Feb 27, 1973-May 8, 1973: Oglala Sioux occupy Wounded Knee (feb 27, 1973 – may 8, 1973)

Description:

Hundreds returned to Rine Ridge reservation, site of the 1890 massacre, as a symbol of the demand for Indian land, Indian rights

many members of the new militant organization called the American Indian Movement (AIM)

declared it liberated territory

Within hours, more than two hundred FBI agents, federal marshals, and police of the Bureau of Indian Affairs surrounded and blockaded the town. They had armored vehicles, automatic rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, and gas shells, and soon began firing

food supplies became short. Indians in Michigan sent food via a plane that landed inside the encampment.
The next day FBI agents arrested the pilot and a doctor from Michigan who had hired the plane.

In Nevada, 11 Indians were arrested for taking food, clothing, and medical supplies to South Dakota.

mid-April: 3 more planes dropped 1,200 pounds of food, but as people scrambled to gather it up, a government helicopter appeared overhead and fired down on them while groundfire came from all sides.
Frank Clearwater, an Indian man lying on a cot inside a church, was hit by a bullet. When his wife accompanied him to a hospital, she was arrested and jailed. Clearwater died.

a negotiated peace was signed, in which both sides agreed to disarm

The siege ended and 120 occupiers were arrested.

The U.S. government then said that it had reexamined the 1868 treaty, found it valid, but that it was superseded by the U.S. power of “eminent domain”—the government’s power to take land.

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