“The only major Indian problem...
bums trying to get their braids and mugs in the press."
- Dick Wilson (tribal chairman strongly opposed to AIM)
Background: footage of Earl Yellowboy walking on "Wounded Knee Memorial Association" building, from Les Indiens de La Colère (1973) filmed at Pine Ridge.
The Pine Ridge Reservation of the Oglala Sioux people was established under the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie.
On February 27th, 1973, roughly 200 AIM supporters from 50 tribes, as a protest, occupied the site of the last massacre of the Plains Wars, Wounded Knee, on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. This action would come to be known as the Occupation of Wounded Knee, or Wounded Knee II. During the 71-day siege, two people would lose their lives and thousands of rounds of ammunition would be fired between occupiers and opposition groups, including U.S. government forces.