Wounded Knee, S.D. (AP) \u2014 Madonna Thunder Hawk remembers the firefights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a medic during the occupation of Wounded Knee in early 1973, Thunder Hawk was stationed nightly in a frontline bunker in the combat zone between Native American activists and U.S. government agents in South Dakota.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI would crawl out there every night, and we\u2019d just be out there in case anybody got hit,\u201d said Thunder Hawk, of the Oohenumpa band of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, one of four women assigned to the bunkers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Memories of the Wounded Knee occupation \u2014 one in a string of protests from 1969 to 1973 that pushed the American Indian Movement to the forefront of Native activism \u2014 still run deep within people like Thunder Hawk who were there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thunder Hawk, now 83, is careful about what she says today about AIM and the occupation, but she can\u2019t forget that tribal elders in 1973 had been raised by grandparents who still remembered the 1890 slaughter of hundreds of Lakota people at Wounded Knee by U.S. soldiers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat\u2019s how close we are to our history,\u201d she told ICT recently<\/a>. \u201cSo anything that goes on, anything we do, even today with the land-back issue, all of that is just a continuation. It\u2019s nothing new.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other feelings linger, too, over the tensions that emerged in Lakota communities after Wounded Knee and the virtual destruction of the small community. Many still don\u2019t want to talk about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the legacy of activism lives on among those who have followed in their footsteps, including the new generations of Native people who turned out at Standing Rock beginning in 2016 for the pipeline protests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor me, it\u2019s important to acknowledge the generation before us \u2014 to acknowledge their risk,\u201d said Nick Tilsen, founder of NDN Collective and a leader in the Standing Rock protests, whose parents were AIM activists. \u201cIt\u2019s important for us to honor them. It\u2019s important for us to thank them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Akim D. Reinhardt, who wrote the book, \u201cRuling Pine Ridge: Oglala Lakota Politics from the IRA to Wounded Knee,\u201d said the AIM protests had powerful social and cultural impacts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCollectively, they helped establish a sense of the permanence of Red Power in much the way that Black Power had for African Americans, a permanent legacy,\u201d said Reinhardt, a history professor at Towson University in Towson, Maryland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was the cultural legacy that racism isn\u2019t OK and people don\u2019t need to be quiet and accept it anymore,” he said. “That it\u2019s OK to be proud of who you are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A series of events in South Dakota in recent days recognized the 50th anniversary of the occupation, including powwows, a documentary film showing and a special honor for the women of Wounded Knee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ___<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018’THUNDERBOLT’ OF PROTEST<\/p>\n\n\n\n The occupation began on the night of Feb. 27, 1973, when a group of warriors led by Oklahoma AIM leader Carter Camp, who was Ponca, moved into the small town of Wounded Knee. The group took over the trading post and established a base of operations along with AIM leaders Russell Means, of the Oglala Sioux Tribe; Dennis Banks, who was Ojibwe; and Clyde Bellecourt<\/a>, of the White Earth Nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Within days, hundreds of activists had joined them for what became a 71-day standoff with the U.S. government and other law enforcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was the fourth protest in as many years for AIM. The organization formed in the late 1960s and drew international attention with the occupation of Alcatraz in the San Francisco Bay from 1969-1971. In 1972, the Trail of Broken Treaties brought a cross-country caravan of hundreds of Indigenous activists to Washington, D.C., where they occupied the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters for six days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, on Feb. 6, 1973, AIM members and others gathered at the courthouse in Custer County, South Dakota, to protest the killing of Wesley Bad Heart Bull, who was Oglala Lakota, and the lenient sentences given to some perpetrators of violence against Native Americans. When they were denied access into the courthouse, the protest turned violent, with the burning of the local chamber of commerce and other buildings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three weeks later, AIM leaders took over Wounded Knee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt had been waiting to happen for generations,\u201d said Kevin McKiernan, who covered the Wounded Knee occupation as a journalist in his late 20s and who later directed the 2019 documentary film, \u201cFrom Wounded Knee to Standing Rock.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf you look at it as a storm, the storm had been building through abuse, land theft, genocide, religious intoleration, for generations and generations,\u201d he said. \u201cThe storm built up, and built up and built up. The American Indian Movement was simply the thunderbolt.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The takeover at Wounded Knee grew out of a dispute with Oglala Sioux tribal leader Richard Wilson but also put a spotlight on demands that the U.S. government uphold its treaty obligations to the Lakota people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By March 8, the occupation leaders had declared the Wounded Knee territory to be the Independent Oglala Nation, granting citizenship papers to those who wanted them and demanding recognition as a sovereign nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The standoff was often violent, and supplies became scarce within the occupied territory as the U.S. government worked to cut off support for those behind the lines. Discussions were ongoing throughout much of the occupation, with several government officials working with AIM leaders to try and resolve the issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The siege finally ended on May 8 with an agreement to disarm and to further discuss the treaty obligations. By then, at least three people had been killed and more than a dozen wounded, according to reports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two Native men died. Frank Clearwater, identified as Cherokee and Apache, was shot on April 17, 1973, and died eight days later. Lawrence \u201cBuddy\u201d Lamont, who was Oglala Lakota, was shot and killed on April 26, 1973.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another man, Black activist Ray Robinson, who had been working with the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization, went missing during the siege. The FBI confirmed in 2014 that he had died at Wounded Knee, but his body was never recovered. A U.S. marshal who was shot and paralyzed died many years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Camp was later convicted of abducting and beating four postal inspectors during the occupation and served three years in federal prison. Banks and Means were indicted on charges related to the events, but their cases were dismissed by a federal court for prosecutorial misconduct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n