History of past treatment of Native Americans

Wounded Knees Massacre
 
Wounded Knee, located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, was the site of two conflicts between Native Americans and representatives of the U.S. government, including the U.S. Army and, later, the FBI. An 1890 massacre left some 150 Native Americans dead, in what was the final clash between federal troops and the Sioux tribe. In 1973, members of the American Indian Movement occupied Wounded Knee for 71 days to protest conditions on the reservation.Ghost Dance and Sitting Bull
Throughout 1890, the U.S. government was worried about the increasing influence at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation of the Ghost Dance spiritual movement, which taught that Native Americans had been defeated and confined to reservations because they had angered the gods by abandoning their traditional customs. 
Many Sioux believed that if they practiced the Ghost Dance and rejected the ways of the white man, the gods would create the world anew and destroy all non-believers, including non-Indians. On December 15, 1890, reservation police tried to arrest Sitting Bull, the famous Sioux chief, whom they mistakenly believed was a Ghost Dancer, and killed him in the process, increasing the tensions at Pine Ridge in South Dakota.
On December 29, the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry surrounded a band of Ghost Dancers under Big Foot, a Lakota Sioux chief, near Wounded Knee Creek and demanded they surrender their weapons. As that was happening, a fight broke out between an Indian and a U.S. soldier and a shot was fired, although it’s unclear from which side. 
A brutal massacre followed, in which an estimated 150 Indians were killed (some historians put this number at twice as high), nearly half of them women and children. The cavalry lost 25 men.
The conflict at Wounded Knee was originally referred to as a battle—the Army troops involved were later rewarded with Medals of Honor—but in reality it was a tragic and avoidable massacre. Surrounded by heavily armed troops, it’s unlikely that Big Foot’s band would have intentionally started a fight. Some historians speculate that the soldiers of the 7th Cavalry were deliberately taking revenge for the regiment’s defeat at Little Bighorn in 1876. 
Whatever the motives, the massacre ended the Ghost Dance movement and was one of the last major confrontations in the Indian Wars, America’s deadly series of wars against the Plains Indians and other Native Americans.
The American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded in 1968 in an effort to stop police harassment of Indians in the Minneapolis area. Borrowing some tactics from the Vietnam war protests of the era, AIM soon gained national notoriety for its flamboyant demonstrations. However, many mainstream Indian leaders denounced the youth-dominated group as too radical.
In 1972, a faction of AIM members led by Dennis Banks and Leonard Peltier sought to close the divide by making alliances with traditional tribal elders on reservations. They had their greatest success on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, after a group of young white men murdered a Sioux man named Yellow Thunder. 
AIM’s growing prestige and influence, however, threatened the conservative Sioux tribal chairman, Dick Wilson. When Wilson learned of a planned AIM protest against his administration at Pine Ridge, he retreated to tribal headquarters where he was under the protection of federal marshals and Bureau of Indian Affairs police. 
Rather than confront the police in Pine Ridge, some 200 AIM members and their supporters decided to occupy the symbolically significant hamlet of Wounded Knee, site of the 1890 massacre. Wilson, with the backing of the federal government, responded by besieging Wounded Knee.
During the 71 days of the siege, which began on February 27, 1973, federal officers and AIM members exchanged gunfire almost nightly. Hundreds of arrests were made, and two Native Americans were killed and a federal marshal was permanently paralyzed by a bullet wound. 
The leaders of AIM finally surrendered on May 8 after a negotiated settlement was reached. In a subsequent trial, the judge ordered their acquittal because of evidence that the FBI had manipulated key witnesses. AIM emerged victorious and succeeded in shining a national spotlight on the problems of modern Native Americans.
The troubles at Wounded Knee, however, were not over after the siege. A virtual civil war broke out between the opposing Indian factions on the Pine Ridge reservation, and a series of beatings, shootings and murders left more than 100 Indians dead. When two FBI agents were killed in a 1975 gunfight, the agency raided the reservation and arrested AIM leader Leonard Peltier for the crime. 
The FBI crackdown coupled with AIM’s own excesses ended its influence at Pine Ridge. In 1977, Peltier was convicted of killing the two FBI agents and sentenced to life in prison. To this day, Peltier’s supporters continue to maintain his innocence and seek a presidential pardon for him. 
And in 2021, members of the U.S. Congress petitioned President Joe Biden to revoke the Medals of Honor soldiers received for their participation in the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre.
Disaster at Wounded Knee. Library of Congress.
What really happened at Wounded Knee, the site of a historic massacre. 
What really happened at Wounded Knee, the site of a historic massacre. National Geographic.
Warren, Merkley, Kahele Lead Bicameral Letter Urging Biden to Rescind Medals of Honor Awarded to Soldiers who Perpetrated Wounded Knee Massacre. 
Warren, Merkley, Kahele Lead Bicameral Letter Urging Biden to Rescind Medals of Honor Awarded to Soldiers who Perpetrated Wounded Knee Massacre. Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Senate.
Wounded Knee Massacre. 
Wounded Knee Massacre. Encyclopedia of the Great Plains.
10 Things You Should Know About the Yakama Nation
ICTMN asked some Yakama people to share 10 characteristics that make their Nation strong.
· RICHARD ARLIN WALKER
· UPDATED:
SEP 13, 2018
 
Among the nations of the world, at 1,875 square miles, its land mass puts it just behind Luxembourg and Mauritius in geographic size. Count its historical territory, 18,750 square miles, and it’s smaller than Israel but larger than Kuwait.
Government-owned enterprises employ people in agriculture, communications and media, cultural preservation, education, entertainment, land and resource management, wildlife management, and utilities.
There are 55 government departments, among them business and economic development, education, environment, health and human services, law and justice, and natural resources.

Wounded Knee Massacre

American Indian Movement

Although Yellow Thunder’s attackers received only six-year prison sentences, this was widely seen as a victory by the local Sioux accustomed to unfair treatment by the often racist judicial system. AIM’s highly visible publicity campaign on the case was given considerable credit for the verdict, winning the organization a great Wounded Knee Siege

Trouble Continues at Pine Ridge

Sources

Which nation of the world is this? It’s the Yakama Nation.
The Yakama Nation is a federally recognized indigenous nation, a signatory with the United States to the Treaty of 1855. In that treaty, the Yakama Nation made available 11.5 million acres for settlement, but reserved 1.4 million acres – “composed of ownership of Mount Adams as our western boundary, 600,000 acres of timber lands, 400,000 acres of rangelands, 200,000 acres of agriculture lands, and 200,000 acres of home sites, cities and towns,” according to Trudy Pinkham, Yakama, a supervisory forester with BIA.
The Nation has nearly 11,000 citizens and is governed by the 14-member Yakama Tribal Council; it’s an active, hands-on government, with council committees dealing with issues related to budget and finance; culture; economic development; education and housing; grazing and timber; health and welfare; fish and wildlife; irrigation and roads; law and justice; recreation and youth activities; veterans; and radioactive hazards from the U.S. government’s Hanford Nuclear Site.
The Yakama council is not afraid to take bold steps to protect the culture and public well-being. The council voted in 2000 to extend a ban on alcohol sales over the entire reservation, including land owned by non-Indians. At the time, then-council member Jack Fiander said in an Associated Press story, "It's a symbol that this is not the type of economy we want to see concentrated on the reservation. It's sort of a symbol to the youth – we don't think it's cool anymore to use or abuse alcohol.”
And in 2013, after Washington state voters approved the recreational use of marijuana, the Yakama Nation made it clear that the sale and use of marijuana would not be allowed on the reservation.
The Yakama Nation is a strong nation. ICTMN asked some Yakama people to share 10 characteristics that make their Nation strong.
Courtesy Yakama Nation Fisheries
David Sohappy Sr. 1925-1991)
A diverse Nation: According to the Yakama Nation Museum & Cultural Center, “The ancestors of today's Yakamas were of different tribes and bands. Each was a distinct group led by a council of leaders, and each tribe or band spoke their own Native language, and were closely related to other Columbia Basin Plateau Tribes.”
The Yakama Nation was created by the Treaty of 1855, which states that the “following confederated tribes and bands of Indians, occupying lands hereinafter bounded and described and lying in Washington Territory … are to be considered as one nation, under the name ‘Yakama’”: Palouse, Pisquose, Yakama, Wenatchapam, Klinquit, Oche Chotes, Kow way saye ee, Sk'in-pah, Kah-miltpah, Klickitat, Wish ham, See ap Cat, Li ay was and Shyiks.
“A lot of Yakama people live different ways,” artist Toma Villa said. “To people who live in the valley, that’s Yakama to them. To people who live near the Columbia River, that’s Yakama to them.”
Much of Villa’s artwork is influenced by his family’s life at Cook’s Landing on the Columbia River. Villa fishes with his relatives – the sons of his granduncle, the late fishing rights defender David Sohappy Sr. – on the river. To honor his people’s river heritage, he’s painting murals near traditional fishing sites – one depicts a mammoth at the gorge; another, his granduncle, Sohappy; another, a gillnet fishing scene. (Villa also creates prints, sculpts and casts iron.)
A land of much beauty: Yakama country is a diverse land that has always provided for its people. Yakama’s reservation and ceded territories include 12,280-foot Mount Adams, and “the Yakima River, Medicine Valley, evergreen forests, meadows, Celilo Falls, Fort Simcoe, Columbia River and beautiful rolling hills,” the Yakama Nation Museum & Cultural Center reports. “We have always honored and respected Mother Nature. She gives us our huckleberries, roots, choke cherries, deer and salmon.”
Today, Yakama people engage in ceremonial, subsistence, and commercial fishing for salmon, steelhead, and sturgeon in the Columbia River and its tributaries within land ceded by the Nation to the United States. “Our people are strong in fishing, hunting and gathering of our traditional foods,” Pinkham said.
Never back down: “Our treaty still stands, with complete sovereignty,” said Patricia Selam, who is studying community development at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “We will never back down in our stance to uphold and exercise our rights as a people.”
In the Treaty of 1855, the Nation reserved the right to fish, gather and hunt in its traditional areas. But defending those rights has been continuous. David Sohappy Sr. (1925-1991), a World War II veteran who was imprisoned in his 60s for exercising his treaty fishing rights on the Columbia River, was a plaintiff in a federal court case that upheld treaty fishing rights – guaranteeing treaty signatories "a fair and equitable share" of salmon runs and making them partners in the rule-making process. Lavina Washines (1940-2011), first chairwoman of the Yakama Nation (2006-08), helped protect a traditional fishing and salmon-drying location from development as a gated community, and sought restoration of animal, plant, soil and water life that may have been damaged by radioactive waste at the Hanford nuclear reactor site.
Despite the settlement era, the boarding school era, the termination era, and all of the economic, political and social challenges in between, “we flourished and prospered,” Selam said. “We still exist with hearts as strong as our ancestors.”
PRESENT COUNCIL MEMEBERS TO DAY
Gerald Lewis – Chairman
George Meninick Sr. – Vice-Chairman
Charlene Tillequots – Secretary
Christopher Wallahee – Assistant Secretary
Terry Heemsah Sr. – Sergeant at Arms
YAKAMA NATION TRIBAL COUNCIL
Deland Olney
Arnold Eyle
Gene Sutterlict Sr.
Esther Moses-Hyipeer
Ruth Jim
Terry Goudy-Rambler
Jeremy Takala
Caseymac Wallahee
Nathaniel Pinkham