29
White Lies
We arrived at Crow Dog’s Paradise to find about five hundred people waiting for us. We went first into the purification lodge, where Grandpa Henry, Leonard Crow Dog’s father, led us in a ceremony. After eating, Dennis and I gave talks about what was going on inside Wounded Knee, about our treaty, our reasons for making the stand, and our determination to continue. We talked about the kinds of support we needed—most critically, medical supplies and ammunition. I was introduced to a priest from Saint Francis Catholic Mission Boarding School, a community on the Rosebud that everybody referred to as “Sin City” because it swarmed with bootleggers and dope dealers. The priest, who shall go nameless, was planning to help bring ammunition and guns into Wounded Knee, and we discussed ways for him to do it.
Before leaving the Rosebud, I was reunited briefly with Michele and Scott. After having been turned away from the roadblocks around Wounded Knee, Betty had found her way to the Crow Dogs’. Michele was nine and just getting into her gawky years. She had some idea what was going on in Wounded Knee, but I wasn’t able to say what was in my heart. I feared that I would never see her again. I held her in my arms for a long moment and we both tried hard not to cry. Scott was six and didn’t understand the situation at all. He just looked at me in wonderment through his huge, dark eyes. I wanted to tell him how much I missed him, but the words never came. It was a bittersweet moment. I still thought I would never leave the Knee alive, but at least I had had a chance to see my kids one last time. I told them to always be good to their mother and to pray along with their ancestors—and that I loved them more than life itself.
Soon after our return to Wounded Knee, Crow Dog announced that he was going to have a ghost dance. In the white man’s history books, Wounded Knee is forever linked to the so-called “Ghost Dance craze” that “swept across Indian Country.” Even Dee Brown got it wrong in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee when he repeated the myth that the Sioux had embraced the teachings of the “Paiute Messiah Wovoka, who had founded the religion of the Ghost Dance” and had begun to hold dances to bring back the buffalo and restore the dead. Whites are taught that followers of the Ghost Dance “religion” believed bullets would bounce off their ghost shirts, also believed they would become invincible supermen, and were getting ready to attack settlers, so the cavalry was dispatched to end that threat at Pine Ridge. The lie continues, asserting that when the troops encountered Big Foot’s band, which had left the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, they were attacked. This is bullshit—U.S. military propaganda lies to excuse the mass murder of Paiute, Shoshone, Nez Perce, and Sioux people.
What really happened was that in 1890, the Lakota sent Kicking Bear and Short Bull west to what is now Nevada, to learn about Wovoka, a great Paiute medicine man, and the Ghost Dance. They returned to report that the Paiutes were doing a good thing. Wovoka taught his people that they must continue to live and think and act like Indians. No matter what the white man did to them, no matter what they were forced to endure on their reservations, if they remained true to themselves and the ways of their ancestors, eventually everything good would happen for them. That’s what AIM believes also: Remain true to who you are, and you will find peace of mind. The living proof of that is found in the wonderfully fulfilled and spiritual lives of Fools Crow and other Lakota elders, as well as those among the Miccosukee, the Navajo, the Hopi, and all the other nations who still follow traditional ways.
ABOVE: Big Foot (left) and Sitting Bull (right).
What really happened was that Big Foot and his band were camped out on the Standing Rock Reservation when two Indian men who had been accused of raping an older white woman came to ask for his protection. By the standards of our culture, he couldn’t turn them away. Then Sitting Bull was killed by Indian police, and the cavalry stepped up patrolling and brought in reinforcements. Big Foot realized that if Sitting Bull, who had done so much for his people, could be killed, then nobody was safe. Because Big Foot was sheltering fugitives, he worried that the white soldiers would come after him next. He decided to head for Pine Ridge and ask for Red Cloud’s protection, because Red Cloud was cooperating with the U.S. government. Big Foot was about two miles south of Porcupine when the Seventh Cavalry caught up with him. They disarmed his men and took everyone to Wounded Knee. A scuffle broke out the next day while the troops were searching their Indian captives for weapons. The cavalry started to shoot—and didn’t stop until every Indian in sight was dead.
When we began our own ghost dance at Wounded Knee, Crow Dog explained that he wanted us all to acknowledge the spirits present there, to call out to them to help and protect us. The night before, the women had made dancing skirts and shirts for us. We began at sunup. It was clear but cold, with much snow on the ground. Crow Dog assured us that although we danced barefoot, no one would be harmed. Men and women together, we danced until noon. As in the sun dance, we went through a cycle of songs, then started over. The dancing, singing, and suffering were familiar. Through prayer, the time flew by. Everyone’s feet became numb and swollen, but we didn’t realize it until we had finished and headed back to the trading post. Suddenly, walking was weird—I could feel nothing below my ankles. Crow Dog was ready. He had buckets of snow brought in to massage our frozen feet as he prayed. Not one dancer was injured. The power of Crow Dog’s medicine in those years was awesome. He is an astonishing man.
One dark, moonless night, we packed into the purification lodge. An intense firefight raged outside, but we were so involved in singing and praying that we didn’t hear it. We finished our ceremony during a lull in the shooting. When we opened the flap, people rushed over, thinking that everyone inside was dead or wounded. They told us the feds had been shooting at the fire pit next to the lodge. We looked for bullet holes. Crow Dog said, “Look at this,” pointing to an expended .223-caliber slug—like those fired by an M-16—on the ground near the lodge. Circling the hut, we found three or four more. When daylight came, we found still others imbedded in the lodge itself, in blankets draped over the framework. It was almost the same at our tipi—no holes in it, but slugs lying atop the snow all the way around. I still find that amazing.
Kent Frizell, a top Justice Department official, had once been the Kansas attorney general, but he was also a real cowboy who had grown up on a ranch. After sparring with him for days, we focused on ten demands, but Frizell needed his bosses—Attorney General John Mitchell and the felons-in-waiting at the Nixon White House—to think he was a tough negotiator. He wouldn’t accede to all ten, and we wouldn’t back off, so Frizell rewrote our list to consolidate it into what looked like only six demands. We agreed, because it still gave us everything we asked—congressional hearings into the status of our treaty, an investigation of the wholesale violations of Oglala civil rights, and a meeting at the White House.
The night before signing the agreement, we held a mass meeting at the trading post to select our White House delegation. Four is the most sacred of numbers, so we wanted to send that many people. We decided that our emissaries should include a lawyer, a spiritual adviser, an Oglala elder, and a member of the Wounded Knee leadership. As our lawyer, we chose Ramon Roubideaux, a full-blood and my mother’s relative. The eldest Oglala traditionalist present was Tom Bad Cob, then in his eighties; he agreed to represent us. Naturally, we asked Crow Dog to be our spiritual representative. That left only someone from the leadership. Several names were suggested, but there was no consensus. Wounded Knee was my home and I didn’t want to leave—and I certainly didn’t want to submit to arrest. That was part of the agreement, even though our lawyers had assured us that everyone would be promptly bonded and allowed to go to the White House. When my name came up, the people unanimously agreed. I couldn’t refuse the honor. I was almost overwhelmed to think that they had so much faith in me. When I said I would go, I was all choked up with emotion.
The next day we held a signing ceremony in front of the tipi, witnessed by the press. Then Crow Dog and Bad Cob were driven to Rapid City while I submitted to arrest. I had always wanted to travel by helicopter, but not until I became one of the FBI’s ten most wanted did I finally get my free ride. Before I was allowed aboard, the marshals cuffed my hands behind my back with plastic handcuffs. When I objected, they said it was standard procedure. That’s how all government idiots avoid having to act like human beings. They say it’s procedure and that they must follow regulations.
When we landed in Rapid City, I was the last off the helicopter. As I hit the tarmac, I handed the handcuffs to a marshal at the door. His face fell and his eyes bugged out. When they put the cuffs on, I was allowed to keep my hands in front. After booking in the county jail, I was placed in a cell by myself. I guess they didn’t want me to contaminate the other prisoners with un-American thoughts on freedom and self-determination. WKLD/OC lawyers brought in Stan Adelstein, a Jewish liberal Republican and one of the richest men in the state. It was our first meeting. He stared at me as though trying to decide what kind of person I was. I can’t blame him; he was being asked to put up thirty-five thousand dollars for my bond. All he said was, “You’re not going on the run, are you? You’re not going to skip to Cuba or anyplace.” I said, “This is my country. No white man is going to run me out of it.” He said, “That’s good enough for me.”
I was released, but Judge Bogue put several restrictions on me. I couldn’t return to Wounded Knee, drink alcohol, or even go in a bar; I couldn’t hang around with felons, carry a firearm, or commit another crime. It was like parole, except I had yet to be tried, much less convicted.
After a visit to WKLD/OC’s offices, I went to AIM’s headquarters and slept. After a few hours, Herb Powless, an AIM leader from Wisconsin, woke me and took me with three other guys to a Rapid City motel room to see a white guy from Arizona. Herb said only that it was about buying guns. I wasn’t interested, but I agreed to go along because I wanted to hear what the guy had to say. He gave us a pie-in-the-sky pitch about a shipment of M-16s and AK-47s coming into Arizona from Mexico, and he offered to provide us with grenades and plastic explosives—anything we needed. I listened to him, thinking, this is too good to be true—the guy’s got to be a fed. We said, “Oh, bullshit!” and left the room.
In the morning, I joined Bad Cob, Roubideaux, and Crow Dog at the airport and we flew to D.C. first class. The next day, we went to the American Arbitration Association building. From there, we were supposed to go to the White House. What the feds had wanted all along, of course, was for our people in Wounded Knee to give up. We told them that the last time we did that—at Wounded Knee in 1890—our ancestors had been massacred. We had resolved that that would not happen again, and had told Frizell that we wouldn’t give up our arms until after our White House meeting had produced tangible results.
One of the conditions under which I had surrendered was that the feds would turn the trading post’s phone back on. Dennis and I had worked out a code. What I said and how I said it would tell him whether to stand down the weapons or not. I had called the night before to say in code that we hadn’t been to the White House yet. At the American Arbitration Association, the feds said that since our people wouldn’t give up their arms, the White House refused to meet with us. I told them, “That wasn’t our deal—that’s bullshit.” Reporters and cameramen were following us around, so we called a press conference on the spot. I said, “I submitted to arrest to come here and deal honestly with the government to settle our grievances—but these people aren’t honorable. The White House flat out lied to us.”
I hung around Washington for a couple of days, but since I couldn’t go back to Wounded Knee, WKLD/OC told me to raise money for our cause by speaking at universities. I was invited to Oklahoma, where some Indians had seized a place near Stillwater and were demanding that the government live up to their treaty. Police and state troopers had avoided direct confrontation, although they professed to worry because the Indians were armed.
On the way to Stillwater, I stopped to speak at the University of Kansas, in Lawrence. More than a thousand people packed in to hear me. Before another speech at Oklahoma State University, in Stillwater, I joined an AIM press conference at the airport in Tulsa. After we gave our prepared statements, a UPI reporter said, “If you win at Wounded Knee, what will you do next?” That was such an obviously stupid question that I answered facetiously, “We’re going to militarily take over western South Dakota. That happens also to be within the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty area.” Everybody cracked up, so I thought they all understood I was trying to give an amusing reply to something that never should have been asked. Wrong! My jest was printed from coast to coast, and scared the bejesus out of a lot of otherwise rational people, especially in the northern Plains states.
After that speech, I was taken to the Indians’ armed camp, where everyone was drinking. I joined in. Still drinking, they drove me to Stillwater on back roads. As I sat in the middle of the front seat, an Indian in the back pulled out a gun, thumbed back the hammer, and put it to my head. He said, “You really think you’re some cool guy, don’t you? You just think you’re some hot shit, right?” I was within a heartbeat or an involuntary flinch or a bump in the road of having my brains blown through the windshield—but I was just drunk enough not to care. I said, “I’ll tell you what I know. I’m an Oglala Lakota patriot and I’m a leader of the American Indian Movement—and if you don’t like that, either pull the fucking trigger right now, or stop the car and let’s take it outside.” One of the guys in the car, Sam English, now a painter of world renown, talked the guy into giving up the gun. We pulled up to a bar in some small town and left him there. Afterward, I thought, what a stupid way to die. I made sure not to drink around anymore self-destructive Indians.
I made a speech the next week from an outdoor mike on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles. At Wounded Knee, it was colder than hell and snowing, and those guys had put their lives on the line—but many in my audience of students paid no attention to my message. They lay on the lawn, soaking in the warm California sun and chattering, so I cut myself off in midspeech and walked off. As I was leaving, a reporter came up to say, “We got word that Judge Bogue is going to revoke your bond unless you publicly apologize for your remark.”
“What remark?” I replied.
“About militarily taking over western South Dakota.”
“Publicly apologize? That’s bullshit!” I growled, walking off. When the story ran, it quoted me as saying, “The judge is full of bullshit.” The next day, I appeared at a scheduled press conference at the Los Angeles Indian Center and got word that the feds were coming to bust me because Bogue had revoked my bond. I had a plane ticket for Rapid City, so I decided to turn myself in there. I sneaked out and got in the backseat of a Volkswagen bug owned by a married couple I had just met. On the freeway headed for the airport, we were stopped by six carloads of LAPD cops. They surrounded our car, a dozen officers kneeling and pointing handguns at us.
“Come out with your hands on your head!” they barked. I tried, but an adult cannot execute that maneuver from a Volkswagen’s backseat, so I pushed the seat forward and started to get out. As they screamed, “Put your hands over your head!” I heard a chorus of metallic clicks—cops cocking weapons. As I got out and stood, hands down, a cop slugged me on the head with his baton. When I went down to one knee, he grabbed me by the back of my collar and threw me against the car. “Spread ’em!” he shrieked, kicking my legs and clubbing me in the back.
At that moment, two carloads of FBI agents screeched up. The agents poured out, waving their IDs while racing toward us full speed and shouting, “Stop! Stop!” They were obviously afraid the cops were going to do something irreversible that might ultimately embarrass the Nixon administration. They said, “We’re taking this man,” and bundled me into their car.
They took me to a jail near downtown Los Angeles. After stripping for delousing and suffering the indignity of having a rubber-gloved finger poked up my anus to discover any contraband I might be carrying, I was locked into a maximum-security isolation cell. The next day, I had a visitor. On the other side of the Plexiglas window was a white-haired old Indian. Behind him was a young Indian man, probably still in his teens. I don’t know their names and I’ve never seen them before or since. The old guy said, “You’re the reincarnation of Crazy Horse. I’m saying my prayers for you. Don’t worry, you’ll be all right. Is there anything we can get for you?” He left me twenty dollars for candy. I couldn’t help recalling that I was then about the same age as Crazy Horse at the time of his murder in 1877 by a BIA goon named Little Big Man. According to one story, Crazy Horse’s bones and heart are buried at Wounded Knee.
I stayed in that jail only a day and a night. Then, handcuffed, chained, and escorted by three marshals, I was driven to the Western Airlines tarmac. We got right on the plane, and I was seated in the last row with marshals on either side. Others were across the aisle and in front—five or six in all. When we changed planes in Denver, one asked if I wanted a coat over the cuffs to hide them. “Hell, no,” I said. “I’m a political prisoner.” As we walked through the airport I held my fists up to show the cuffs and people clapped and yelled.
We got on another Western plane and flew to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I was surprised. The marshals said, “We don’t want you in Rapid City.” I wound up in a Minnehaha County jail cellblock with three “Banditos” bikers who were awaiting trial for murder, and a couple of Indian guys. I stayed there for six weeks, leaving my cell only for meals and to go to a dayroom where we could play cards and watch television. I got no exercise. My only regular visitor was Carol Clark, daughter of a white man and an Osage woman. She was rich because her mother had “headrights”—royalties from oil wells on Osage land. Carol became my conduit to WKLD/OC, flying back and forth to Rapid City to talk with the lawyers. When it came to getting me out of jail, they stalled her with all sorts of excuses. I bought them until Carol dropped in on a WKLD/OC meeting and heard one of the lawyers say that the longer I stayed in jail, the better it would be for everyone. Although he has denied ever having said that, this lawyer is a lifelong leftist.
He believed that if I were AIM’s martyr, everyone would rally around, making it easier for us to raise money, and simpler to point out the federal government’s continued oppression.
But no one had asked me about that. When Carol told me what was going on, I got very angry. I sent word that I wanted out, no matter what. Since WKLD/OC wouldn’t help, Carol did. She knew a lot of people, and she set about stringing them together to raise the eighty thousand dollars I needed for bond. I’ve forgotten most of their names, but one was actor Mike Farrell, who would later star in the hit television series M*A*S*H. He contributed eight thousand dollars.
Before Carol could raise all the money, however, federal marshals came without warning one morning after breakfast, took me to the airport, and put me on a private plane. When we were airborne, they told me I was going to Scottsbluff, Nebraska, for a preliminary hearing on the counts I had been charged with after the Chicano-Indian conference. It was all bullshit, false accusations, of course, but now I was to have my day in court for disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, illegal possession of an unregistered gun, and two counts of assaulting police officers. A marshal said, “Your attorneys have been notified and will be there.”
The purpose of the “prelim” was to establish that the state had sufficient evidence to take me to trial. The defendant doesn’t get to introduce evidence—only prosecution witnesses testify—and a smart lawyer will ask nothing on cross-examination which could reveal his defense strategy. I sat and listened as two cops said that I must have concealed a long-barreled revolver between my legs, because they didn’t find it when they searched me at the scene or when they searched me before, and again after, booking at the police station. Somehow, it hadn’t fallen out while I was allegedly assaulting them as I got out of a squad car with my hands cuffed behind my back. After I was in the cell, they said, I must have taken that gun from between my legs and put it in my back pocket. Then while I moved around in my sleep, it fell out and somehow rolled to the middle of the cell.
I didn’t think it was unusual for two cops to be so unconvincing. But I found it incredible that the judge nevertheless bound me over for trial on all charges. I was taken from the court to the airport and was returned to Sioux Falls. Within a few days, Carol had lined up the rest of my bond on the Wounded Knee charges. After forty-three days behind bars, I was free—for the moment.
While I was still in jail, the siege continued. Before I was released, two people were dead and our resistance at Wounded Knee had ended. Because churches were traditional sanctuaries, we had put our older people there when the shooting started. Those Christian marshals and Christian FBI agents and Christian soldiers had no respect for their own spiritual roots, let alone ours. They fired on every single building at Wounded Knee, even those with a cross atop them. Every church was riddled. On April 25, a .50-caliber bullet came into the church near Denby Road, ricocheted around inside, and nailed Frank Clearwater in the head. He was a Cherokee, forty-seven years old, who had arrived with his wife only a few days earlier. He is buried at Crow Dog’s Paradise.
Buddy Lamont, a Vietnam vet and one of Stan Holder’s best men, had served with AIM at the Custer courthouse and was among the first people into the Knee. His mother, Agnes, was one of the demonstrators who formed OSCRO. His niece, Kamook, was married to Dennis Banks. Buddy was proud to serve at Wounded Knee. His grandmother, at age twelve, had survived the 1890 massacre in which her aunt and uncle had perished. Buddy’s great-grandmother had been at the Greasy Grass with Crazy Horse.
Buddy was killed on April 26 by a fed sniper who violated a cease-fire to shoot from ambush. Buddy’s family, all but destitute, had to borrow eighteen hundred dollars to ransom his body back after the BIA sent it to a coroner in Rushville, Nebraska. Buddy is buried in the hilltop cemetery, near Big Foot and the other massacre victims. Until the sacred four winds no longer blow across our Grandmother Earth, every Lakota child should know and revere his name as they do Crazy Horse, Red Cloud, and Big Foot.
Buddy’s death, which saddened everyone, convinced Grandpa Fools Crow and the other elders that there had been enough death. Since we were too few to fight and too many to die, Fools Crow asked the Wounded Knee leaders to try to find a peaceful resolution. On May 2, a Department of the Interior negotiator stated for the record, “I do have the authority to insure that the Government of the United States, and probably Congress, will discuss anything with your chiefs, anything and everything you want to discuss about the 1868 Treaty. …I have authority to tell you that any and all criminal violations against you by any outsiders will be prosecuted. I do have the authority to tell you that members of the tribal government will be prosecuted.”
On May 4, the White House promised that if our defenders laid down their arms, top-level representatives would meet with “the headmen and chiefs of the Teton Sioux”—another white term for the Lakota—during the third week in May “for the purpose of examining the problems concerning the 1868 Treaty.” That was what we had been demanding all along, so the elders agreed. The siege ended on May 8, after seventy-one days.
According to the agreement, no one would be jailed. Instead, people would be “processed.” The marshals would take names and addresses and, if there were outstanding charges, they also would take fingerprints and mug shots. Then everybody would be released. Hardly twenty minutes after the stand-down, the feds broke that agreement. Sacred medicine bags and ceremonial clothing were confiscated from Crow Dog and Black Elk. Like everyone else still inside the Knee, they were handcuffed and dragged off to a Rapid City jail. The feds thought they were going to get the whole leadership, but the prize—Dennis—was gone. Along with several other people, he had sneaked out the night before, and remained a fugitive for several months.
Before allowing the press back into Wounded Knee, the feds pulled what I’m sure they thought was a great public-relations stunt. They trashed all the homes, then showed them to the media and said that was what AIM and the Oglala people had done. I thought that was lower than low. The missionaries and all the longtime residents of the area became homeless. Most of them had to move out of the community, and some of them blamed us.
Hundreds of Oglala people came on May 17 to Grandpa Fools Crow’s place in Kyle, in the northeastern part of the Pine Ridge Reservation, to meet the White House delegation and to discuss our treaty. Those emissaries from Washington, however, had no official standing and no authority to offer anything. After hours of evasions, the white men left, promising to come back in two weeks with answers. The Oglala people returned on May 31, the day the white delegates had said they would come back, but nobody from Washington, D.C., showed up. Instead, Leonard Garment, the same Nixon henchman who had rejected the “Twenty Points” from the Trail of Broken Treaties, sent an insulting note. It said, in part, “The days of treaty making with the American Indians ended in 1871; …only Congress can rescind or change in any way statutes enacted since 1871…”
Once again, we Indians had accepted the white man’s promises—just as our ancestors had. Once again, the government of the United States of America had lied.