted,
new protesters and fresh supplies flooded in.
On March 11, revitalized occupation leaders
made a startling announcement.
MEANS: The leadership of the Oglala Sioux
here present in Wounded Knee,
have declared Wounded Knee an independent country.
(applause)
From here further, if any spy from the United States of America
is found within our borders, he will be dealt with
as any spy in a time of war and be shot before a firing squad.
(cheers and applause)
NARRATOR: The battered hamlet of Wounded Knee was now
the Independent Oglala Nation.
While U.S. officials hurriedly put roadblocks back in place,
the new nation asserted its sovereignty.
A delegation, led by Chief Fools Crow,
traveled to the United Nations
to put the Oglalas' case before the world.
REPORTER: They arrived almost an hour late.
They said taxi cab drivers just wouldn't stop to pick them up.
Wearing a medal given to the tribe
by the United States government
after the signing of the treaty of 1868,
78-year-old chief Fools Crow, through an interpreter,
explained why the group came to New York.
(speaking Lakota)
"It is our last effort in this trouble.
"I think we have exhausted all other means of a settlement
of the trouble we have at Wounded Knee."
NARRATOR: The delegation failed to get official recognition at the U.N.
and returned to Wounded Knee.
There, inside the borders of the Independent Oglala Nation,
the chiefs and medicine men introduced Lakota culture
to the protesters, many of whom had come from cities
and were disconnected from Indian traditions.
CLYDE BELLECOURT: One of the first things that we did
when we got into Wounded Knee is we built a purification lodge,
an inipi, a sweat lodge.
We were all required, everybody was required,
to go in there and purify themselves
and to pray and ask their creator for help.
Everything that we did was preceded by prayer
and gathering, smoking of the sacred pipe
and tobacco offerings, everything.
(speaking Lakota)
CHAAT SMITH: The Indian movement was different
than other political movements of the time because
it defined itself as a spiritual movement.
(whistle blowing)
Their trajectory, in a way,
mirrors what a lot of the Indian world was about,
which was trying to...
connect with traditional knowledge, culture, religion.
HENDRICKS: One of the things that AIM tried to do
was to return "Indian-ness" to all Indians.
Whether folks lived in the city, on reservations,
whether they spoke the language or didn't speak the language,
if you were Indian, you could return to the tribe.
NARRATOR: Many of the protesters had left reservations behind,
along with thousands of other Indians,
as part of the federal government's Indian relocation program of the 1950s and '60s.
ABOUREZK: The government thought one way to solve the Indian problem
was to relocate Indians from the reservation
to the bigger cities.
They couldn't kill the Indians anymore.
That was out of fashion by the '50s.
So, they decided to experiment.
They did a lot of experimenting with Indians.
Relocation program was one such experiment.
It was exciting, relocation.
You know, you get to go to a big city
and help you find a job
and you get to see the rest of the country.
Of course you weren't forced to go on relocation,
but they made it look good: "Streets paved with gold."
We ended up in Cleveland, Ohio.
NARRATOR: Over 100,000 Indians were relocated in just 15 years.
The government promised to help them find schools, housing,
and employment.
But for many, the promise rang hollow.
THUNDER HAWK: They put us in a real dumpy motel.
And I was just sitting there thinking,
"I wonder what's going on at home?"
I could just see the rolling hills
and the small, small town.
They're all just moving and walking and going real fast.
Nobody's stopping to look around.
That's why we stayed in our apartments
or stayed in our rooms.
BELLECOURT: If you went and applied for a job,
you better not tell them you're Indian.
You better tell them you're French or some...
Italian or some other nationality
or you wouldn't get the job.
NARRATOR: By the 1970s, half of all Indians lived in cities.
But the Relocation Program
produced an unanticipated result.
LANADA WARJACK: It pulled us all closer together.
We could always spot each other in the city.
So if we'd see an Indian on the street
walking down Market Street, we'd look at each other,
and we'd just smile and kind of shake our head,
or, you know, an acknowledgement of each other.
We didn't care what tribe anyone was.
We were Indian people.
We were a race.
(singing)
NARRATOR: The new pan-Indian identity led to the growth of activist groups
around the country.
The American Indian Movement was the most radical.
JOHN TRUDELL: There were a lot of Native people
that were afraid to stand up.
Geronimo demonstrated, man!
Crazy Horse demonstrated!
And for us, the baby boom generation,
circumstances were right; we could raise our voice.
(gunfire)
NARRATOR: Over the course of the siege,
government forces would pound the village
with more than 500,000 rounds of ammunition.
Right there.
NARRATOR: It was inevitable that there would be casualties.
(gunfire)
Where's that car? Where's that car?
MAN: The Wounded Knee apparently has a wounded party.
WEBSTER POOR BEAR (archival): It really don't bug me that much.
I really don't mind getting shot.
We are willing to sacrifice our lives for our children
so they will not have to grow up in the society
we grow up in today.
(current): Milo and myself got hit.
We knew that no one was...
no one was going to go through this completely unscathed.
There was somebody that was going to get it again.
NARRATOR: With the White House increasingly preoccupied
with Watergate, the government had allowed the occupation
of Wounded Knee to drag on.
But at the end of March,
the Justice Department sent a new negotiator
who changed tactics.
KENT FRIZZELL: Shortly after I arrived,
the lifestyle was somewhat changed
of the occupants of Wounded Knee.
The electricity was cut off.
The water line was cut.
NARRATOR: Then Frizzell cut off the protesters' most vital lifeline:
he ordered reporters to leave town.
Y'all get back in your cars, okay?
Just get back in the car till we get the word.
Don't touch my hand, either.
Just get back in the car till we get the word.
FRIZZELL: I frankly think that the barring
of the news media has had an effect on negotiations.
A positive effect from the government's point of view...
FRIZZELL: All of a sudden,
those in Wounded Knee weren't seeing themselves
on top of a pony waving an AK-47
at the American personnel on the ground.
NARRATOR: Just when the siege
was officially kicked off the airwaves,
it got renewed publicity from an unlikely source:
Hollywood.
That he very regretfully cannot accept
this very generous award...
NARRATOR: Marlon Brando refused his Oscar for Best Actor in The Godfather
in protest of the negative portrayal of Indians
in the movies.
Excuse me...
NARRATOR: Brando sent an Apache actress
named Sacheen Littlefeather to represent him
at the awards ceremony watched by millions.
Later, backstage, she explained Brando's absence.
I have indicated in this statement
Marlon Brando is on his way to Wounded Knee.
At that time, you'll have to take me for his word.
NARRATOR: Brando never made it to Wounded Knee,
but a poll taken four days after the Oscars
showed his sympathies were widely shared:
most Americans sided with the protesters.
Within a week, the two sides reached a deal.
NEWS ANCHOR: The siege of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, ended today.
REPORTER: Representatives of the Indians
and U.S. Interior Department officials
formally signed the pact this afternoon
inside the embattled village.
NARRATOR: Government officials promised to investigate corruption
on Pine Ridge,
and to immediately convene a White House meeting
and congressional hearings on treaty rights.
For their part, the protesters agreed to lay down their arms.
(drumming, singing)
CAMP: You know, the first thing Indians do is break out a drum.
You know, so they started banging a drum
and singing victory songs
and everybody was whooping and cheering.
That was a time when we really thought we won,
and not only that, we thought that, uh, we had survived.
FRIZZELL: I talked to Chief Fools Crow, an elder and a full blood.
I offered him a ride on my helicopter
if he could get this young Indian lad
to let me ride his pony.
He thought it was a wonderful gesture
and I did the same as I galloped off on that pony, bareback.
NARRATOR: Chief Bad Cob, medicine man Leonard Crow Dog,
and Russell Means rushed to Washington for a meeting
at the White House.
But the deal quickly collapsed over the critical detail
of what was to happen first-- the White House meeting
or the disarming of the protesters.
The White House will not negotiate
while guns are pointed at federal officials
in Wounded Knee.
That is our position.
I believe it offers the only hope for a peaceful solution.
And I, for one, am prepared to stand by the agreement
until hell freezes over.
Can we give up our arms?
Hello?
That is so stupid, it's beyond belief that they would even...
they would even say that to the press.
What, these stupid Indians are going to go to negotiate
after they lay down their arms?
What?
Nobody does that in the entire world in history.
NARRATOR: After the agreement unraveled, Russell Means was arrested.
He would spend the rest of the occupation in jail.
The fun and games, so far as I'm concerned, are over.
A United States marshal has been seriously wounded.
REPORTER: Many of the some 300 persons in Wounded Knee
are sick with bad colds.
Doctors here report at least 15 persons here have pneumonia.
REPORTER: The garbage is piling up.
The food is running short.
One meal a day is now the rule and that's not much of a meal.
THUNDER HAWK: One time, one of the guys came in
and he had a sack on his shoulders.
And it was, I don't know, maybe a 50-pound bag
of what they fed calves.
So we just... that's what we ate.
We made pancakes out of it and whatever.
We just treated it like flour.
BANKS: We had been rationing ourselves
to one meal a day, one full meal a day.
We are cutting that effective today, to one half meal a day.
ZIMMERMAN: At the time, I was minding my own business in Boston,
following the Wounded Knee story in the news like everybody else.
One day, somebody walked into my office that I knew
within the Boston anti-war movement.
They had heard that I was a pilot
and they needed somebody to go in there
who could fly over the federal blockade
and bring them some food.
BANKS: If there's any plane comes by here today,
we don't want anybody taking any potshots at them.
They'll be making a food drop to us today.
(cheering)
ZIMMERMAN: We operated out of Rapid City, South Dakota.
At 3:00 in the morning,
we were over Wounded Knee about 40 seconds,
made the drop and we were gone.
And 2,000 pounds of food landed in the village.
At first we thought we were being attacked.
We thought they were gassing us,
you know, because what it was, was the flour exploding
and creating a big cloud.
You know, but then all of a sudden, you know, we said,
"Oh, hey, this is food," you know?
So we're all out there gathering the food
and the FBI opens up on us.
(gunshots)
NARRATOR: The night before, a man named Frank Clearwater
and his pregnant wife had arrived in the village.
Clearwater said they had hitchhiked
all the way from North Carolina.
ROUBIDEAU: When he came in, he had his own gun.
He had a kind of a big long-barreled shotgun.
It looked like he came out of the hills, too, you know.
He said he was Cherokee, you know.
Yeah, he looked like one of those mountain men.
KEVIN McKIERNAN: They had ready-made cigarettes,
which was a very big deal because we were all smoking
in those days, and we were smoking cherry bark
and things from... from the ground.
And here was a ready-made cigarette.
And so I remember Frank Clearwater lit it up
and we passed it around in a...
in a circle like a form of communion.
(gunshots)
NARRATOR: When bullets began to fly on the day of the food drop,
Frank Clearwater took refuge
with other protesters in a church.
As they hugged the floor in an effort
to stay out of harm's way,
a bullet tore through the plasterboard wall
and struck Clearwater in the head.
He had been in Wounded Knee for less than 24 hours.
CAMP: A brother named Strawberry
had his hand on the back of his head
and he was holding his skull...
and I put my hand on his skull, tried to hold his brains in...
and we took him...
took him in the clinic and they couldn't save him.
NARRATOR: The first death intensified the government's determination
to bring the siege to an end.
In mid-April, a unit was put on alert at an Army base
in Colado.
According to plans leaked to the press,
the government was prepared to move into Wounded Knee
with armored helicopters and tear gas.
FRIZZELL: The White House,
the Department of Justice,
were concerned with the confrontation going on
all during the month of May, into the summer.
The college campuses, I was told, would be emptying out
and all the adventure seekers
would be infiltrating Wounded Knee.
I was given a ten-day deadline.
NARRATOR: Officials were destabilizing the occupation
using covert tactics.
FRIZZELL: I have some information I think
that you'll be interested in.
And it's based on a source that we have utilized in the past
and has furnished us information in the past within Wounded Knee.
Now very frankly, I cannot identify him
for obvious purposes.
ROBERT WARRIOR: There were almost surely spies within Wounded Knee.
The U.S. government
had infiltrated the American Indian Movement
like it had infiltrated every political organization
in the U.S. during that time.
HENDRICKS: AIM knew that they had spies in their midst
and that was part of the FBI's game.
Not just to have the spies to get information
on what AIM was doing, but to get AIM guessing
as to who those spies were,
to get them paranoid and pointing fingers at one another.
What is that?
What did you point at me?
ROBERT WARRIOR: One effect of that paranoia inside Wounded Knee
is that there are purported cases of people
who disappeared and who were thought to have been killed
mainly because people didn't know who they were
and who assumed that they were spies.
FRIZZELL: I got daily reports.
I got informer reports.
This information came to me through the tribal government
and through the FBI.
(gunfire)
NARRATOR: On April 26, Wounded Knee sustained the heaviest barrage
of gunfire since the start of the siege.
When the shooting subsided, Buddy Lamont,
a 31-year-old Oglala from Pine Ridge, came out to investigate.
Lamont was a Vietnam veteran who'd been in Wounded Knee
since the beginning.
LITTLE SKY: Everybody started getting up and...
and going back about their normal routines,
and Buddy came, got up and walked over to the trenches
where we were at.
A sniper at a good thousand yards hit him
squarely in the heart...
(gunshot)
and he wasn't even aiming the gun.
He had his back turned, you know, and his...
his weapon was on his shoulder, you know.
To me, that was murder.
NARRATOR: Negotiators agreed to a ceasefire
so that Lamont's family could bury him at Wounded Knee.
On May 6, Buddy Lamont was laid to rest
next to the victims of the 1890 massacre.
BANKS: They asked me if I would say a prayer for him,
which I did.
It said, "2,000 people came and one remained."
ROBERT WARRIOR: Buddy Lamont's death
becomes, really, the final blow to a lot of people
inside Wounded Knee, especially the Oglalas from Pine Ridge.
He was somebody that everybody knew.
Everybody knew his mom.
And he was there for all the right reasons,
fighting for something that he cared about.
And for Buddy Lamont to die was more of a tragedy
than most people could bear.
NARRATOR: Fools Crow and the other Oglala leaders had had enough.
Despite AIM's objections,
they insisted on bringing the occupation to an end.
NARRATOR: On May 8, 1973, after 71 days,
the siege of Wounded Knee was over.
In final talks with the government,
AIM leaders agreed to disarm and submit to arrest.
But many of the protesters were already making other plans.
(drumbeat)
ROBIDEAU: We asked the medicine man,
we said, "We want to get out of here.
We don't want to leave no weapons here."
So, he says, "We'll have a ceremony tonight
and we're going to pray."
So we prayed all night long.
RICHARD WHITMAN: We sang the American Indian Movement song.
An honor song.
A memorial song.
(singing)
(thunderclap)
ROBIDEAU: So, it started getting cloudy
and then that evening, it started raining.
Wind. Rain.
So they couldn't shoot the flares.
ARLENE MEANS: Lots of people walked out.
The spirits had a lot to do with it.
The one that brought us out was the owl.
And every time he'd hoot in a direction
and then we'd go that way
and they did it right under the marshals' noses.
(singing continues)
NARRATOR: As the protesters fled Wounded Knee,
a triumphant Dick Wilson toured the remains of the town.
REPORTER: Dick, are you surprised by what you're seeing?
I expected this.
Why?
They're hoodlums. Clowns.
This is the way they live.
NARRATOR: Not only was Dick Wilson still firmly in charge,
he would exact revenge
on his opponents as the federal government looked the other way.
WILSON: The Oglalas don't like what happened,
and if the FBI don't get them, the Oglalas will.
We have our own way of punishing people that way.
REPORTER: Shooting on the reservation?
You said it.
We'll take care of them.
HENDRICKS: After Wounded Knee, it was a period of time
that the dissidents called "The Reign of Terror."
It was a time when Dick Wilson truly unleashed his forces
on the folks who had supported Wounded Knee.
NARRATOR: In the three years following the siege,
two FBI agents and more than 60 AIM supporters were killed,
giving Pine Ridge the highest per capita murder rate
in the country.
As the reservation spiraled into violence,
the government went after AIM in the courts.
HENDRICKS: One thing that Wounded Knee gave
the federal government an excuse to do
was to try to litigate the American Indian Movement
out of existence.
You and your bunch of hoodlums take over down there,
you destroy people's property...
NARRATOR: Within months, more than 500 indictments
were brought against AIM members,
most on minor charges that were later dismissed.
HENDRICKS: They succeeded in tying up AIM in court,
and AIM, at this point, with all those resources
going into court, lost its way.
NARRATOR: AIM fell into disarray and violent infighting,
and would never again have the impact it had in 1973.
But the hopes inspired by the siege would echo
in the decades to come.
Despite the chaos that followed in its wake,
Wounded Knee would prove to be a turning point
in the history of Native people.
THUNDER HAWK: We needed to let the rest of the world know what was going on.
Two states over, they had no idea about Indian people.
We were just invisible.
We were the ones that kicked the doors open on the Indian issue
and let the world see.
ROBERT WARRIOR: The good that came out of Wounded Knee
was the entry into American Indian political life
of people who had not been there before,
who had not had a real voice.
People learned they could tackle problems, create opportunities.
And I think that coming out of Wounded Knee,
people knew they could make a difference.
(chanting)
TIGER: There was a lot of sense of,
"We're important and we can do something
within our own people, our own tribe, our own homes."
I didn't go back to what I was doing before.
I felt maybe I can do something to help, not only my people,
but other people, too.
NARRATOR: Native activism would spur the revitalization
of Native cultures.
In the years following the siege at Wounded Knee,
Indians would create tribal schools
and cultural institutions
charged with preserving Indian traditions and passing them on.
CHAAT SMITH: In the late '60s and early '70s,
these were still emerging ideas about reconnecting
with traditional culture, language, religion
that was starting to happen.
But this became the majority sentiment
in the space of just a handful of years.
It was really about identity.
It was about affirming we're still here, we want to be here,
and we want to be here on our own terms.
Whatever went on in the '60s and '70s,
it's an extension, it's a continuation.
It's no different than what King Philip was about,
or Crazy Horse was about.
And whatever means and manner we could,
since the Europeans arrived here,
we've had to fight for our survival.
BLACK ELK: What the 1973 occupation did
was people started saying, "Hey, we're Indians.
"It's okay to be Indian.
We are Indian, we really should be who we are."
The struggle that we have in the 21st century
is to remain ourselves.
Every one of us has to do our part to remain Lakota,
to remain Indian, and to teach our children,
to teach our grandchildren,
and make sure that there will be children sitting in sweat lodge,
standing at the sun dance in a thousand years.