Members of the American Indian Movement occupied the site of the Wounded Knee massacre to hold a press conference about conditions on the Pine Ridge Reservation. However, they were blocked in by guards set up by the reservation chairman. This sparked a 71-day armed standoff between AIM members and federal authorities. Over 500,000 rounds were fired during the siege, killing 2 and wounding others. The siege drew international attention to poverty and rights issues facing Native Americans.

1. Second Battle at Wounded Knee
ONE PART OF THE NATIVE AMERICAN
MOVEMENT

2.  Members of the American Indian Movement
occupied the ground atop George Washington’s head
at the Mount Rushmore National Monument in the
Black Hills of South Dakota

3.  Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOONs) heavily
overlapped with the local police
 The GOONs were employed in an effort to terrorize
Wilson's opponents, mostly local AIM
supporters, into submission

4.  On February 26, it was decided to convene a press
conference the following morning at a symbolic site- the
mass grave containing the remains of some 350 Lakota's
massacred by the US Army at Wounded Knee Creek in
1890- to expose what was happening on Pine Ridge.
 “That evening, an advance party of about 150 AIM
members entered the tiny reservation hamlet to prepare
for the vent, while a smaller group began to notify the
media. At dawn, however, those inside Wounded Knee
realized that, overnight, Wilson's GOONs had set up
roadblocks on every road by which the press could enter
the hamlet, simultaneously sealing the AIM people in"
(Ness 712)

5.  4. "Thus began the seventy-one-day Siege of
Wounded Knee, 1973.
 Initially unprepared for either an armed
confrontation or a protracted occupation under
South Dakota's severe winter conditions, the
surrounded AIM contingent quickly equipped itself
with weapons and ammunition from a local trading
post (Ness 712)

6.  State and local police departments in a five-state
area surrounding South Dakota were placed on
continuous alert to intercept persons suspected of
heading for Wounded Knee

7.  During the course of the siege, a half-million rounds
of military ammunition were fired into the Wounded
Knee perimeter, killing two Indians (an
Apache, Frank Clearwater, and an Oglala, Buddy
Lamont), and wounding numerous others.
 More flares were used to illuminate the perimeter at
night than were expended by all US forces in
Vietnam during any year of the war (Ness 712)

8.  In efforts to reach a truce during the bloody siege at
Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1973, a leader of
the American Indian Movement hands a peace pipe
to Kent Frizzell, assistant United States attorney
general (713)

9.  AIM's purpose in going to Wounded Knee had been
accomplished
 “By the time the siege ended on May 7, 1973, the
situation on Pine Ridge- and conditions in Indian
country more generally- had riveted international
attention for more than two months" ( Ness 713)

10.  Annual per capita income on Pine Ridge was barely
$1,200 in 1972, for instance, while unemployment
hovered at about 90 percent and male life expectancy
averaged only 44.6 years

11.  “It was reasoned that Nixon would have little
alternative but to promise correction of the
government's long-standing pattern of violating
treaties with Indians, usurping their
governments, and expropriating their lands and
resources. As a result of this treatment, native people
had been left by far the most impoverished of any
population group reflected in the US census” (Ness
710)