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#woundedknee

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Today in Labor History May 8, 1973: A 71-day standoff at the Pine Ridge Reservation, at Wounded Knee, ended today, after American Indian Movement (AIM) members surrendered. In 1890, U.S soldiers massacred nearly 300 Lakota people at Wounded Knee. Ever since, native peoples on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where Wounded Knee is located, have faced poverty, and racism by their neighbors. They also had a corrupt local government on the reservation. So, on February 27, 1973, 200 Lakota activists and members of AIM, seized control of Wounded Knee. They demanded the resignation of their corrupt tribal leader. They also demanded that the U.S. government start obeying its treaties with indigenous peoples. Within hours of the occupation, police surrounded the them, marking the beginning of the siege. The cops were joined by federal marshals and national guards, who traded fire with AIM activists on a daily basis. Two native activists died in the conflict and one federal agent was shot and paralyzed. AIM leaders Dennis Banks and Russell Means were arrested, but their case was dismissed by the federal court for prosecutorial misconduct. Two years later, there was another shootout at Pine Ridge. AIM leader Leonard Peltier was wrongfully arrested and imprisoned until 2025.

Today in Labor History May 6, 1973; The FBI attacked Native Americans at Wounded Knee. The town of Wounded Knee had been surrounded and cordoned off by the FBI and marshals since February 27. Members of the American Indian Movement had gone to Wounded Knee for a meeting, but were immediately locked in by FBI. Members who tried to leave were arrested. They were opposing the autocratic and corrupt rule of Oglala Tribal Chairman Dick Wilson. Throughout the 3 months of occupation, gunfire was repeatedly traded between the two sides. Several activists were killed by the gunfire.

Today in Labor History February 27, 1973: 300 Oglala Sioux activists from the American Indian Movement (AIM) liberated and occupied Wounded Knee, South Dakota. This was the site of the infamous Massacre at Wounded Knee (1890). They occupied the site to protest a campaign of terror against them by the FBI, and corrupt tribal officials, and the tribal thugs knowns as GOONs (Guardians of Oglala Nation). The occupation lasted over 2 months, before being quashed by the U.S. government. 3 Native activists were killed. Dennis Banks and Russell Means were indicted for their roll, but charges were later dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct.

I haven't seen a website for this event yet, but it's been an annual event for years!

#4DirectionsMarch
February 27, 2025
Wounded Knee, South Dakota

AIM Liberation of Wounded Knee 1973

North Direction: 9am Porcupine Post Office
East Direction: 9am 2 miles back on Mouse Creek
South Direction: 9am 18 Junction & Big Foot Trail
West Direction: 9am Manderson Post Office

AIM Liberation Celebration and Honorings 2pm
Wounded Knee District School, Manderson, South Dakota

#LeonardPeltier #WarriorWomen
#WoundedKnee #NDNCollective #IndigenousProtectorMovement #WaterProtectors #DefendTheSacred #ProtectTheSacred

Watching Vow of Silence: The Assassination of Annie Mae Aquash
Tv series (2024) directed by Yvonne Russo.
Annie Mae Aquash is one of so many missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. The doco investigates her murder, the continuing fight for Indigenous sovereignty, land & water; and effects of centuries of colonization on Indigenous women and girls.
imdb.com/video/vi3901933849/?p

IMDb▶️ Vow of Silence: The Assassination of Annie Mae - Vow Of Silence: The Assassination Of Annie MaeWatch Trailer | 1:35

Leonard Peltier's 46 [now 48] years in prison: ‘What else do you want?’

Former federal judge: Leonard Peltier ‘remains a casualty of this country’s cruel and lawless war against American Indians’

by Mark Trahant
Sep 29, 2022

"Leonard Peltier’s name has become a story that reflects other stories. One narrative describes Peltier as America’s longest political prisoner, serving more than 46 years in a federal maximum security prison. In that telling, Peltier has become a humanitarian and a 78-year-old Turtle Mountain elder who has been incarcerated for far too long.

"There is a long list of people, tribes and organizations that have called for Peltier’s freedom. The former prosecutor in the case. Members of Congress. #AmnestyInternational USA. Pope John Francis. The #DalaiLama. The National Congress of American Indians. Dozens of tribal nations, including Peltier’s own tribe, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. And, as of this month, the Democratic National Committee.

"That’s one version. A contrary account casts Peltier as the lead character for the crimes committed by the American Indian Movement [#AIM] during the #WoundedKnee era, including internal community violence, and he is described as a remorseless murderer.

"That last story is still promoted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on its website. But Peltier is not in prison for murder. The government could not justify a murder case, so it switched gears and today Leonard Peltier is Inmate #89637-132 serving at the United States Penitentiary, Coleman, in central Florida, on charges of 'aiding and abetting' the murder of federal officers, plus a seven-year sentence for an escape attempt.

"Indeed Peltier has already served a longer sentence than most principals in murder convictions. There is no way to look at the evidence and come away with any conclusion other than Peltier is being punished for crimes that could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law."

Read more:
ictnews.org/news/leonard-pelti

Happy #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth From the Army That Brought You the #TrailOfTears

After 170 years of armed attacks, #ForcedRelocations, #EthnicCleansing, and #genocide of #NativeAmericans, the #USMilitary wants to celebrate.

by Nick Turse
November 28 2024,

"'The Army was, bottom line, an instrument of a settler colonial empire that was determined to convert Native lands into private property for mostly white settlers,' said Jeffrey Ostler, professor of history emeritus at the University of Oregon and author of 'Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States From the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas.' 'That was its mission: to carry out a federal government policy that, in practice, often became a genocidal war.'"

Read more:
theintercept.com/2024/11/28/ar

The Intercept · Happy Native American Heritage Month From the Army That Brought You the Trail of TearsBy Nick Turse

How #LeonardPeltier has unjustly spent forty years in prison — and why it’s time to change that

Mike Baughman July 20, 2016

"So much time has passed that many Americans have forgotten, if they ever knew, what happened to an American Indian named Leonard Peltier, who has spent more than 40 years confined in various federal penitentiaries. This summer, a group of his family members and friends are traveling the country in an attempt to salvage what remains of his life, and to remind us all that no statute of limitations pertains to the application of justice.

"Peltier’s ordeal began when two FBI agents, Ron Williams and Jack Coler, were shot to death on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975. No one familiar with the details of the case believes that Leonard committed the murders, and Peter Matthiessen explored this miscarriage of justice in his 1983 book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, called Matthiessen’s book 'the first solidly documented account of the U.S. government’s renewed assault upon American Indians that began in the 1970s.'

"The plain truth is that with two FBI agents shot dead on an Indian reservation, the government needed a conviction. At Peltier’s trial before an all-white jury, prosecutors used false testimony against him, some of it obtained through torture. One particularly repugnant example: The FBI produced affidavits by a woman named Mabel Poor Bear, who said she was Leonard’s girlfriend and claimed to have seen him shoot Williams and Coler at close range. But Poor Bear had never met Leonard, didn’t even know what he looked like, and was proved to have been nowhere near the scene of the murders. When she tried to recant her testimony, claiming that the FBI had threatened to take her child away if she didn’t sign the affidavit, the judge refused to hear her testimony.

"Amnesty International classifies Leonard as a political prisoner. Some of his other defenders include Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Robert Cantuar, a former archbishop of Canterbury. Michael Apted produced an acclaimed documentary film exploring the case, Incident at Oglala, which was narrated by Robert Redford.

"Despite the FBI’s fraudulent evidence and perjured testimony, Peltier remains in federal prison. He went in as a 31-year-old and is now 71. He’s been transferred often, from Leavenworth, Kansas, to Terre Haute, Indiana, to Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, to Canaan, Pennsylvania, back to Lewisburg, and finally to Florida. Everywhere he’s been, inmates have jumped and beaten him, likely with the collusion of guards. Now he is going blind from diabetes, suffers from kidney failure and is susceptible to strokes. Ed Little Crow, a Lakota living in Oregon, says that all Peltier wants 'is a chance to see his family and work on old cars. If that dignified black man who’s president doesn’t pardon him, he’ll die in prison. This is his last chance.'

"When Peltier was sentenced, the applicable law stated that an inmate with a good record should, after 30 years, be released. His record was good, but, instead of freedom, his parole board gave him another 15-year sentence. His next hearing is scheduled for 2024.

"Before his second term ended, President Bill Clinton, under pressure from Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye and billionaire philanthropist David Geffen, among others, was expected to grant executive clemency. But after several hundred FBI agents, along with the dead agents’ family members, demonstrated outside the White House, Clinton on his last day in office pardoned a financier named Marc Rich instead. Rich had been indicted for tax evasion and illegal oil deals, including a purchase of $200 million worth of oil from Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran while 53 Americans were being held hostage there, and selling oil to the apartheid regime in South Africa despite a U.N. embargo. Geffen called Rich’s pardon 'a sign of corrupted values.'

"On my last trip to South Dakota, I visited the Pine Ridge Reservation. In the town of Pine Ridge, I talked to the man I’d come to see and then drove north to Wounded Knee, where I spent the long afternoon alone. There was a pleasantly cool north wind and a clear blue sky. I walked and thought. This quiet place was where, in 1890, the U.S. 7th Cavalry surrounded an encampment of Lakotas, and for no justifiable reason opened fire. By some estimates, as many as 300 Indian men, women and children were slaughtered by the time the firing finally stopped. To make a foul deed even worse, at least 20 of the soldiers who participated in this senseless massacre were awarded the Medal of Honor.

"There’s nothing anyone can ever do about what happened at Wounded Knee. But, though very belatedly, something can still be done about Leonard Peltier. I hope President Obama sets this man free. "

Original article:
hcn.org/issues/48-12/how-leona

Archived version:
archive.ph/NPKLS

High Country News · How Leonard Peltier has unjustly spent forty years in prison — and why it’s time to change thatBy Mike Baughman

Demand freedom for Leonard Peltier

Native activists in the U.S. and Earth Defenders around the world face violence, threats, and criminalization for protecting our planet. In solidarity, we support the call to the release of Native American Earth Defender #LeonardPeltier.

In 1973, Peltier and other activists from the #AmericanIndianMovement (AIM) accompanied hundreds of #Oglala #Lakota people in a historic re-occupation of the town of #WoundedKnee, #SouthDakota,