Wounded Knee Research Articles

Reporting Indigenous Women's Resilience at Wounded Knee through the Journalism of Susette Bright Eyes La Flesche

Reporting Indigenous Women's Resilience at Wounded Knee through the Journalism of Susette Bright Eyes La Flesche

Massacring Indians: From Horseshoe Bend to Wounded Knee by Roger L. Nichols (review)

Massacring Indians: From Horseshoe Bend to Wounded Knee by Roger L. Nichols (review)

THE CINEMATIC OTHERING OF SITTING BULL IN THE ADAPTATION OF BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE

The marginalization of particular groups or people as a result of the idea that one group or person is better than another is known as the "othering" process. This article discusses how a film adaptation of Dee Alexander Brown’s book on Native American history, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (BMHWK) performs this act of othering. First of all, it is done by negatively portraying the heroic figure in the book. Sitting Bull, a Teton Dakota Chief who united the Sioux tribes in North America, the Great Plains, in mid 19th century is reduced in the film into a weak figure. The Native American chief is overshadowed by White figures like Elaine Goodale and Senator Henry Dawes. In the film adaptation, the social hierarchy-building process, which put the Whites on top, educated natives in the middle, and the rest of Native American population in the bottom, serves as a vehicle for a further process of othering. The film represents Native Americans as people who need to be governed and who can only survive if they abide by White people's laws.

Occupying Space: Land art and the Red Power Movement, c. 1965-78

Scholars of Land art have long acknowledged the influence of pre-Columbian Indigenous art on earthworks made in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s, identifying this appropriation as an extension of modernism's preoccupation with "primitivism". Less attention has been paid to the temporal and ideological parallels between Land art and the Red Power movement - a historic moment in Indigenous American rights activism that comprised a series of highly publicised protests and land occupations at sites like Alcatraz Island, Wounded Knee, and Mount Rushmore. As this wave of activism intensified and brought issues of land ownership and the legacy of settler colonialism to the forefront of the American public's concerns, a number of non-Native artists began working with land as their primary material. By situating a selection of works by artists Michael Heizer and Dennis Oppenheim within the historical framework of Red Power - including media representations of activists and countercultural appropriations of Indigenous American traditions - another social lens emerges through which to interpret these iconic works of Land art. The issues of displacement, territorial borders, and trespassing that emerge in Heizer's and Oppenheim's works take on new meaning when considered in relation to Red Power activists' interrogation of broken historic treaties and demands for the return of stolen lands.

After the Massacre at Wounded Knee

After the Massacre at Wounded Knee

Massacring Indians: From Horseshoe Bend to Wounded Knee by Roger L. Nichols (review)

Massacring Indians: From Horseshoe Bend to Wounded Knee by Roger L. Nichols (review)

Massacring Indians: From Horseshoe Bend to Wounded Knee by Roger L. Nichols

Massacring Indians: From Horseshoe Bend to Wounded Knee by Roger L. Nichols

Mark Twain among the Indians and Other Indigenous Peoples

Mark Twain among the Indians and Other Indigenous Peoples

From Generation to Generation: Rethinking “Soul Wounds” and Historical Trauma

If Elizabeth Warren, often referred to by me as Pocahontas, did this commercial from Bighorn or Wounded Knee instead of her kitchen, with her husband dressed in full Indian garb, it would have been a smash!—Donald Trump (1)

Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America by David J. Silverman

Reviewed by: Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America by David J. Silverman Matthew Jennings (bio) Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America. By David J. Silverman. (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016. Pp. xii, 371. $29.95 cloth) Seminole war leader Osceola put it succinctly in the words he allegedly aimed at General Duncan Clinch in 1835: "You have guns and so have we—you have powder and lead, and so have we" (p. 208). In Thundersticks, David Silverman tackles a large, dimly understood aspect of Native American history—how Native people acquired, understood, and employed guns—and has produced a work of lasting value. There is no question that the arrival of horses, largely via [End Page 248] the Spanish to the south, and guns, largely via the English and the United States to the east, wrought earth-shaking transformations across a huge swath of Native North America from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. In fact, many textbooks feature a map with a thicket of arrows (no small irony there) to help drive home this point. Most previous accounts stress European and American control of the trade in firearms, and downplay Native power. Silverman has produced an important new narrative that demonstrates how the diffusion of firearms through Native America took shape, traces the myriad of ways in which Native people directed the flow of weapons into their homelands, and chronicles the debilitating and empowering effects of the gun for indigenous communities. After an introduction featuring the surrender of the Lakotas, and their guns, to the United States in the late nineteenth century, Silverman arranges Thundersticks along chronological and regional lines. The earliest chapters treat the dawn of the arms trade among the Mohawks, in New England, and in the Southeast, and the shock-waves that reverberated through eastern North America as a result. Subsequent chapters address the role of firearms in the Seven Years' War and its aftermath, the role of guns in the sea otter fur trade in the Pacific Northwest, Seminole resistance, Plains middlemen, and the case of the Blackfeet, whose ascendance in the mid-nineteenth century owed much to their ability to limit gunrunners' access to their rivals. A brief epilogue considers the symbolism of the rifle as employed by activists of the American Indian Movement at Wounded Knee in the 1970s. Obviously, any work that purports to include all of Native America, as the book's subtitle suggests, will sacrifice depth of coverage at times. Some of the chapters, such as the one on the Seven Years' War, dig more deeply into archival or primary source material than others. But when Silverman relies more heavily on published work, he chooses wisely from some of the best that recent Native American historical scholarship has to offer. Silverman also might have afforded more analysis to the varied Native cultural responses to the spread of [End Page 249] guns. The handful of instances in which he approached this subject were tantalizing. Perhaps the most important contribution that Thundersticks makes is in its deft reframing of a plethora of historical processes, including settler colonialism and indigenous responses to it, through the lens of firearms. There is more work to be done on this significant subject. Silverman's excellent history has reopened a crucial area of inquiry, and it is not difficult to imagine future dissertations exploring the implications of his ideas in area-specific studies. Thundersticks deserves wide readership, and it is likely to become a staple in graduate seminars and advanced undergraduate courses in Native American history. Matthew Jennings MATTHEW JENNINGS teaches history at Middle Georgia State University in Macon. He is author of New Worlds of Violence (2011) and the editor of The Flower Hunter and the People (2014), and is currently researching several topics related to the Native Southeast and local history in middle Georgia. Copyright © 2018 Kentucky Historical Society

From Tokyo to Wounded Knee: Two Afterlives of the Sunagawa Struggle

The Sunagawa Struggle, a massive anti-US base protest in the suburbs of western Tokyo, had lasting impacts not only on the US–Japan security alliance, but also on the people who participated on both sides of the protest lines. This article traces the lives of two people who were profoundly changed by their experiences of the anti-base movement in Japan: Dennis Banks, a young airman who was tasked with guarding the base and would later help found the American Indian Movement; and Sunagawa protestor Shimada Seisaku, who spent a career as a Tachikawa city councilperson and remained committed to anti-base activism.

Narratives of the Lives of Buried Hearts: Writing as (Re)Historicising

The specific context for this literary analysis encompasses the lives and experiences of American natives and of the slaves who were brought to the U.S.A. as elaborated in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, by Frederick (Douglass (1845), and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown (1970). These books are perhaps some of the most evoked manifestations of historical revision; the former addressing American History through the perspective of a slave, and the latter doing likewise through the perspective of the indigenous population. I endeavour to get to such reflections through scrutinising the historical echoes of literature, as my specific goal is to analyse if and how Douglass and Brown’s books revise American history by saying what has been kept silent so far. The reflections articulated in both narratives prove to be harsh evidence that historical documents are far from being all encompassing – and are, for such reason, amenable to revision.

Writing America: Literary Landmarks from Walden Pond to Wounded Knee, A Reader's CompanionShelleyFisher Fishkin. Rutgers University Press, 2015.

Writing America: Literary Landmarks from Walden Pond to Wounded Knee, A Reader's CompanionShelleyFisher Fishkin. Rutgers University Press, 2015.

Reembodying Our Occupied Geographies: Boyd Cothran's Remembering the Modoc War, Benjamin Madley's An American Genocide, and the Future of Native American Studies

Narratives of innocence are stories born of the dispossession of bodies from lands that continue to serve as vectors of violence, reenacting the scene that created them. The term was introduced by Boyd Cothran to describe the cunning afterlife of conflicts between settler states and indigenous peoples: state violence yields stories that reiterate erasure, weaponizing memory to forget the lessons of colonization. In a situation of violence that produces silence, names resonate as instruments of clarity, cutting through erasure. Genocide is a name historians are now using to describe a process of erasure that created modern California, a process indigenous people have long discussed that narratives of innocence have silenced. Through a reading of Cothran's book Remembering the Modoc War and Benjamin Madley's book An American Genocide against an older literary genre on violence ranging from Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee to Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, I take California as an emblem of a profound alteration in the way the United States processes the trace memory of indigenous erasure. A historical reckoning is now underway as indigenous people reembody their occupied geographies, returning their stories to the land and, in the process, reconfiguring the national narrative.

Writing America: Literary Landmarks from Walden Pond to Wounded Knee

Writing America: Literary Landmarks from Walden Pond to Wounded Knee

Excerpt from <em>Writing America: Literary Landmarks from Walden Pond to Wounded Knee (A Reader's Companion)</em>

Author(s): Fishkin, Shelley Fisher | Abstract: Excerpt from Writing America: Literary Landmarks from Walden Pond to Wounded Knee (A Reader's Companion) (Rutgers University Press, 2015)

Legitimation, State Repression, and the Sioux Massacre at Wounded Knee

The Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 and the Ghost Dance movement that preceded it offer a compelling sociological case for understanding legitimation, elite framing, and repression. Building on the social movements literature and theoretical insights on power, institutions, and inequality, we engage in multimethod, in-depth analyses of a rich body of archived correspondence from key institutional actors at the time. Doing so contributes to the literature by drawing attention to (1) the cultural foundations of inequality and repression; (2) super-ordinate framing by political elites and the state; and (3) key institutional conflicts and their consequences. We find that, within an ambiguous colonial context, officials of the Office of Indian Affairs and federal politicians shelved benign military observations and, instead, amplified ethnocentric and threat frames. Force was consequently portrayed as justifiable, which increased the likelihood of the massacre. We conclude by discussing the utility of our results for conceptions of culture, power, inequality, the state, and state violence.

Native American’s Forced Assimilation in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Native American’s Forced Assimilation in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Driving with the top down sun out & wind blowing all over the place xoxo, mm

Vanessa Huang Driving with the top down sun out & wind blowing all over theplace xoxo, mm Trust, child. When I was 29 & radio broadcasted "a matter of principle" we didn't forecast this cloudbreak to morning onion rain: back on before Where the boys are, someone waits to throw back angled portrait of Miss Major stunned like the lights forme\ A smilin' face— & taking off my kitten heels at the Christopher cops, New Daughters of Bilitis storming lipstick curls & toothbrushes at billy clubs sea a screams pinking overcome/ hand in hand Feminist Studies37, no. 2 (Summer 2011). © 2011 by Vanessa Huang 437 438 Vanessa Huang with the girls at Gene's, Hair Fairies spilling on to Taylor & Turk smoke clouds like/ a warm embracetwo-spirit ghost shirts knee deep in the earth/ Cover me with pretty liesI two arms to hold me tenderly from Cambodia fireworks raining always my girls & the sons I don't mind callin' me Dad Oh, deep in my heart/ & Brother Soledad I do believe/ some street in town and I know he's lookin' therefor me/ In the crowd of a million peopleI'll find I myfallen body Icarus, When Mancusis ask "Why are they destroying their homes?" & commissions write "critical" & "risk ofloss" they did not risk loss walking protractors out a Kent & dogwood blossoms from Cleveland truck routes/ where the boys true love will be He's walkin' down Vanessa Huang ■m back from the mess hall/ valentine pulled out a line/ And then I'll climb to the highest steeple in this castle a towers/ and tell the world he's mine/ Brother Herb say the world is hearing the world is seeing the world is coming & the brothers talk to the People of America exploding guards against the walls on firespreading wild, blowing holes /'Til he holds me I wait impatiently/ Where the boys are, where the boys are morningspark storm a demons I where the boys are Trust, child. When queens say "a superb job" & "tremendous" they did not see Attica is all of us & I know someone waits forme/'Til heholdsmeI wait impatiently I Where the boys are black flowers stemming without light or water black that whispers I can't tell you what the yard was like I cried it was so close everyone together castle a flowers thick & bitter/ where the boys arej We shall overcome these birds a prey fireskydeaths & stripped naked / Where the boys are\ We are not afraid We are not alone some day/ column a flowers shake shadowmemory out a hostage echoes knuckled under 'til spirit crawl & beat down on trouble & trouble plea guilty 440 Vanessa Huang I some day accordion dreams promise someone waits for me I am paper 66 & my silvergray wig j hold me tenderly top down where the boys are sun out & wind blowing all over the place/ The whole wide world aroundj shall overcome their throatslash some day The poem refers to these resistances: the 1971 rebellion of prisoners at the Attica "Cor rectional Facility" in New York state, one of whose leaders was Herbert X. Blyden, and where Vincent R. Mancusi was the warden; the three-day 1969 Stonewall Rebellion in New York City, led by two-spirit, transsexual, transgender, lesbian, bisexual, and gay persons of color, at the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street; Daughters of Bilitis, a lesbian social and political group begun in the 1950s in San Francisco; the Compton's Cafeteria Riot of 1966 in San Francisco's Tenderloin District; the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam covertly bombed by the U.S. at its bases in Cambodia; U.S. anti-Viet Nam war organizing in the 1970s, including in Ohio at Kent State where students were shot and killed by the National Guard, and in Cleveland, where pictures of the MyLai massacre were first published in the Plain Dealer, and the Soledad Brothers George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, and John Clutchette—three Black prisoners at Soledad California state prison, defended by Angela Davis. "knee deep in the earth" and "Cover me with pretty lies" are borrowed from Buffy Sainte Marie's "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee." The rest of the italicized text is borrowed from "Where the Boys Are" and "We Shall...

American Indians at Wounded Knee in Current U.S. History High School Textbooks: Discourse Analysis Using the Appraisal Judgment System

Discourse analysis of two currently popular U.S. history textbooks that applies the Systemic functional Linguistics based APPRAISAL system to determine judments made about American Indian peoples.