Guerrilla History - Wounded Knee '73 at 50 Retrospective w/ Sungmanitou Tanka

Episode Date: March 3, 2023

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we bring on Sungmanitou Tanka to discuss the 50th anniversary of the Wounded Knee Occupation in 1973!  We talk about the causes, the events themselves, and the legacy with 50 years of hindsight, a very important discussion on all of these fronts.   Sungmanitou is of the Oglala Lakota Nation, is one of the hosts of Bands of Turtle Island, and has recently also taken over the Marx Madness Podcast.  Listen to the season of People's History they are putting together that goes much more into depth on the events of the Wounded Knee Occupation.  Also be sure to follow the Chunka Luta Network (@ChunkaLuta1973) and Sungmanitou (@BandsIsland) on twitter!   Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory

You don't remember den, Ben, who? No. The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello, and welcome to guerrilla history. the podcast that acts is a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history

and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki, joined unfortunately by only one of my two usual co-hosts. Today we have Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, joining us. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm well. It's great to be with you, Henry. Great to see you too.

Unfortunately, we're not joined by our other usual co-hosts, who of course is Brett O'Shea host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast as he's recording something for Revolutionary Left Radio right now, which we are eagerly awaiting the release of. But we do have an excellent guest today and a fascinating topic and a very, I want to say timely topic. It's about as timely topic as a history podcast can really hit. And that's because it's another one of our anniversary episodes. So we're being joined by shung manitou who many of our listeners would know from bands of turtle island but shung manitou why don't you tell the listeners a little bit more about who you are and some of the other projects that you're involved with before we get

into the conversation today hello i'm a go out of lakota from penridge reservation where this event that we're talking about today took place and uh my family help lead it uh i'm also known for my appearances on the Red Nation Red Power Hour and then Iran the Yodid series was sort of like a look into parapolitics and like conspiracies

and that sort of thing that's popular at that time you could say like we talked about UFOs for one of the first few episodes ancient aliens connection to Nazis like a Nazi literally wrote the book that ancient aliens is based on and then

the guy who got Truman to sign the, like, a guarantee for Israel's existence wrote another one of the books that the series is based on. So it's just, and that led to Nibiru and the Heaven's Gate Call. And it's just a weird history. So it's fascinating to go into, right? And then I also just recently took over the Marks Madness series during a collaboration we were doing on The Red Deal, which was written by The Red Nation, who I was a former organizer with, but now I've gone on to start forming my own cadre, a focus on propaganda production called the Chalkaluta Network,

where I'm sort of trying to get podcasts and media producers on the internet who are Marxist Fennonists to kind of have a coherent line to push a specific message to kind of combat the patriotic socialism elements and mostly the anti-decolonialism, that's sort of propped up through the sort of white chauvinism and patriotic socialism that's, you know, being called socialism. I mean, like, to me, it's a little obvious when you go Pat Soche and you just change the P to an N and all of a sudden it's Nat Soch and National Socialists. Like the ops obvious to me, but I feel like a lot of people are doing mental gymnastics to ignore that. So there's a lot of history that I hope can be addressed that's sort of been ignored.

for a really long time that like Nick Estes and I had tried to kind of like push the conversation to discuss co-intel pro and um look into it further but people ended up just stopping at like Ward Churchill's analysis and for a lot of people they aren't aware that Ward Churchill went on to write for like Soldier of Fortune magazine and stuff like that like he's not a leftist and And like Brett's commented on the mistakes he's made by interviewing him in good faith and stuff. But I've talked to Ward Churchill. Ward Churchill was my uncle Russell Means as like sort of right-hand man at one point. And like he was like a pretendian, pretending to be native.

And then he says that he got fired for calling the country a bunch of little Ikemen's. But in reality, he got fired for like plagiarizing a bunch of students work. Like, there's a little mystification behind the history of war, Churchill, and, you know, when I first talked to him, he spent an hour calling it the War of Northern aggression. So he's, I, please move beyond him. Okay. But, you know, that's, you know, that's sort of where my focus lies as well as, you know, decolonial Marxism. And, like, for those who don't know, Walter Ronnie, had some essays that were recently published by Verso last year that kind of outlined de-colonial Marxism, which would be like scientific socialism through a pan-African lens, right, that I think we could utilize here and really advance the common understanding of what scientific socialism would entail for an American in a Canadian context.

But that's a long way to say, check out the podcast. Absolutely. On February 27, 1973, a group of Oglala Lakota and their supporters, around 200 people, made their way to a small handlet known as Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. It was the site of the last massacre of the Indian Wars in 1890, where over 300 Lakota, including women and children, were killed by U.S. troops. Here, the independent Oglala nation would take a stand and claim their land back. So what is happening in Wounded Knee when a declaration of sovereignty was made

and it's a start. It's a start of a revolution amongst Indian people today, not only... They were saying no to the corrupt colonial reservation system. They want to destroy a nation. No to decades of forced assimilation, termination, and emiseration. This system was forcing them off the reservation because they were starving, forcing them out of the cities because they could receive no justice here. No to police brutality and rampant white vigilante violence.

The murders of Raymond Yellow Thunder and Wesley Badhart Bull. They have killed their last Indians. To help win this fight, traditional leadership brought in a group called the American Indian Movement. Life of a warrior, protect the children, those who cannot protect themselves, and the land and the water, the sky. Whoa, I want to be our aim. The United States government has established a military siege of the village.

AIM faced a brutal campaign of suppression, assassinations, and infiltrations. I only had the FBI, you had the cops, you had the goon squad. During the wounded knee occupation and in the aftermath, At least 64 people, many AIM members and supporters were killed with the help of the FBI, local police, and the federal government. People were being murdered. It's called the reign of terror. Nobody was investigating these deaths and nobody has to date. The state wasn't just trying to suppress AIM, but a whole movement.

This particular era of Red Power saw at least 70 other indigenous-led occupations armed and unarmed across North America. We're not going to give up our fishing rights. There are treaties throughout the United States being broken. That's really what it is. A treaty we're fighting for. Good evening and welcome to Indians of All Tribes, Indian Land Radio. This is John Trudell Welcome. Yeah, it did inspire a lot of movements, a lot of people.

Well, the Indians are fighting back. Our prophecies had told us one time. Our prophecies told us that one day, small fires would crop up throughout our nations. And Fort Laughton was there. Alcatraz was there. The Nike Missile Tate. the confrontations at Fort Lewis, Washington, the struggle of the fishing rights up in Washington.

You cannot make a bargain with the police. You cannot make a bargain with the government. We've got to stay here till they take the last Indian. And it said that small fires would become one gigantic flame, and at that time the red people would stand once again as a power. And we have to stand as sovereign people. How am I talk to yet, man. Hello, my relatives.

I am Oglala Lakota from Pine Ridge Reservation. I go by Zicato. And for this season of People's History, called We Will Remember, we're going back to Wounded Knee, Pine Ridge, and the American Indian Movement, to educate, inspire, and reflect on those who came before us. Hear the series, We Will Remember, later this year, by subscribing to People's History Podcast for the Chunkaluta Network. Thanks.

Well, that's a very interesting set of interests, and I hope we will have some opportunity to get, you know, connected to thinking about decolonial Marxism, but perhaps even through this, the relevance of the event that we want to speak about with you, which is, of course, that it is the anniversary, the 50th anniversary of the occupation at Wounded Knee. And in terms of indigenous struggles, this is, you know, an important moment and event that we should remember and think about. But before we get into talking about it, significance, perhaps you could just tell listeners who may not be very familiar with the events, you know, what happened at Wounded Knee 50 years ago? I believe we mentioned playing the trailer. I don't know if this would be a good time for it. but I'd hope it kind of gave a brief overview that, you know, there was over 200 Oglala Lakota people who went into a little hamlet known as Wounded Knee and, like, a hamlet that's like smaller than a village.

Like there is something like six houses, like six houses still there. And at the time there might have been 15 tops. You know, that's when I was doing good. And that was coming out of like the trading coast era. And in Wounded Knee, there was actually two little trading posts built on top of what was a massacre sign. And so for what people, a lot of people are aware of like how recent colonialism is. And that is a big issue that I'm trying to overcome in the dialogue and discourse TM or whatever, you know, is that a lot of people. conceptualization of colonialism is very limited to

hundreds of years ago is how they picture it. And a lot of people don't realize that America had barely begun its colonial genocide when it became a country in 1776. And that's only a few hundred years ago. And so in 1890 is this massacre called Wounded Knee. And this is a result of Mniko Lekota people coming from their reservation after the assassination of Sitting Bowl. And so actually, there's a wonderful episode I did with Revolutionary Left Radio and Brett. So, you know, kind of like if you missed Brett in this episode, you can go check out that one.

That was a few years ago, but it's probably one of my better episodes I've ever done, where we kind of talk about the world history of Ernie LaPointe. And Ernie LaPointe is the great grandson of Sitting Bull. Sitting Bowl was the first ever great chief of the Ochete Chakouin. The Ocetei Chakouin is a greater federation of nations that

Lakota people belong to. And the Lakota are seven bands known as the Teteuoha, which the Teteuah which means people the plains. And like traditionally it would be more like Titoch would be what you say.

But that's like there's a lot of dialectical the diet that what is the term dialectic differences yeah dialect different not just difference in dialects we could say yeah yeah but yeah see i'm trying to like avoid the you know confusion with the marxist term right so uh basically uh the ochete chakuin is normally called the sue by the federal government and that word derives from a french adoption of a Nishinaabe slur for us, which means snake in the grass or little snakes. And so obviously that has some implications to it when you think about like, I don't know,

anti-Semitism in Europe, like, and then given that there's like an interesting connection between Landback conspiracies and antisemitic conspiracies about like George Soros and stuff like that. It's kind of an obvious connection, especially once you combine that with the past like Mormonism, believing indigenous people to be a lost tribe of Israel, right? So then you have this underlying superstructure that people aren't acknowledging that Utah used to be its own Mormon state, and they're practically posed to form their own state given a, you know, civil issue in the country, right? So the minute a revolution starts, the Mormons are going to seize control over their area, you know, like they have the money, they have a military even. They have a National Guard at their disposal. Same with Texas. You know, there's a lot of different things that leftists aren't considering when they talk about revolution here, right? A lot of them kind of picture it happening through the ballot box. And anybody who's a fan of Malcolm X knows that it's going to be bullets, unfortunately.

I think you hit a lot here, but I want to turn our focus on to one particular point that you hit, which is that there was a massacre that took place in 1890. And then you mentioned that in 1973, this occupation is taking place at the same site. So as we talk and we're going to get more into what were the reasons for the occupation, you know, various reasons, what were the goals of the occupation, etc., etc. But before we even get to that, we have to understand that there was a reason that this was, that the site was chosen for the occupation in the first place. And as you alluded to, it was this 1890 massacre. So I think that perhaps we can touch a little bit deeper onto what was this 1890 massacre. I'm sure most of the, at least

most of the American-based listeners of the show have at least heard of the massacre at Wounded Knee, but probably based on how history, education in the United States is the knowledge of it probably doesn't extend to much deeper than that. So perhaps you would like to give a little bit more information on the 1890 massacre and then how that fed into the decision to use the same site as the occupation in 1973. And then we'll talk about, you know, why did the occupation take place and whatnot? Well, so as like historical materials, we need to understand that things don't happen to avoid, right? And so the 1890 massacre kind of marks the end of the frontier.

So the census after that massacre literally declares an end to the frontier. That's the only sort of like declaration to the end of the frontier we get is the 1891 census. And so after that, you know, you have the development of like the Daz Act. So, like, this is when indigenous people would be first put on a list and then have their blood quantified to determine the amount of benefits entitled, I guess you could say, to indigenous nations based on a nation-to-nation contract known as a treaty. These treaties according to the Constitution are the equivalent of the Constitution. They are the supreme law of the land. it should be held in that same regard. So as we know, this is a subjective ideal, right?

This is something they want to uphold, but they never did. They broke all the troops. Not a single treaty was ever upheld, and they were all eventually broken. And ours was the last few signed. And to be fair, this actually isn't the last massacre. The Morgans end up doing a massacre in 1923. That's around when we gained citizenship. So, like, the hit.

History is very more complex than you can get off of Wikipedia because Wikipedia is wrong, you know, like it's just now being updated because of us because we are finally pushing our voices in history and reclaiming historical agency, which is something like Ronnie kind of describes as Walter Rodney as the worst thing to happen to colonize people is that they are strict of their historical agency. And this is basically to describe, you know, how Marx and angles describe history as hitherto all written history being the history of class struggle. This meaning that when a society can finally start writing its history, we start to notice that the history is defined by these class elements and oral histories still haven't talked about their traditions. you. But so a wounded knee itself, you know, is this tragic event where hundreds of people are literally gunned down in a, I mean, so it's a small ravine, but like it's a little gully that like would funnel people directly into fire. And so the government as these people are fleeing the reservation sort of gathers them at this camp. There's a American flag upside down. and a white flag underneath it. And they take all these people's guns. And at this time, there's something known as the ghost dance. And the ghost dance movement sort of forms out of like a religious, almost like liberation theology,

but for, you know, like indigenous nations that all sort of adopted their own versions of it. But there was a similar stir and dance than everybody practiced. And there's a wonderful Redbone song, actually. called We Are All Wounded at Wounded Knee and then Wovoka that are off the same album that kind of like explain the story and they were writing these songs like during that era funny enough and they also did Come and Get Your Love which was in like Guardians of the Galaxy and stuff so pretty famous band that a lot of people don't realize are all indigenous you know and we're at Wounded Knee and stuff so it's just like you know another layer of history that's sort of like right in front of your face but nobody knows. knows, right? But this is, you know, a history that's easily accessible when you actually learn how accessible it is. You know, there's a lot of resources out there, right? And so one of the things we need to be careful when talking about this massacre is sort of the politics surrounding sacred sites and stuff. And there's a book called The Politics of the Hall of Ground that I recommend people read to better talk about this in a respectful way. Because, the mini conju survivors, like families who are descended from these people who survived. And like the stories that you can read yourself are horrific. Like they, I mean, one story that we can talk about, unfortunately,

is that there was a baby found suckling at its mother's breast while the mom was dead. That's terrible. It was my ancestor who recounts that. American horns. so that's why I say I can talk about it and it's it's not it's not something good you know and that's that's life unfortunately that's a light massacre in this history like custer's known for using babies as skeets as target practice they would prone them into the air as a shotgun shotgun so this is like the end to the that and the introduction to a liberal option of saving the Indian and killing the man, right? And this leads to a boarding school era and then the eventual return of these boarding school kids to their reservations. And then there comes what's called the termination era as well as relocation

programs that were supposed to start assimilating indigenous people into white culture by providing us jobs, housing, et cetera. But really all it did was take us out the reservation, leave us in San Francisco, Cleveland, Denver, Phoenix, and then call it a day. Welcome to capitalism. Yeah. Well, as you point out, there are these different phases. So this was the wounded knee massacre was kind of the closing of one phase and then it followed with as you just described. And it's that rapid too. You know, like I wish it wasn't that bad. Yeah, in the next less than a century, 70 years or so. But obviously something starts to change in the late 1960s, well, even maybe before, but you can see that there is some kind of more concerted effort to respond to this previous history that leads to the occupation. Perhaps you could tell us a little bit more about who, you know, conducted the occupation, why they chose, you know, to do it in this context and what they were trying to accomplish with the occupation of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1973. As I mentioned, none of this stuff happens in a void, right? And so prior to Wounded Knee, like I said, there's 70 occupations leading up to this. These are armed, unarmed.

Some of them are using treaty rights. Some of them are just, you know, indigenous people saying land back. You know, this is like the first iterations of this. And actually it goes even further back to like the 1920s and stuff when you first have the introduction, like the Carlisle boarding schools and the Indian Citizenship Act, where you, my tribe went to Congress to talk about our treaty rights and how they were being violated because we had several. earth and rolled dams being built in flooding villages and murdering people, you know, and this was a project that continued until the 70s, like JFK opens up the last one. You know, that's a lot of presidents to preside over direct genocide, you know, in recent times. FDR, you know, like this was like his big plan to, this was the new deal.

And bindeloria Jr. is one of our great scholars, right? he then praises the New Deal and that's just sort of a show of like what liberalism does to a motherfucker right sorry I don't know if I can swear I don't know

how else to describe that mentality sometimes it's appropriate as you just got the guy was as Iid as it is you know we'll give him his ls where they're due but uh you know wounded knee

comes from this larger history of what's known as red power right and it really kicks off in 65 with fish in struggles in the Pacific Northwest. And that's actually where Leonard Peltier would even get a start is at these fishing struggles. And so there's men like Billy Frank Jr. who was arrested more than 400 times for fishing.

We have left us today too afraid to go to a protest out of fear they'll be arrested. This is drastically different circumstances. You know, like this old man talked, like he talks about it, as they used to walk across the river on the backs of salmon. I went out there last year, I was talking to the Lummi Nation, and they had four salmon return to spot. Incredible. The salmon runs their elders say only have a few years left.

There is a drastic need for revolution, and it was needed a year ago, but here we still are pleading with people on podcasts to do something. You know, like go and organize anything of community garden. you know, whatever. But that's what AIM was trying to do here, is that, well, it's actually kind of funny. They don't actually plan the occupation or anything. So what's going on at this time is there's a man named Richard Wilson or Dick Wilson. And he's kind of a fascist. I mean, he's literally a fascist, you know, who is like hiring his family and stuff. It's almost like gangsterism. in that you know you have like a right wing militia form called the goon squad and they kind of they got that name from embracing the term goon and they turned it into guardians of the oglala nation and this group still exists to this day they're just not a right wing militia anymore getting armor piercing rounds and ammo and guns from the military and not getting air force support and stuff which is what would happen at the occupation of the movement. So this is a literal right wing death squad. And I'll get to that. A literal right wing death squad being funded on a reservation, a fourth world, if you want to get into the technical terms, but essentially a third world. To this day, we are considered third world living additions to do our income level and our access to electricity and clean running water. So we are still considered third world living additions in America vastly different than most people's of experience. Okay. We are different. because we are an internalized colony that is its own nation that is being denied at sovereignty. Right.

That's why we can make deals with Cuba, despite them offering to send doctors, the United States won't let them. Canada does the same thing. So it's, you know, we don't actually have sovereignty, but this all comes out of the ending of the termination era. And AIM actually is responsible for that, right? So what you're describing, sorry, what you're so what you're describing is, um, some kind of was he actually the kind of chief or oh so okay i should explain right right what you're describing is um a you know political structure that has in place over the reservation um at pine ridge um very connected to the bureau of indian affairs and doing kind of the work of

a colonial occupation except that it's been, you know, you know, offshore, not offshore, but like, you know, franchised out, as it were to... Well, Phenade describes that, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, we see that happening right now. What is the Palestinian Authority? But, you know, it's a very similar kind of structure. So tell us a little bit more about that group, who they were.

And then, you know, how this led to some kind of. kind of resistance against the internal, you know, structure that has been created to police and control indigenous people at the Pine Ridge Reservation. So I'm sorry if my mouth gets covered with a baby hand at any point in this explanation, but I'll try to speak through it. So Richard Wilson, he is what's called a tribal chairman, okay, and this comes out of a recent system in the grand scheme of things. So in the 1920s, like I mentioned, there's this establishment of several earthen-world dams that end up flooding several villages across Ocetei-Sekwain Reservation land, right? This is like the Coda people, various Lakota groups, you know, but this is all along the Missouri River and this is actually led by working class.

and like business owners. The federal government actually has to like offer an alternative plan. And this is in the face of the Army Corps of Engineers offering another clan. So there's like three different settler interests competing. And it's actually the working class interest that went out. And so like when you're talking about colonialism, this is a direct example of working class interests hurting colonized people when you only consider the settler classes as working class, you know, because it's not like these indigenous people didn't have jobs, you know,

like a lot of people don't realize that the Empire State buildings primary labor came from the cheap and better Mohican union labor. And that's, they were cheaper because they were a different nation, right? And so basically this all comes out of the reservation system, which is very new. It comes after wound in need, right? So this is sort of like the solution. At this point, we're on prisoner of war camps that are the inspiration of concentration camps. We still live on those camps.

Our districts are defined by the camps. Our families were put on. Those are our traditional lands that we still have. The BIA, then through the Bureau of Land Management, and also the National Park Service stole a bunch of land and then sold it for very cheap. And just to add it for the listening, it's the BIA is the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Right. Bureau of Indian Affairs, sorry.

And they're, they belong under the, they're the only, like, human branch under the Department of Interior. And so we're classified alongside wildlife. So when people are like, oh, everything's all hunky dory nowadays, it's like, no, we're legally defined differently that I am considered an animal. according to chamber of commerce and stuff like that. I'm something in the way

resource on the land. You know, yeah, that's right. Right. And this all stems from something called the doctrine of discovery,

which was defended and upheld by Ruth Bader Ginsburg during the Dakota access pipeline protests. So this is a relevant issue that's 500 years old. And it's directly influenced by the Catholic Church, you know.

So when people are like, oh, they don't matter anymore, it's like, no, actually they, like, until they renounce that doctrine of discovery, a lot of the world's economic basis and legal basis has that precedent at its very core. And that is terrifyingly fascinating that we ignore it so much. I think a lot of people ignore legalism because they think it's so liberal, but it's like, well, we've been able to. win a lot of gains through legalism and like everything else it's just one more level you have to fight at you know and like you know people are running presidential candidates it's like you know spend some time doing legalism instead that's a little more helpful you know before you start criticizing legalism maybe don't run a federal candidate i don't know that's my beef with that criticism but uh you know these people were elected right you know you

know, and like I talked to some former friends of the guy, and they're like, we never expected him to do any of that. He would fire bomb political opponents, assassinate people in the street. Pedro Bessonet gets shot, and then they watch him bleed out before calling an ambulance. You know, like, they're horrible, horrible things. And the government condoned this. They ended up putting like sandbags and like snipers and stuff across BIA buildings on my reservation. This is a, you know, a reservation that today, has like 25,000 people, you know, it's like bigger than some states. Sure, but like it's a vast amount of land and they have a bunch of people concentrated on like the urban area, right,

the, you know, where you have to go to get food and stuff. So any A members or AIMPathizers could be watched or denied access, you know, were attacked. And that was very common. You know, that's what led to Leonard Peltier and even getting, um, put in prison. for the rest of his life, you know. And so these people, they come in through the reservation system, which is forced on us through the BIA, you know, and until the federal government sort of forced to relinquish control to us or forced to exact, like, you know, we make it not existent, you know, there is, we do not have a way to, um, to. pursue independence in any meaningful sense. We can reform our constitutions, so theoretically you could make a socialist government, but then the question is, are they going to put another Dick Wilson in?

And so that's what Ayn wanted to do at this occupation is they wanted to make a new government that was an independent Oglala nation. And so that's sort of the organization that forms out of this. But this is basically started by what's called the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organizing. And these people were collecting petitions around the reservation to, um, what's impeach Dick Wilson. And they ended up collecting enough signatures when brought to the BIA and stuff. Well, he presided over his own impeachment. And he exonerated himself.

Woo! Electoralism. But like, you know, there's some protections today with that. But even now, like, we almost impeach every president still. Like, our current president's pretty cool. And, like, if it wasn't for the fact that, like, keeps protesting with us and, like, getting arrested and, like, define the council themselves, like, I'm sure that they wouldn't be voted in, you know. I don't know. It's really fascinating politics and, like, it's sort of, like, ignored by the rest of the country.

But, like, this is a potential Soviet, right? Like, you could make a dual power system much easier than your city. you know, in regular America, because we actually have the opportunity in legal avenues to pursue our own constitution with where it would be contradictory, right, to attack us for them. And so that's why it's sort of chosen wound and knee as the site. And these as our goals is because legally speaking, this, we're entitled to this under the Constitution. Okay. And so then you have the reaction of the military. You have. You have. CIA infiltration, FBI infiltration. You have NSA infiltration. Like this is like some of the people like this was right after co-intel pro ends, right? Um, but this is when we see it continue. You know, and we see like Operation Garden plot and stuff taking hold where like you have like corporals in the Air Force, you know, uh, using the Air Force to, um, I mean, harass really. But like, you know,

help kill more Indians. And so the idea is that because they chose this place, the history and the media optics is what's going to protect. The government can't go in and massacre everybody if it's the site of the last Indian massacre. Because, boy, is that a PR problem? And so like around this time, you have Hopi elders saying, stuff. And I'm like, people were hearing this in the Pacific Northwest, like I said. You know, that's where the Red Power Movement really popped off. And so the Hopee elders went up there to talk to

a bunch of people because so many people around the country had gone up there. And then they all went south to Alcatraz. And then they went across the country staging their own occupations everywhere. It was pretty awesome. The Hopee elders say stuff like, you know, even if they extinguish all of us, even if they kill all of us, we have put our truth out there. And, you know, you're not going to be able to kill that idea, basically. And that's, you know, basically a Shagovara quote. They didn't know that, you know, like the Hopiare very reclusive culture and people. And so, like, you know, I don't think they're reaching Shaivera at least.

But yeah, so they're going around telling people about, you know, their prophecies and stuff. And they're like, look, you know, whether we're dead or not, we're going to be proved right, you know. And so far they have them. you know, a lot of new ages take that to be like, oh, you got, you got to like, it's going to be revelation or whatever. And it's like, well, no, it's probably going to be more like capitalism poisoning the entire earth. You know, like crazy horse has a prophecy. And like prophecy is a dumb word, in my opinion. Like, vision is what we would say in visions we describe as dreams you make come true. Okay. So it's nothing that's predestined or anything. It takes your action. So when you say prophecy or whatever, it kind of like, describe. denotes this, like, Christian value of it where, like, Moses went up to Mount Carmel or whatever and fucking, you know, that's not what happened, but we did go to the top of the mountain. But I just, you know, go on. Oh, no, no. There was just one other thing that I also want to add in before we talk about the events of the occupation itself, which is that, you know, you talked about the grievances with Dick Wilson, but there was also, as there generally is,

very strong grievances with the U.S. government. And I think that it's important that people also hear about the fact that this is taking place immediately after the Trail of Broken Treaties movement had had their march, like just a few months later. So I don't know if you want to discuss the Trail of Broken Treaties movement and the grievances that were raised there and how those also are related to several of the grievances, or many of the grievances that were also factoring into the occupation because it wasn't just having Dick Wilson holding onto power, you know, as the chairman of the Oglala Lakota at Pine Ridge, there also were these longstanding grievances with the U.S. government. So it was kind of a two-prong, two-prong justification for this occupation.

at least based on my reading of it. No, for sure. So when I say the, you know, the tribal council, that is the U.S. Go, right? That isn't our government. And people should not confuse them for that because tribal is in front of it. If anything, tribal should denote to you that there's a liberal element there. So when we're talking like from a radical point of view of self-determination, the actual government still around on my tribe are traditional like heads.

and Tiochfaye is what we call them or big family or clans. You know, these aren't like Tiochfay is the word, but I'm trying to put it in terms people might understand better. And it's not quite like cadre starts to get there. But it's, you know, there's a lot of familiar relations that I think are just circumstantial now based on, you know, genocide, like diluting numbers and stuff like that because we used to have a very open society where you just choose your leader.

You know, if you didn't like your leader, go to a different band. So the Oglala literally means those who spread their own. But so we had a very unique cultural system, political mode, where people were very, I mean, it was democratic to its, like, most simplest form is that, you know, if you didn't like it, just leave. You literally could just leave on like, like, when Americans say that now, it's, you know, kind of dumb and like, it's cost like $2,000 or whatever to renounce your citizenship and you didn't have to do that. You could just become your own thing like the Honkla, Lakota, actually from the Oglala Lakota. And a lot of us all derive from the Minicadoju, which would be like the sort of like first cultural expression of like. Dakota after we, uh, originate. And so our origin stories kind of come from, we call Wind Cave, which is like near Custer, South Dakota. Um, and like Sturges happens near it. It's kind of like

on the nose, why a huge colonial event like this would be happening. And, um, basically, uh, it kind of sounds like we have an oral history that dates back to like how we, survive the ice. And so, you know, you have this very, you know, unique place where it would be comfortable to survive the ice age underground at least. And so you have similar things pop up around similar time frames, you know, like we would argue that we've been around for like 10,000 things, you know, our culture. Archaeologists would peg us at 980, which is just very, you know, it's, uh, it's based on a lot of superficial things, I'd say, like, um, just bead work technology mostly. That's like, well, you know, there's various reasons why that would occur, blah,

blah, blah, blah. But basically our culture sort of forms out of this cultural hegemony against the Aztecs, right? And so over here in America, we have this, well, the Americas, whatever you want to call it um fertile island we have our class the closest thing we have to like classes start developing is in the aztec empire with um the crystallization of money almost taking the form of human sacrifices like we never really do get money but we get a taxation in the form of human sacrifices for religious purposes um and you know that class would be treated like loyalty but at the end of their life of e-murder. You know, kind of a bad deal, but, like, there wasn't, like, murdering, you know,

like 12-year-old virgins, like colonizers would say. Instead, you know, they often would murder 12-year-old virgins and do unseemly things to them. And so a lot of that becomes, like, sort of a reverse annihilation theory. But it's like there's, there is no evidence to the sacrificing virgins to volcanoes thing or, you know, like, yeah, they took people's hearts out, but like, Europe was burning people at the stake. I don't know, like bad times all around, eh? They had the largest city, though, at the time, and it was one of the cleaner cities. There was deforestation and stuff like that, and so a lot of our societies after their fall develop rules to try to avoid these downfalls because they saw the fall of the Aztecs and tried to analyze why that happened instead of repeating those mistakes.

as if God predestinate, blah, blah, blah, like a lot of settler understanding of our history is so, like, mystical and stupid when we were like, we're as very scientific people, you know, and I would argue that, like, the best way to describe Lakota culture is the pursuit of absolute truth. So, like, what is that? That's like, you know. If I was going to describe science anyway, that would be, you know, one of the answers to the universe. And so our closest expression to God is the great mystery, which, like, are moments that you can explain serendipity. That's the great mystery, you know, like those moments that just line up perfectly. That's our closest expression to a God because those exist. You know, those are real things we can go to and go, wow, I can't explain that.

You know, and that's sort of like what's going on at Wounded Knee, right? It's supposed to be one of these ceremonial moments, one of these spiritual moments that, it has actual material effects, right? Like, they didn't murder everybody in there. In fact, only one person died, it's Buddy Lamont. And, you know, it's absolutely fascinating. The strategy that went into it. So they like, you go, well, are we ready to go into the actual occupation or?

Yeah, I just wanted to follow up with that. And maybe you can work this into what actually happens during the occupation. because I understand that also one of the other real causes for the occupation was to restore the possibility of, you know, indigenous religion and religious practices, which had been suppressed, made illegal. And you were just talking about how the way in which, you know, indigenous peoples and settler colonial representation always, you know, kind of emphasizes this mystical these are a very spiritual people. But yes, they are.

It's just that the true spiritual dimensions and practices are also suppressed because they're not just spiritual in the way in which Western religion imagines some between, you know, body and spirit and so on, i.e., the spirit is, you know, in a secular society, oh, that's apolitical, so it can be kind of quarantined. But this was one important feature I understand about the occupation was resisting that and reinstituting and creating the opportunity for reviving the culture of indigenous religious practices and the ghost dance in particular. So perhaps you can talk about that and also how important that was during the period of the occupation once it starts with the aim activists and local people. people from Pine Ridge get involved. What happens, you know, during that occupation? So bear with me because it might get a little out there just because like I'm super connected

to the traditional side of my culture and things that I don't have the best white words to explain things. My uncle didn't hear English tell he was seven years old. His grandpa was older than sitting bull. So, you know, the man's old. All right. He doesn't speak the best English. So bear with me as I try to explain this. Okay. Um, so from start to finish, basically, uh, spiritualism had a huge role. And the thing like I was saying about the code of culture is that it's a pursuit of troops. Spiritualism is, you know, um, a way to induce visions, quote unquote, right, um, through physical means. So we don't actually do cougoucients or anything like that. So a lot of people have this idea of peyote and stuff like that. In reality, no, I mean,

you put yourself through any intense amount of pain and just sit through it, singing, you're going to have some clarity of mind to have to it. You know, it's intense. Some people pass out during some of the ceremonies because of the shock that their bodies go through. So whether it's sweat lodges that get to the 400 degrees, you know, or it's what's called piercing where we put a peg or a deer antler through your chest and you hang yourself on a tree. or you hang a buffalo skull off yourself and you drag it around or lean off the tree till they tear out, you know, so when we do, we do a lot, we're a different, we're a different

breed, you know, we're both differently. And, you know, so that's like the underpinnings of this. So Ames starts coming to wound, not wounden need, but Pine Ridge specifically to seek spiritual guidance, I guess, like traditional guidance. mostly, but, you know, to get connected with some sort of spiritual elements of indigenous cultures. And so the means have a, you know, stronger connection to their culture just due to the recentness of our colonization. But the biggest thing is that that's Russell Means, right? Yes, I should say Russell and the means, but Bill is still alive. And it doesn't really matter, which is what we're talking about.

Unless, like, we're talking about the contra incident, and that's a whole other thing. But anyway, that's a later story. The point is, is that they have a cousin. He's like a second cousin or something to me. Leonard Crowdog. And his dad, Henry Crowdog is actually called The Last Eagle Tamer. And so this is how this story is told to me by Bill Means. Leonard Crowdog was also there.

but Henry calls a reporter he knows and says bring your camera to this feel on this day, you know, and the two kids are there, the reporter's there, and he plays this song and blows this whistle and like an eagle bone whistle, and then an eagle flies down and it's okay. And then that eagle would like fly over sweat lodges and stuff as he like prayed. And so like pretty legit dude, I think. I don't know. I know people on the left have some opinions about religion. When you start taming eagles, you got something, you know? Yeah, got something. And he never called himself a medicine man, but he knew a lot.

He was a wisdom keeper, right? And so, you know, he tried to share this knowledge with people as much as he can. And I have wonderful archive footage of it from friends that interviewed him right after the occupation and stuff. But his son, Leonard and his cousin Wallace Black Elk were the spiritual leaders of them during the occupation. And so, like, every day they'd have sweat lodge, traditional medicine played a huge role in taking care of everybody. So, like, white people who were there all got the same medical care as everybody else, the same rations. White people were not forced to leave. A few of them were kind of held hostage at the beginning.

but they were given the choice to leave or stay, you know, and a lot of them chose to stay to talk to the media and then left after that once the guns started shooting. A lot of people left once the guns started shooting. So just the 4-1-1, if a lot of people show up, half of them are going to leave once the gunfire starts, right? You know, this occupation, you know, like spiritualism is like a huge foundation to it,

And that's because boarding schools represented a stripping of that culture, you know, whereas that as religions are often, what's it called? I want to say superstructural, but institutions of the superstructure is what I want to say. And so this religion is one of the last vestiges of an Ochete-Sachau-Ween superstructure, right? And obviously it's resisting colonial occupation and trying to reassert itself. And you have, you know, all the dynamics that might come from, like, say, a bourgeoisie now that you have colonialism influencing it. But, you know, you do have this deeply fascinating era, well, not even era, but eras to study where you had, I would say, class warfare and class, you know, Oh, what's the term? I know, we were moving towards a classless, moneyless, stateless society, you know, and we were pretty far along the way and we were beating the U.S. until they started murdering our kids and like women, you know, like that that's when we finally stopped fighting. And it's not like when I say, you know, women like I don't mean women weren't fighting with us. In fact, well, a woman is who killed a custard, you know, like we were very progressive compared to most society. and it wasn't until colonialism comes in

that way you start to see some really gruesome changes in the culture, I'd say. Like there's a primitive accumulation starts to occur with like horses as it's like money form when Spain starts to transfer a lot of horses to repopulate the Americas with horses again. It's just it's a super fascinating history that's really clouded and a lot to get into.

And so we're trying to. touch on everything while still staying on the occupation is hard yeah so um maybe we can talk a little bit that's really fascinating about these relationships between um you know resistance and the indigenous religion and spirituality that you were mentioning and talking about so these practices were being revived and created a kind of collective communal condition where there was new practices uh well these practices were being you know developed but what else happens during the occupation you've alluded to a period when the guns started you know being fired so like take us like just briefly what was happening

and then you know what precipitated the you know turned to a more violent confrontation in the course of the occupation because I understand that the occupation lasted for 73 days, 71? 71 days, right. So it started in February 27th, you know, 1973, but then it lasted, you know, for well over two months. So what was happening before things reached kind of head with, you know, gunfire and so forth? Well, the gunfire starts very quick. It didn't take long.

Basically the first, how it all begins is they have this meeting at Calico after AIM comes to Rapid City and is handing out pamphlets. There is this whole thing going on with Osgro where they're getting the signatures, obviously. And so then Edgar Bear Runner invites AIM to come protect Osgrove from Dick Wilson's retaliation. And so while there, they had to ask permission from Fools Crow. And Fools Crow is the traditional, like, leaders. So he's sort of like the last great chief. And he's actually who taught, like my uncle, medicine, and where we get our family altar from.

And so Fools Crow, he had a lot of trusted advisors, right? And these trusted advisors had a lot of experience all around the world. His interpreter was Matthew King, who was a machinist, and like kind of parole across America before returning back to the reservation, right? And that's the case with a lot of elders at this time. They might have served in the military or something like that that brought them off of the res and then they came back.

So, you know, it's not like we were blind to the rest of the world, the traditional people. In fact, we had a very wide knowledge of it. And so Fools Crow is one of the elders that is brought to these meetings in Calico. And so there's a sweat lodge, and stuff, um, and prayers that go on to decide who's going, um, to do what, right? And so it's decided at this meeting that Carter camp, uh, and he's from the Oklahoma angle, um, but it's decided

what are you doing? Sorry, but it's decided that he, uh, would go in first on the cover night with about like a dozen other dudes. And they would cut the landlines for the trading post called the Gilderstein trading post, which underneath had, like, super old guns from, like, early pioneering days onward, you know. So that they seized a large amount of weapons immediately. The Oklahoma guys brought some guns themselves, but it wouldn't be until L.A. Communist and Brown Berets actually show up, and they bring two guns each, actually. funny. So pretty cool on them. But, you know, that's after the shooting already happened.

There was a lot of people who showed up the day after once all the news started, right? Because, you know, there's already a federal presence in this reservation. This isn't like something new, you know. This is something they had already been doing in. This is the escalation, right? And so, and it's because of Ames influence there, right? Obviously, AIM had proven that they're able to garner mass media attention. They're able to galvanize national movements, right?

And they have numbers, right? And that's the biggest thing. And so Carter goes in there. They clip the thing to hold those white people hostage. Those white people eventually get a chance to go or whatever. After the media talks to them, a bunch of people start sneaking in. um using like the hills as cover and so it's called the black hills because the shadows get really dark in between the hills because of how big they and uh you know um it it also is like

black soil and stuff like that so there's several reasons why it gets called the black hills but um we call like hay sapa which means like the black ridge um or paha sapa um but uh basically um we uh well i say we the oglala people we had a lot more to uh die for i guess we we had a lot more neck in the game right um and so we stuck around obviously a lot more we had like children there like i talked to the seven year old who uh in this book you can see on the internet archive called the voices wounded knee that seven years old was digging a trench you know like uh these people built like these foxholes and bunkers that um you know they would man and uh you know try to protect the occupation from you know by strategically placing the bunkers around you know

and that's why armor piercing rounds were brought in but they also brought in like apc's and like you know like i mean like they staged a full on military assault on us and you're talking like um in reality there was a couple more automatic guns than people realized there was a couple of M18s, I want to say, that some former Marines had brought. But other than that, most of the guns were just like hunting rifles and pistols. And there was a broken AK-47, which is a pretty famous photo, where the guy's like holding it above his head and he's all smiling. The gun doesn't shoot. The gun doesn't shoot. You know, but like that didn't stop the government from, you know, people don't know about

the MAQ. That's like recent news that's come out that that actually existed. But, you know, there was like 13-year-olds shooting at federal agents. Like I know 13-year-olds were shooting at federal agents and never got in trouble for it or anything. My uncle was 17 years old when he was Ains security at the time. You know, one of my aunts, Madonna Thunderhawk, was one of the primary leaders, you know. So this is all a very close, I mean, all of it. happens, like 15 miles down the road from my family's land. It's very, you know, like,

we know this history very deeply and like, you know, we're the ones who lead the wound, the walk, the four directions walk every year for liberation day. This is actually the last liberation day just happened yesterday. And so February 27th is when the occupation officially begins, but February 26th is when Carter Cant goes. Right. And Kara Camp also ends up being the last person to leave, along with Henry Crowdog and a couple others who, like, everybody decided would be the people to be arrested, basically symbolically, while they try to smuggle everybody else out to avoid legal issues, basically.

And so, like, you have some pretty crazy accounts from people for what happens during the occupation. and then how they leave, you know, but those are usually like, they'll consist on some main stories, like there was a baby born under gunfire. That's a pretty crazy story. Henry Crow, not Henry Cote, I would come up to you if you had a bullet wound

and he would just push it out. So that's pretty intense. But then, like, he would pack some medicine in it and it would, like, make the pain go away, they say. You know, like, there's some wild stories that, you know, are materialists, but it's based in spiritual science that we keep hidden from white society a lot of times because you'll come in and over harvest and destroy the plant. Because you want to make a medicine out of it when it's already

working has attended. You know, like nature grew it that way. You don't need to make a medicine out of it. You know, that's sort of our philosophy. Like, we have plants that will destroy gallstones and kidney stones and you know that's what we use we don't go get a sonogram or anything well whatever the you know when they blast the sound wave at you you know and so this is like

sort of that knowledge that got revived you know and then afterwards unfortunately there's some extreme repression from the FBI and stuff with like the infiltration of like Douglas Durham which begins at that occupation actual and it was

if occupations like that are an easy time for feds easy time so that's you know like the inner circle needs to be pretty tight but even then douglas durham became the right-hand man of dennis banks so you know like and dennis bank's wife at the time come look would end up stitching on it so it's like uh you know i don't think people realize the complexities at hand and you know, organizing something like this, you know, because they weren't communists. They were radlibs, I'd say. And I would say, you know,

despite that, they still received huge support from like Black Panthers during the trailer broken treaties, which I did an episode with with Nick Estes where we kind of go over like what the points actually are, just 20 points is a lot of points. And also it's like a Zionist wrote them so I don't care about reading them out loud, you know, but we can learn from them and make

them better as Marxist Leninists is my opinion, you know, I think there's a lot available there that we're not aware of or we're aware of and haven't looked at yet, right? Like a lot of people, it's on the list, but it's down low after, you know, just a few more essential theorists, right? But it's like, you know, I don't know. Like, yeah, you need some Marx and Lenin, but like we also need to study what happened here, you know, instead of what happened in Russia. As great of a country as the USSR was, it had many downfalls and is why it does not exist today. You can blame the U.S. as much as you want, but it took advantage of internal contradictions. That's how those work.

You know, it might have exasperated them or whatever, but you can only take down a country like, that using internal contradictions. The same way Cortez was so few people took down the Aztecs using internal contradictions. You know, and it's an old play by colonizers. It's a very old move. Something they've perfected over time, you know. And like that's why France would set up race wars years in advance to try to maintain control of their colonies and stuff like that. Like it's not a conspiracy when they wrote up. about it. I wish I was like being a nut job, but it's like, no, you could go read about it in the Library of Congress and stuff. It's a little, it's a little brazen. I don't know. Like, it just blows my mind how like open this history is. So for some reason, I would say it's probably public education's fault, right? Nobody's thinking, what if we went before 1776 and looked at the class relations in America before claims? I mean that the founding fathers were the proletariat in this country.

They were literally land and slave owners. None of us got the right to vote. Any white person didn't get a right to vote, the right to vote unless they had land until much later. And people forget that, you know. That is the definition of Marx going. It's the same as it was in the old Greek societies, freedom, democracy for the slave master. Even if Marx didn't realize that was what was happening there, that's what would happen there. You know, like, it's just very frustrating to see the discourse these days when once you look at this history, it's a little, it's a little obvious to me, like how history has been kind of ought to us to obfuscate these facts of colonialists.

Well, I want to hop in for a second and turn us, so you talked about the occupation and then you talked about support in passing. And I think that it's important that first, before I ask this question, for the listeners to understand that the occupation was actually surprisingly popular, not only within the native community in the United States, but also it drew wide swaths of support from across broader society. You mentioned the Black Panthers, but even outside of radical groups like that, there was surprising amounts of support for the occupation. So the question that I want to turn to now is, what was the significance of the occupation? What is the legacy of the occupation? As we're looking back, you know, not only from now, what was the significance at the time, even as it ended and, you know, ended ostensibly with the U.S. government reasserting its control and, you know, all of that. What was the significance of the time?

what is the enduring significance and what is the legacy of the occupation at Wounded Knee as we look back with 50 years of hindsight? In hindsight, you know, looking at it now, so at that time, you know, AIM represented an alternative, right, to the raw deal indigenous people were being served at that. And so, like, after Wounded Knee, you would have, like, the Menominee Warrior Society staged an occupation of the Vlexa Brother, some Catholic, I forget what they're called, but it's a Catholic monastery, basically. And in Wisconsin, you know, and, like, there they would discover Douglas Durham is a Fed. They would find a room full of recording equipment next to his room, which he insisted be the communications headquarters. he eventually ended up not being allowed in the meetings of things and then like he started getting mad and then beating his girlfriend so was asked to leave the occupation and stuff and yeah it's a pretty messed up story but then she ends up like dead funny enough weird how that one happened um but yeah anyway uh that's jen seated eagle deer and that's like the whole thing with AIM history, but the legacy and the occupation doesn't really end in, I mean, it's

still ill, right? Like Leonard Peltier being in prison is a result of that occupation. And the reason is is because during Russell Means and Dennis Banks first, the United States, they're acquitted because of malpractice. Like, there's so much witness tampering and stuff that goes on. they basically they show anime this is like

people people don't know this history that well but like they knew anime was dead before anybody else did and they would show her body to this mentally challenged woman

Myrtle Poor Bear in order to intimidate her into false confessions and this led to not only letter Peltier's imprisonment but Dick Marshall's imprisonment as well on the ground that they're just

like all just they're all dating her and every single person is admitting to murders to her for some reason you know it's a very weird choice to say the least but like there's a wonderful book

called I don't know I don't know if I'd call wonderful anymore now that I know the guy used to be a fed but uh or was a fed and kind of like sold out all of his contacts to like build his writing career. But Peter Matyerson, I want to say his last name is, wrote in The Spirit of Crazy Horse, which he worked with Bob Rubadu, who was one of the co-defendants for the murders. But basically, Caltier flees the country and doesn't stand with Dino Butler or Bob Rubadu, who are acquitted on self-defense,

whereas Caltier is arrested for murder and has been serving the rest of his life since, and even though these men got acquitted on the same evidence. The only evidence that's precluded from Peltier's trial is the ballistics evidence, pretty important to a gun case, where you would learn that none of the guns were Peltiers. There is no way Peltier could be the murderer. So that's why you had this recent stint when Arlo Looking Force

and John Goodboy Graham went to prison for anime Marse's murder, where they tried to claim that Leonard Peltier tortured her and interrogated her with a gun in her mouth. And, like, you look into that in that story, everybody that I've talked to that was at that Sundance says they went and smoked a joint. The reason why they don't talk about smoking a joint is because there is this huge perception he wants to put up of everybody being anti-drug and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, when in reality, like Vernon Bellacore and Clybella Cor were doing tons of cocaine because they were friends with the Sandinie studs, you know? Speaking of support they got after Wounded Knee, but like the Sandinistas were huge supporters of theirs. And so, I mean, revolutionary groups all around the world, you know, saw Ayn as like the vanguard more so than the BPP, you know. And people don't realize that because there is this hidden history, you know, and like, I don't know.

There's a lot of places to go after that. Well, what you just were pointing out is that one of the kind of consequences or legacies of it was the repression, right, you know, that happened in a fragmented group. It, you know, kind of put people through incarceration on various kinds of trumped up charges and so on, like a lot of the things that we notice happened in Cointel Pro. And as you were pointing out, despite supposedly the end of Cointel Pro, it clearly got a lease on life, you know, through the repression of aim and, you know, as a result of the occupation and so on. But I'm wondering, why are there any other sort of maybe positive legacies you would say about how that advanced indigenous struggle or consciousness or what kinds of outcomes. came out of it that are valuable potentially now looking back 50 years for contemporary indigenous struggle or has basically contemporary indigenous struggle moved on and moved in very different directions. And so maybe that's also something that one can learn by remembering

and reflecting on what happened. You know, that's, that's, I'm not sure. So, but that's the kind of question I'm wondering about is what's the standpoint, you know, of subsequent indigenous resistance and struggle of this history, you know, of the outcomes of this history of this occupation, famous occupation at Wounded Knee that clearly, as we've just been talking, and you've been showing, had, you know, it was, you know, regarded as a vanguard movement and struggle against settler colonial, you know, in settler colonial societies across the hemisphere and was supported by not only a large segment of the population. in a sort of passive way, but actively by some of these other radical groups like the Black Panther Party.

So it clearly was very important in its time. So I guess the question is, is, you know, what were some of the positive legacies or outcomes of, you know, this occupation for indigenous struggle or for, you know, struggles more broadly? What can we learn 50 years after from it for our own contemporary movements? Well, and with wound in these positive sides, you know, I would say that a lot of times the history kind of gets clouded in these negatives, right, and that we kind of say aim collapse after the co-intel probe, but really all the greatest successes of AIME happened after that Monominee Warrior Society incident and after Wickle Dock and stuff does a great, Wickle dock is the Wounded Knee legal defense and offense committee. that was a group of volunteers mostly that I would even face repression themselves like being attacked by the Goon Squad famously at the airport the Pine Ridge Airport, I should say not Rapid City

because Rapid City has the Air Force at their airport I would hope that wouldn't happen there but that would be a little too on the nose. Basically what happens is I'm sure So first we should talk about the International Indian Treaty Council

And so this sort of forms only a few years I want to say one year after Peltier goes to prison If I recall correctly But they would lead a huge grassroots effort To basically like unite indigenous people all around the world you know, in, you know, forming a declaration to, like, define the rights necessary for indigenous people to have self-determination, continued existence in a way that's supposed to be compromised, right, with the settled order of things. So the UN is obviously not an

institution that favors oppressed nations often, right? It's supposed to provide a leaf, a democratic opportunity or lane, but obviously liberalism never lives up to its ideals. And so from like the Marxist perspective, this is obviously challenging to look at the history of, right? The point is, though, is that this was a grassroots international movement that received support from everybody besides the U.S., Israel, and Canada, in Australia. But, you know, obviously the indigenous people there, like the Palestinians, you know, an Irish, you know, everybody, you know, supported it or was directly involved. The Irish were never declared indigenous or anything, though I think the argument could be made just like from the study of the actual people, like what people who formed undrip is what it's called, the UN Declaration for the rights of indigenous people. But even like Saddam Hussein. supported you know like everybody supported you know um and this is you know like it's the UN whatever but there's something to be said of that optic that's there right there's something we said about um the UN's you know declaration of the Geneva Convention or whatever we still

use that as a standard to go while human rights abuses are being committed here or whenever or I don't think it certain states are upheld to the same standards as others obviously but should write in the U.S. order of things and I think it shouldn't be discounted that that point is so easily made on the global stage for us that if you are as you allied with indigenous people despite the reactionary detentencies we might see a greater success

of a national liberation movement at the very least whereas if you ally with Maga Chuds you're more likely to see the next new deal from FDR I feel like

I don't know I just don't see a lot of revolutionary potential there well as we went through this conversation I think that the listeners realize that there's so much more that needs to be said and on many of the topics that were touching on to the broader issue that we were talking about here of the 50th anniversary of Wounded Me.

And hopefully we'll have the opportunity in the future to touch on some of these various subjects that we hinted at in this episode. But I think that we should wrap up for now. I know that we have, by we, I mean, Shung Manitou has a series that he's putting together. at the beginning, we played the intro kind of introduction to this series. So, Shung Manitou, as we get out of here, can you tell the listeners how they can find you and talk about that series briefly so that they can get a more in-depth and serialized story of the wounded knee occupation? So I've been writing this over the last two years, trying to, like, put it together in a way that is last

ranty like this obviously we have only so much time in an episode like this and i'm trying to hit a lot of points that i wasn't able to cover in the more serialized version and so it's going to be a more coherent story that kind of starts um with like the alcatraz occupation the earlier red power movement and then moves on to um tell you about we call it the siege of wooden the knee, right? The occupation, reoccupation. There's a lot of different names for it, but you know, that's all going to be happening at the People's History podcast, as well as the Chukaluta Network podcast and Patreon. If you subscribe to the Patreon right now, obviously you support finishing the project going towards the next project, and you get sneak peeks and

stuff of like the field notes or whatever. We did as well as, like, full version, some of the interviews featured in the trailer as well as that will be featured in the later series once it's finished and aired, right? So we're practically done. It's mostly just in final production and making sure everything sounds good as well as we're producing the music ourselves. So obviously that comes with a lot of labor. That's pretty much not paid. But it's like the only way. way to get good music in your stuff that's not like standard royalty free music so whatever here we are i started a band um i knew a million other projects like i said you can find me on twitter at at bands island that's my personal twitter um but then uh at chunkuluta 1973 is the network uh twitter and there you'll find whatever we're doing you know we do a lot

of different things from organizing in real life to producing content on the internet for people. And the content's only growing and becoming more better, I'd say. Maybe that's bad English, but it's going to be better quality and more educational because I just feel like, you know, we need to hold each other to a higher standard. And I think that, you know we're ready to learn some new things as a collective and I think this is a great place to start focusing people's study because a lot of people can only provide you the cursory oh the young lords and black panthers work together right but then like you learn that aimed at a lot of what the black panthers were doing as far as like police go without guns you know and that's like good optically for the liberals or whatever and that's something to think about you know to avoid repression or whatever but then like they'd have a shotgun in the Trump you know that's what we need to be thinking about you know um unfortunately you know having your shotgun in the Trump leads to

some unfortunate incidents if you can't reach it right but like uh you know that's the way this thing goes sometimes and uh yeah i don't know there's just a lot to think about and I take this obviously a lot serious than some people do and that's because you know, I have family who have died doing this and I, you know, like we are fighting a revolution here and it began a long time, you know, and we do not plan on being oppressed longer than we have to be, you know, like we were not conquered until almost the turn of last century, so I mean, fingers crossed for less than 200 years. That's the goal, eh? I don't know, that's how I view it and I hope, you know, I offered something to at least get you interested in

listening to the other many things I offered for education. Absolutely. And I will, of course, link to that in the show notes. Adnan, how can the listeners find you and your other excellent podcast? Well, they can follow me on Twitter at Adnan. Nan A. Hussein. And you can also listen to the M-A-J-L-I-S podcast by the Muslim Society's Global Perspectives Project here at Queens that deals with the Middle East Islamic world, Muslim diasporic cultures, Islamophobia, topics like that. So do check it out. It's available on all the platforms. And I just want to thank Shung Manitu for giving us such a textured and various with many, many threads that I'm fascinated by kind of kaleidoscopic

history of this occupation and what it connects to. And what it connects to is clearly a very wide history that is, as he described it himself, you know, kind of a hidden history that we really need to learn and understand better if we're to have a way out as a settler colonial society towards real liberation. So I so much appreciate that. I look forward to future discussions, conversations, connections, to learn more about perspective on decolonial Marxism. I think it's an important kind of orientation that is being thought through these histories and through thinking about these histories. So I look forward to a few. future engagement with you. So thanks so much for joining us today.

Yeah, I'm sorry. I opened up so many threads we couldn't close. But that's good history when you do that. Room for future discussion. That's how I always view it. I want to echo Adnan's sentiments. And before I read myself out, I also just want to remind the listeners that they can follow our co-host, Brett, who was unfortunately unable to make it to this recording today, but you should definitely listen to his two shows, Revolutionary Left Radio and The Red Menace. Both of those can be found at Revolutionary Left Radio.com. I also want to remind listeners that guerrilla history has recently launched a spin-off show, Gorilla Radio, and we have several episodes up on the Guerrilla Radio channel already, including a recent episode that came

out absolutely fascinating with the founders of Palestine Action, the group that is doing direct action in the UK to shut down weapons manufacturers that are providing their weaponry to the Zionist regime in Israel. Really terrific discussion. So subscribe to Gorilla Radio, wherever you get your podcast to hear that episode as well as other episodes similar to it. And of course, we will be putting out more on that channel as well. As for me, you can follow me on Twitter at Huck 1995, H-U-C-1-995. You can follow Guerrilla History on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod

G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-L-A-U-S-Cod and you can help support the show keep us up and running and help us expand and do more things like the spinoff Gorilla Radio as well as we have actually many, many more ideas of things that we would like to do if we had the resources to do them by going to

Patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. Again, Gorilla being spelled G-U-E-R-I-L-L-A. On that note, then listeners, Until next time, Solidarity. You know what I'm going to be.