Two stories published in the South Dakota Searchlight illustrate the particularly South Dakota dynamic surrounding the Wounded Knee Massacre site. The headlines speak for themselves.
Early Wednesday evening, Makenzie Huber's Wounded Knee Massacre monument vandalized, damaged.
Just over two hours later, the Searchlight published Jacob Fischler's U.S. House passes Johnson’s bill to protect Wounded Knee land.
The stories speak for themselves. Huber reports:
A monument erected over a century ago to honor tribal leaders killed in the Wounded Knee Massacre was broken and vandalized earlier this month on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
A decorative element resembling an urn was pulled off the top of the monument, despite being held in place by a pin or rod. The element was damaged and left busted near the monument. Vandals also defaced the south side of the monument with graffiti.
“I’m really angered and frustrated because people in the area should respect this a little more,” said Wendell Yellow Bull, an Oglala Lakota County commissioner.
After weeks of work to clean and repair the monument, Yellow Bull plans to hold a ceremony when the broken pieces are placed back atop the monument on Monday.
Yellow Bull’s great-grandfather, Joseph Horn Cloud — who was a teenager at the massacre and whose parents, two brothers and a niece died in the onslaught — commissioned the monument in the early 1900s to honor the 22 headmen or “Itancan” who were killed in the massacre.
A total of about 350 Miniconjou Lakota people — many of them women and children — were killed by nearly 500 U.S. soldiers at the site on Dec. 29, 1890. After some of the Native American bodies froze on the ground for several days, a military-led burial party dumped them into a mass grave.
The 870-acre area surrounding the site is designated as a U.S. National Historic Landmark and is listed in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
South Dakota Congressman Dusty Johnson introduced a bill to protect 40 acres of the land, prevent commercial development and provide greater control of the site to the Oglala Lakota and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes, which recently acquired the land covered by the bill. The bill unanimously passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday and now goes to the Senate.
“What happened at Wounded Knee is a stain on our nation’s past that cannot be washed away,” Johnson said Wednesday.
In a 1990 Associated Press article, Yellow Bull’s grandfather, William Horn Cloud, recalled visiting the mass gravesite with Joseph Horn Cloud.
“He would walk over and lay down on the long, trench grave,” William recalled. “I asked him later why he did that. And he’d say, ‘My mother and father are there, so I am laying with them.’”
Yellow Bull worked with Sioux Monument in Martin to piece the monument back together. Owner Rick May, who is Oglala Lakota, estimated it cost about $500 to repair the monument, which he covered.
May hopes the damage will bring attention to Wounded Knee and the needed repairs or updates that could improve the site.
“It’s just a sad event,” May said.
Yellow Bull filed a police report on the incident.
The U.S. House approved by voice vote Wednesday a bill that would help protect land at the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota, where an estimated 350 Lakota were killed by U.S. soldiers.
The site is within the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The Oglala Sioux Tribe and the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe purchased 40 acres around the site last year and would retain possession of the land under the bill, lead sponsor Dusty Johnson, a South Dakota Republican, said.
The wounds from the massacre, which included the killing of noncombatant women and children, remain fresh for the state’s Lakota residents, Johnson said on the House floor earlier this week.
Johnson visited the site in June, he said. At nearby St. John’s Church, the floorboards are still stained with the blood of the wounded and dying who retreated there.
Johnson said he heard on his June visit from the grandson of a survivor of the attack, who grew up hearing of the fear and terror the day evinced.
“These are real people, these are real places,” he said. “These are not ancient tales of a distant land.”
The bill would place 40 acres into protected status for the tribes, Johnson said, providing tribes tools to protect the land.
Oglala Sioux Tribe President Frank Star Comes Out commented on the bill in a news release from Johnson.
“We are pleased the House of Representatives acted quickly to pass this important legislation,” Star Comes Out said. “This bill will protect our sacred land at Wounded Knee. It also continues the healing process for the descendants of victims and survivors of the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre.”
South Dakota’s U.S. Sens. John Thune and Mike Rounds, both Republicans, introduced an identical bill in the Senate.
Democrats have introduced bills in several sessions of Congress to rescind the 20 Medals of Honor awarded to U.S. service members at Wounded Knee, but that measure has not passed either chamber.
There's another story a related to Indian Country and history in the South Dakota media--and while the massacre at Wounded Knee and the long-term generational trauma of the Indian boarding school era may seem like different issues, they are fibers in the warp and weft of the fabric of genocide.
Huber reports in ‘Just a knee bone’: Reinterment brings pain and healing to Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate:
. . .The singular bone, which matched La Framboise’s gender and age upon death, is a reflection of how poorly Native American children and people were treated and viewed by the United States, [Tamara St. John] added. . . .
While St. John said she loves the United States, she isn’t surprised that there was “just a knee bone” in La Framboise’s grave.
“I cannot tell you how many times I’ve cried, even though I know I should be happy. People are messaging me that I did it — because I’m the loudest and have been the pushiest,” St. John said, who’s been actively working on bringing the boys home for the past six years.
The Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate struggled with the U.S. Army for years to follow what St. John referred to as a “rigid” reinterment process, having to find next of kin to the boys (who did not have direct descendants) and endure other struggles. The Army took over the property in 1927 after the school closed in 1918, so while the Army was not involved with running the school, the grounds are under the Army’s oversight now.
. . . St. John said her work has just begun. She is thinking about lobbying for federal legislation to make repatriation efforts easier, or to increase resources for tribal repatriation efforts. . . .
Let's hope that Johnson's win on the ‘‘Wounded Knee Massacre Memorial and Sacred Site Act’ ’motivates South Dakota's only congressman to follow St. John's lead. Her work as a state legislator should prove useful in navigating the process. Her son, Sioux Falls state representative and Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate member Tyler Tordsen served as State Director of Tribal Affairs for United States Senator Mike Rounds (now SE Regional Director for Rounds) should also be able to assist in prodding South Dakota's congressional delegation to step up (Rounds and Thune are sponsors of the Wounded Knee Massacre Memorial and Sacred Site Act in the senate.
It would also be a chance for Rounds to rise above a dark mark on his record while governor, in signing a 2010 constituent bill for the Catholic church that changed the statute of limitations (SOL) for bringing civil claims against institutions that had constructive knowledge of sexual abuse. While these boarding schools weren't federal institutions, they are a thread in this blanket (including the notorious Tekakwitha Orphanage in Sisseton. Perhaps St. John and Tordsen can work with colleagues in Pierre to address the 2010 law.
The South Dakota Searchlight articles are republished online under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
Photo: A sunrise silhouette of the entrance to the Wounded Knee Massacre memorial in South Dakota. (Getty Images) via South Dakotalight).
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