Chase Iron Eyes on AIM and the 40 year anniversary of Wounded Knee II. Definitely read the whole article at Last Real Indians.
Today, Feb. 27, 2013 is the 40th Anniversary of the Siege at Wounded Knee, also affectionately known as Wounded Knee II. Forty years ago today the American Indian Movement, having been engaged with para-military forces of the United States for 71 days, reached a cease fire to the gun battle that left a handful of people shot dead or injured in 1973. Pride and Heartache are two words recently used to describe the legacy of Wounded Knee II today. However, I respectfully describe the effects of Wounded Knee II not as a “legacy” like it is all in the past because the movement is very much alive, not with “pride” as if we are boastful about what we had to do to defend our dignity, and certainly not with “heartache” as our indigenous hemisphere could not be more heart-strengthened by the water-shed even that is Wounded Knee II.
Violent rabble rousers those AIMsters. The B.I.A. takeover and trashing of the building meant to “help” Indians, the burning down of the courthouse in Custer, SD when they refused to charge a white-man with murder of an Indian, the 71 day siege at Wounded Knee where 10,000 rounds of gunfire were exchanged and lives were lost. This is the American Indian Movement. Mainstream has succeeded in repainting the face of AIM so that we associate the word AIM with in your face-gun-toting thuggery whose influence we fail to recognize for its contributions then and its evolution now. I do not dispute that the AIM of the 70s was violent; our people didn’t have the blessings of time and coherent organization to plan each and every step of the movement. Things just happened of their own energy, including violence.
Lingit Latseen 