What is the sacrifice that we Native Americans have made.
We can't tell it
by the amount of land they've taken from us,
we can't tell it by the massacres they've committed.
But the totality of all of it, that's where the pain is.
Eight, ten, twelve. A blind man could see that.
Now the Indians are getting even.
They're moving to the city, getting militant
and setting up their own alphabet...
Several groups of American Indians
have banded together to march on
the Nations capitol where a redress
of some long standing grievances.
But the President refused to see
them, Congress is out of session,
so today they took their to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
And Dennis Banks is one of the founder of the American Indian
Movement. It was back in 1973 that he was making headlines.
In 1973 Banks led a protest at the Custer County Court House
because a white man who stabbed an Indian
was not charged with murder.
The protest became a riot.
A few weeks later he led the occupation
of Wounded Knee, it lasted 71 days.
He fled to Oregon and California
and finally to New York where the Onadogan...
MUSIC
This is the spot right here, its all grown over
now, but this is the spot where I was born.
I was born on April 12.
My mum, she used to make apple pie, she was a good cook
I remember that and she would - we'd go gather apples,
all these old crab apples and she'd make apple pie.
Every Friday or Saturday she'd say,
"well I guess it's time to cook,
you know what I'm going to cook"
and everyone one would say "yeah"!
There was no paved road out here then.
They were always walking, always walking.
We had to ask people for food,
no one was working and we had to go on welfare.
We wouldn't have made it if we had to rely on her income.
Boarding schools were established in the 19th century
and the idea of this institution was to bring
Native children away from their families and their
communities for the purpose of cultural assimilation
and to really move away from their tribal backgrounds.
The government forced Native people into boarding schools
by coming into communities through their
local law enforcement representatives and
rounding up children and taking them to boarding schools.
And then the bus was coming.
It came from that direction...
I remember we had to wait here, all the kids must
have been about six or seven other kids with us.
The BIA man was here and he had his little clip board
and he said these are the ones that have to go.
So my brother Mark got on and my sister, and there was crying and
yelling and screaming and kids not wanting to go
- but then we left.
I remember being on that school bus for hours and hours.
I remember getting off that bus,
that moment stayed with me so fresh all these years.
I remember getting off, we were given khaki uniforms,
coveralls and they sprayed us down with DDT.
Then whenever I'd see my sister Audrey I'd say
"what's going on... when are we going home... where's our mum?"
I was there so many years, I thought that...
our mother abandoned us.
An average school day in a Government boarding school,
emphasized reading, writing- the basic skills.
They mostly taught you to do vocational schools
because Indians were good with their hands,
you know they were taught to be farmers,
bricklayers and things like that.
They weren't taught to be teachers and lawyers, the white
society didn't believe that Indians had that capability.
They beat us for speaking our own language.
I could never understand that.
I still maintain that anybody that speaks two languages
is richer than a person who speaks only one.
So why deny him his legal right to speak his own language?
Yeah, you couldn't relate to your Indian-ness.
They just beat the heck out of you,
send you through what you call a "hot line",
about 20 people would stand there with brooms,
students- and you had to run through that.
I used to wish I'd catch these white people on the reservation
and catch them speaking English and we'd have someone beat them.
I remember a little boy, Norman Red Bear, and he
stood up, he was a little boy- but he stood up.
He said "go ahead and beat me big man, you enjoy beating
little kids because they speak their own language?... you're
not going to take it away from me, I'm going to speak it
... you can beat me to death but I'm going to keep it.
Go ahead and beat me, big man." And he slapped that little boy,
blood coming out of his nose and mouth...
he said "go ahead and satisfy,
beat another little kid, make his mouth bleed.
I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid -
I'm going to keep my language, go ahead, beat me." Yeah.
I used to come here on Saturday mornings
and Sunday mornings and stay here...
this would be like "my spot".
I would make a little fort sometimes out of boxes
and I'd sit in them and look out that way,
because I knew that my home was out there some place.
There were kids who were completely raised
within in these institutions.
When school was out they would put up a list of all the people
who could go home, and my name was never on that list.
The Government paid for your trip to boarding school
and then four years later they paid for your return trip home,
and any visiting in the meantime was at the expense of families
and in most cases parents couldn't afford that.
They shifted me from Pipestone to Wahpeton Indian
school, from Wahpeton Indian school to Flandreau.
The way that Indians coped with this bureaucracy, and the way
that children especially coped with it - was by running away.
So we left.
We left Flandreau at night time.
From these tracks I knew where the trains would be slowing down
in the morning and we could jump the freight. And we did.
Here we were just hugging each other, happy, "we're going home"
and the next morning we started walking...
we walked all the way to Cass Lake, 17 miles
and we caught a ride from Cass Lake to Bemidji, and
and then I went over to where my mum was at - you know,
she looked at me and she says "oh, my son"
and we just hugged
and she said she was going to cook -
and she says "I want to make you a pie tonight"...
and I said "apple pie".
When I finished the schools I went back to the reservation but
there were not many adults, male adults in the villages.
A lot of them were working in Minneapolis.
I had decided I would go into the military
I was sent to Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.
The training that I got there was no different
from the training that I had at boarding school.
It was getting up early in the morning,
making your bed and shining your shoes.
They put me in aerial photography.
I went to an aerial photography school.
I asked for an assignment in the far east.
There was only one base that was taking aerial photographers
and that was at Yokota Air Base right up near here.
The military treated me great.
I wanted it to be my career then, I was going to spend
my entire 30 years in the military, but I didn't.
What I saw at Sunagawa really changed
the direction of my life.
There was a big protest at this town called Sunagawa
and it came to a head in 1956.
The United States Air Force wanted to expand
the base by one mile and they were condemning all that
land over there and then after they condemned it
then it would be turned over to the US Air Force.
And they were surveying the land they needed to condemn, but
the students, the farmers,
the mothers and Nippon-zan Mihoji...
they all came together and they said "no".
The community was well organized and they were halting,
stopping the surveying crew.
And those of us in the military, I was stationed at Yakota,
they bussed us over and we were standing guard
on the inside of the fence.
One of our orders was just to guard the place
and make sure no one came over.
And they said maybe some protesters
might come over the fence.
One of our Sergeants said "what should we do if they come over?"
And the Captain said then you shoot them.
He said well "do we shoot to maim, do we shoot to
cripple, what do we do - do we give them a warning shot?"
And he said, "No, you shoot to kill".
SHOUTING
But then all of a sudden
the commotion started coming right in front of us.
I seen the police hitting the monks.
SHOUTING
All during the day there was ambulances
back and forth, back and forth...
over a thousand people were hospitalized
and one of them was killed.
In the end, they won.
There was no expansion of the base,
the military stopped the effort to get the land
and there was no more surveying, so they won.
This was Native people, fighting for their land.
MUSIC
When I started drinking,
I wasn't drinking because I was unemployed,
it just happened that I started drinking.
And then pretty soon that started to overwhelm me.
SOUND OF JAIL CLOSING
I committed a crime of burglary, and I was arrested
and I was sent up here to prison.
I wasn't working and feeling bad that I wasn't able
to provide for my family and it was winter time,
so I broke into this grocery store and my partner Bill,
he stayed there and he got caught.
I decided, I said Bill I'm leaving let's get
out of here. So I left. We were both drunk.
So I went and I got home,
it was snowing out and I woke up my wife
and I said we're having steak dinner tonight -
it was about 2 o'clock in the morning
and so I put all the groceries away and we started...
and there was a knock on the door and it was the police.
It was snowing out as I said.
I drove my pick up right from the grocery store
right to my home and all they did was follow the tracks.
I was sentenced to five years, you'll end up doing
like three years and 18 months...
and the rest will be off for good behaviour.
You feel destitute, you feel this is the end of the road
- either you're going to spend the rest of your life
in prison, you're going to commit suicide, or-
those are all options that you think about...
Going to the library I found some books on Native history
and I brought one back to the cell.
The story of the Ojibwa people told by Earl Warren.
That one probably influenced me the most...
and there was another one about Geronimo.
So then I became highly interested
in the path that I wanted to take.
I wanted to be more part of helping Native American people.
MUSIC
I'd seen in the news that about
200,000 people were in the streets
in San Francisco or some place protesting against the war.
And the civil rights marches,
half a million people marched on D.C.
And they were speaking about the black civil rights
and they were speaking about the war in Vietnam, women's rights -
SINGING
MUSIC
but no one was speaking for Native people.
But then you think, how can you bring about a change.
MUSIC
When I got out of prison,
the south side of Minneapolis became an area
where a lot of people lived.
It was very hot July 28th, 1968,
that was going to be our first meeting
of the American Indian Movement -
we didn't know it was going to be called AIM
but that's what it was about.
We were handing out pamphlets on Franklin and Fourth Avenue
in the Indian communities.
Dennis came to get me one night, this was in the sixties,
and said "come on I come to get you to go to a meeting".
So we went to a meeting it was on Plymouth Avenue north
in Minneapolis.
The hall was kind of big, it could probably fill up
with maybe 200 people.
At six thirty maybe seven o'clock there was,
the place was filled.
I felt we hit on something, we hit on a nerve.
The atmosphere was, you know, anger for what the police do.
Every Friday night the police would come down
Franklin Avenue and stop at all the Indian bars...
and they would back their paddy wagons up flush
with the back doors of the bar.
And they'd take their nightsticks
and bang on the counters saying "all right you sobs
you're all under arrest, get out there
and get in that paddy wagon".
People would then be forced to go out the back door.
Open the door and went right into the paddy wagon.
There was a lot of stories about how the cops would come down
and they'd load up the paddy wagons and buses and they'd
pin unsolved crimes, crimes that had gone a long time
unsolved and it would make their police records look good.
This one guys, he was sort of heavy and he was
getting in and he was moving rather slow.
And this police officer hit him in the gut with a night stick.
And he had real trouble getting in the paddy wagon,
but he went ahead and got in.
The guy had serious health issues,
he was always complaining that he was hurting here.
And he goes down to the jail and dies that night.
Police brutality and slum housing, high unemployment those
are the things that people came to the meetings to discuss.
And of course, Clyde Bellecourt was in the audience
yelling "we gotta do this, we gotta do that" and
I said, well you can just say "stand there",
you gotta come up and face and be on the front line.
I got up and I spoke and I said what are we going to do?
I told them "confrontation",
"confrontation politics" I called it.
About half the people there ran out the door,
scared to death of what I was talking about.
So Dennis and a lot of other people got together and
decided that they were going to march against the police.
We're going to get in their face, we're going to march on
the police department and march on the public school system.
The brutality did stop.
This Indian tent city is in Minneapolis,
home of one of the Nation's most activist Indian organizations,
the American Indian Movement or AIM as it is known.
AIM's chairman is Dennis Banks, a 37 year old ex-convict.
Would you characterize AIM as a militant group?
I would say that we are striving to correct and to change
and to gain control of our own community,
gain control of our schools, have some input into the city
planning... if this is being militant, then I would say yes.
We came from slum conditions, prisons, jails and -
we weren't there to start a clothing drive...
we we're there to start a toy drive...
we were there to hopefully bring an end to
the god damn conditions that we were living in.
MUSIC
Well the beginnings of AIM was sort of chaotic
because at that point no one would listen to Indian people
until we got a little bit belligerent, let's say.
We took over Mount Rushmore one time.
We went up there and they weren't hiring Indians
to work there, so we threw a picket line
picket line up there against them for a while and
I went to talk and they cut the mic off on me
because I cursed.
And I started ranting and raving about how they
didn't employ Indians, none of the people who
worked in those stores were Indian, none of
the Mounties were Indian, this is a damned disgrace.
This is our land, it belongs to us
and they don't have Indians working here.
I got off and said give me a piece of paper
and I wrote out a press release - and I said
as of darkness we're going to take over Mount Rushmore.
Today at 5 o'clock we're taking this over and occupying it.
Well within about an hour and a half to two hours there were
more god damn cops around there than there were people.
Then I send a guy in to town and I said get three white sheets...
and I had the women saw them together and in red
paint I put SIOUX INDIAN POWER, big white sheets...
and next morning there were about five of us on top of
George Washington's head and Banks was one of them.
So we took out those white sheets and put rocks
on the bottom and tied them up here on George Washington's head
"Sioux Indian Power" and god it was the first time something
like that had ever happened... its a national monument.
Not far from here is where Raymond YellowThunder is buried.
There was a man named Raymond YellowThunder
that was murdered in Gordon, Nebraska.
And the first autopsy said he died of exposure,
but nobody believed that.
This man Raymond YellowThunder was tortured
and then killed by rednecks.
The mother had called the BIA police and they said
they couldn't do it because he was killed in Nebraska.
Law enforcement said "no, we don't have jurisdiction there...
this is a Native problem, an Indian problem."
But the BIA said "no, he was killed off the reservation."
The family of Raymond YellowThunder
requested that the American Indian Movement come.
Nobody wanted to help them so we came.
We were getting calls from South Dakota,
we were getting calls from Wisconsin.
We decided that we were going to charge head on toward racism,
charge head on against the justice system
that was non-existent for Native People.
AIM went after the fact of a murder,
after the fact of a brutality, beating...
we never went there to cause any trouble,
the trouble was already there.
SINGING
What AIM needed then was spiritual strength.
Crow Dog's Paradise, this is a place I came in 1968
when we realized that the American Indian Movement
needed spiritual guidance.
I came here, knocked on the door...
I said I'm looking for Henry Crow Dog.
This big tall, he must have been about 6'3", he says
I'm Henry Crow Dog. I said, I'd like to talk to you.
He says "have you ever been in a sweat lodge?" I said "no".
"Can you put up a tipi?" I said "no".
He said, "well you do know how to chop wood, don't you?
And I said, "yeah, I do know how to do that".
He said, "well if you've never been in a sweat
before then maybe today is the first day".
I made the fire,
just had a towel on and there was snow and it was cold.
He said, "now bring me one of those rocks" and I had
the pitchfork there and I brought one in to him.
He said "bring me four of them".
He was singing while I was bringing them in...
he said come inside.
It was hot, oh my god...
he left the door open and he said,
"this is what you must learn inside, you must pray,
if you're praying than you're not worrying how hot it is -
I stay in here and it doesn't burn me."
Then he was explaining to me
"each rock - one for each direction,
one for the universe, one for mother earth, one for yourself."
I needed to understand spirituality,
I needed to grasp on to something
and I found it, I found it with Henry.
A part of me began right here.
Henry sent Leonard, he came because his father said
they need help, I'm too old to lead the battle
and I'm sending you.
So they lit a fire where we started going
to ceremonies and things.
People started dressing Native, they started -
I saw that on campus, we started growing our hair...
it was an expression of our heritage.
Whether it was intentional or not I think that we
grabbed a little of that Hollywood romanticism of
Indians from the past and began to use it
at that point in time in order to further our own goals.
And the American public I think could connect us with the past.
About two years later a young man came from Cleveland,
and his name was Russell Means.
He came to our pow wow and he had a dance outfit
and he started inquiring about the work we were doing -
and we started telling him everything we were going to do.
Russell Means was a very charismatic person.
He got stuff done, he could move things.
He was like the "bad-ass" and Dennis was
the diplomatic, I'm talking with broad strokes.
Russell, Clyde, myself... it was gelling... everything
was being put together, it was starting to build.
It was the summer of '72, the Chairman of the tribe came over
he was saying we need to have a big gathering in Washington DC.
We want to develop some change, a change in policy
in how they handle affairs for Native people.
So we went downstairs, we put it all up, we put
down "gathering in DC" and we said we can have
caravans - and I said "yeah, why don't we have
a caravan all the way from the west coast?"
And Russell Means said why don't we have two caravans?
We'll have one from Seattle.
I was taking one from San Francisco,
Russ from Seattle all the way across...
we'll visit as many reservations as possible.
Went to Reno, Nevada, we stopped there. And Salt Lake City
we picked up about four car loads of people there...
and Cheyenne, Wyoming and picked up some more people there.
The schools would shut down just to see him
and what he was leading.
We attended just about every rally that there was that they
put on as they were gathering more and more followers.
In South Dakota our two caravans met there, and
then we joined together, that was a good feeling.
When the Trail of Broken Treaties swept across America,
this is where the northern route and the middle route,
this is where we met, right here (Pine Ridge, SD)...
everyone got out and everyone parked along side there and we
drove in here, we were parked right here and all the cars...
oh, it was really good.... grass roots people
were popping out all over and wanting to join us.
We went on into D.C.
We started making plans to have meetings with the Health,
Education and Welfare - BIA, Department of the Interior.
The Co-ordinator said there's something wrong,
we had all these meetings set up
and now they're slamming their doors on us.
They had problems with housing and things that had been
promised to them, I think they had made arrangements.
Bob Burnett had contacted the churches and the rest and they
were going to put people up -
and then the churches heard that there aren't any "real" Indians,
there are just "urban skins", Cubans, Negroes... right?...
and renegades.
So they all pulled out. And the churches they did get back -
Rats running around, big rats running around
the basement of that church so we got out of there.
It didn't turn out as expected.
So we moved out of there, by then it was six in
the morning and we went over to the BIA building
and we circled the White House, drove around
the White House and then went over to BIA Building.
MUSIC
Waited until they opened up, went inside, we had an impromptu
meeting there our room seated 500 people, every seat was
taken and we asked the Commissioner to come down
and that's when he told us that
all the meetings had been cancelled.
I don't know anything about that, and I doubt it.
Why the hell do we have to put up with some
"I don't know" people?
By the time they had gotten there
the Congress was out of session and
the Administration was in California,
Nixon was in California at the time...
so that the timing was off for one thing,
made them even more frustrated
about seeing who they needed and wanted to see
to negotiate for these increase in program.
At five o'clock, at five o'clock the BIA building was supposed
to be closed, everybody out, but we didn't have no place to go.
The police said
"the building closes at five or five thirty and
everyone's got to be out". "No, we're not going to get out".
So when they said that, then we decided that we would
occupy the building.
"And if you're with us stand up now",
and three hundred people stood up.
And the people said "yeah" and a big round of applause.
This is our building, why can't we sleep in the auditorium?
Why can't we eat in the cafeteria at night
and have bathrooms that have running plumbing?
And we knew that they'd come into town
and that they had taken over the Bureau.
So we went down, it was a big dramatic stage
with all the AIM men standing there with their-
looking really macho with- they had poles and
pipes and things... and they were standing guard.
After we got in the building we found that
there was no one negotiating any place.
So I said do you have someone
that you've talked to that you can negotiate with
and I'll help you, we'll see if we can use Fred's office
and help you set up the meetings.
Then when we started talking a fight broke out
in the back and the police started to charge the building.
The cops had decided to storm the building.
It was a lot of stuff being throw around inside
and table legs used as clubs, stuff like that...
and the cops were attempting to come
into some of the lower windows...
and the guys were down there beating
them back with those table legs.
They pushed the police back, and the police regrouped and left...
and they came back with about 40 more police officers.
They tried to rush the building again
but there was people upstairs on the second and third
and forth stories and they all had big typewriters...
the people would be coming in like that and they
were throwing the typewriters... and, deliberately
in front of the police to warn them that if they
get too close that's what's going to happen.
When you're in a situation like that you can begin
to get fairly paranoid in terms of well yeah,
they're really going to come in here and beat
the hell out of us so we have to defend ourselves.
Sort of a siege mentality that developed within that.
The United States media wouldn't support us.
They wouldn't advertise anything or come to interviews
or nothing, so what happened was the foreign press from
Europe and Japan started publicizing our little champaign
here. And then CBS, NBC and all them felt left out.
The press was not on our side to begin with -
but they became curious and of course the dramatics of it all
of course is what caught the larger press.
Outside the building was just spectators
that just gathered themselves up
and they formed arm in arm around the building
and wouldn't move.
They were getting the attention of the public, which you needed
to do to get the attention of the Congressional leaders.
And we drafted the 20 point program
which we presented to Congress.
Which would bring everything back, get rid of the BIA,
bring a direct government to government relationship.
All this was written in
and most of that legislation was passed, by the way.
Well, those radical Indians are presenting a 20 point program
these aren't really radical ideas...
these are ideas that are established
within the law to revive what Indian peoples are entitled to,
based on their treaties and based on
the agreements that they've had with this country.
I think that the Government simply didn't take us
seriously- in terms of, and actually began to talk about
things that could alleviate some of the pressure that
was on Indian tribes throughout the United States.
Throughout the whole thing, I think Dennis
was more or less the persona of reason.
I just looked on them as heroes, they were my heroes.
There were people there that you wouldn't dream
would be there otherwise, you know, you would think
they wouldn't do that... but they found their courage
and they went, I think, because of these men.
It's the second or third day we're still here,
right, nobody's been killed, nobody's been busted.
Singing and drumming, singing the AIM song,
dancing, three meals a day in the cafeteria.
We had it for four days... and we wouldn't let it up.
And so I called around to people I knew in the White House and
said you've got to get here and negotiate out, somebody's got
to give somebody some authority
from the White House to negotiate
with these people so they can come to some conclusion.
The outcome of it was, that's what they did.
But in the meantime there was damage done to the building
and there was great drama all throughout Washington.
I was part of that negotiation. And they wrote a check
to the National Congress of the American Indian.
People provided buses,
transportation for them to get home.
And they paid the tickets and they gave them
gas money. And they gave them food money home.
The bus would go to Boston, wherever.
There were so anxious to get them out I think they
would have just done anything to get rid of them.
MUSIC
We all went home and began to weigh our options
about what's the next step for us as a group.
Because people started to think about
Native Americans differently,
Native Americans started to think
about themselves differently.
Well we're Indians and we want to be a part of what's
happening... and we're here and pay attention to our needs.
It was just a real turning point I think in how we
viewed ourselves as American Indians and how we
viewed ourselves as particular tribes- and we knew at
that point that we could effect a positive change.
You began to feel it, it made you proud...
cause we would mention it
between each other sometimes about Indian brotherhood,
about all being brothers and all this other stuff,
but it was never real, this began
to make it real, this began to shape it
and give some meaning to it.
BEATS
I believe that most local communities and law enforcement,
local people then looked at them as a bunch of renegades.
I felt like the general population probably
saying all Indians are like these guys.
It was really disheartening because all of a sudden
they were thinking that Indian people
were on the war path and they were going to be
circling the wagon trains again.
You know after the BIA takeover the order
went out by the Bureau of Indian Affairs
if two or more Indian people gathered
on any street corner they could be arrested
for planning or inciting a riot, especially the American Indian
Movement members. It was a Nation wide effort
to silence the movement.
A lot of people did not agree with what AIM was doing,
they thought they were maybe a little too radical
at the time, which- I of course did not think they
were, I didn't think they were radical enough!
As you know we're going into Custer and there are quite
a few of us who don't plan on walking out of Custer.
We came here on February 6 to protest the judicial
handling of the Wesley Bad Heart Bull... his death.
Sarah Bad Heart Bull had a son
who was killed violently, and right or wrong
he was killed by a non-Indian... and
the non-Indian did not go to prison.
And instead of being charged with murder,
he was charged with second degree manslaughter.
There was a fight outside a bar and a...
Native American person was killed, but...
they didn't think there was enough evidence
to get a murder charge because it wasn't premeditated,
it was a fight that started in a bar and ended up
out in the parking lot and the person was killed... so.
Daryl Smith had intended on killing Bad Heart Bull
and he said so in front of sixteen witnesses.
This was intentional murder.
It is sad when mistreatment, and abuse and neglect and murder
against Indian people becomes common.
This is where it started and this is where it's going to end.
For Custer, South Dakota February 6th has arrived.
It's a good day to die.
Dennis Banks gave a speech here in Rapid City
and part of that speech was, "it's a good day to die".
And that got everyone excited because they thought
a good day to die meant it was a good day for us
to go out and kill you.
Let us show America,
show this country,
show countries all around the world -
that we will not tolerate anymore abuse,
that we will not tolerate anymore killings.
All right the following action will be as follows.
There will be two routes,
two caravans leaving from Rapid City.
There were two caravans going two different ways
converging on Custer and maybe 20-30 cars in each caravan.
There are roadblocks set up, we've got to get through those
roadblocks. Don't forget there are snipers in that area in
Custer they're on the second floor of the building, they
are waiting for us and I think we shouldn't surprise them.
We had a scheduled meeting with District Attorney,
State's Attorney they called him.
And we had it right in that building over there,
the old courthouse.
Today, February 6, is the day that Dennis Banks,
the AIM leader, said it would be a good day to die.
The day however started off very slowly with a nine o'clock
meeting being missed by the Indian group.
Later on in the day however,
Indians began to arrive at the Custer County courthouse
in caravans of cars.
This is one of the AIM caravans arriving in Custer today.
Only a few people were allowed in to talk to the Judge
and the D.A. right, they were going to decide things.
NEWS REPORTER SPEAKING
So they only let a few in-
Russ and Dennis, Crow Dog and a few others.
And claimed in front of witnesses, at least ten,
that he was coming back to fix and kill Bad Heart Bull,
of which he did. Now that's pre-meditated murder.
So when a white man hunts down an Indian,
takes two days to plan it,
and hunts him down and brags about it -
and you give him a five thousand dollar bail and second degree
manslaughter, he goes to prison for a lousy two years
if he doesn't get probation.
I'm going to prosecute to the fullest extent
on a second degree manslaughter.
And I assure you I will do everything in my power,
I'll get every witness -
Second degree manslaughter... you know that was murder.
No, I do not.
They were basically told, you know, "tough".
There was anger, there was righteous anger.
SHOUTING
One of those troopers grabbed Sarah Bad Heart Bull,
the very reason why we were there
because her son was killed.
SHOUTING
SOUND OF BREAKING GLASS
Somebody broke the window
and the people at the front door started pushing through the
Sheriff Deputies to get into the building.
There was a lot of clubs and beating up of everybody.
SHOUTING
We started setting fire to the town.
Two young guys went up the steps of the court
and throw this big can right through the glass door.
So a guy picks up a flare.
SHOUTING
SIREN SOUND
SOUND OF FIRE FLAMES
The police had really mustered in back of the courthouse,
and they came down and it must have been a formation
of at least four across.
One guy picked up a police rifle.
SHOUTING
It took a long time for
law enforcement to get the thing under control,
they burned down the chamber of commerce building
across the street.
GUNFIRE
They tried to start a fire at the filling station
across the street and have the gas tanks explode,
but they were unsuccessful.
SHOUTING
It was a general riot and it was just chaos
because there was smoke and it was burning,
lots of fighting and everything else... it was just total chaos.
February 6th was...
was a hell of a good day.
It was a good day to die for a lot of things.
I think those people will think twice before they
stab another Indian.
The American Indian Movement was preparing itself to make a real
final stand. A final stand that says no more abuse, no more
killing, a final stand no more ripping off of our lands,
our resources, our timber, our water rights...
the rights to hunt and fish and trap...
DRAMATIC MUSIC
During the early 70s the Pine Ridge Reservation and
the people of the Pine Ridge Reservation were really
under siege by the BIA administrator, Dickie Wilson.
And there was a lot of paranoia and a lot of fear.
Dick Wilson and his goon squad were beating on people,
trying to make them sign over land,
if they refused, they were beaten to death.
You know people were just trying to find a way to live
reasonably and it appeared to me that he was bullying them.
People who called themselves goons, you know that the acronym
was for the Guardians of the Oglala Nation... but I have to
always believe that that was not an accidental choice.
That they called themselves goons
because they wanted to be seen as
people who would shoot and kill anyone.
He and many of the mixed bloods were raising havoc, felt they
had the right to go around and shoot up houses and people...
And they furnished them booze and they had them
drunk, they had drive by shootings going on
every night, women were being swept off
the streets of Pine Ridge, a lot of them got raped.
And they just got away with it,
and the FBI just turned their head.
It was this absolute
crucible of fear that Dick Wilson's methods had produced.
Somebody on the reservation called AIM, the American
Indian Movement, and they called for AIM's help.
We thought you know that it was good for them to come
and at least help us because nobody else would help.
My father, Dennis Banks,
held a meeting at the local community centre.
When I got there they were discussing the goons squad
and that the people in power weren't helping the people
and so they wanted AIM to help them.
It was at the meeting that my mother first laid her eyes on
this man named Dennis Banks. And when he spoke, people listened
and that right there signalled to her that there was a change
coming. My father, the moment he looked at her, that was it.
At that moment, I saw a person that was like a Joan of Arc.
So their love story began, and it began in a time of unrest.
MUSIC
I want to tell you the backbone of
the Indian civil rights movement was not men, it was women,
they were the damn backbone of it.
It was the women that stood up,
over 1500 individual complaints
and in every one of their complaints they talked about
there was nobody there to help them.
We were confronted by a lady by the name of Gladys Bissonette,
who stood up in the back of the room
and confronted me, I was chairing the meeting,
and asked me if I heard enough yet.
Lou Bean was one of the women who was at the meeting
where they suggested "let's go to Wounded Knee".
So it was Lou Been, it was these women like Lou Been who
had these great ideas and they said alright,
if you AIM men aren't going to take us over to Wounded Knee,
we're going to do it ourselves.
We decided then, that rather than confront the BIA,
the US Marshals and the FBI
in Pine Ridge, that we would go to Wounded Knee.
There were some people lined up on the streets here.
Everybody knew that something was going to happen.
Something was in the wind,
people were cheering us, you know saying "right on AIM".
I was excited, my adrenalin in my system was pumping hard.
I just felt, this is it.
Wounded Knee itself is an important symbol
you know where the 1890 Massacre happened you know,
of women and children by the military.
Way back in 1890 when Chief Big Foot
and his people were massacred there.
They were under surrender and high armed guard by troops
and the next day, that's when they instigated them
to fight and then they shot them down,
unarmed people. Men, women and children.
Along those gulches right there, that's where a lot of women
and children, they found them after the massacre in 1890.
Soldiers chased them all along this gulch.
To go back there and say this is the place
that most symbolizes what
the US government has done to Indian people
and continues to do.
The caravan drove through Pine Ridge and toward Wounded Knee
We were sure that something was in the making.
They moved in and took over
the entire community of Wounded Knee.
The only place of business there was a grocery store,
they took that over.
SOUND OF HELICOPTER
That's when the Marshals pulled in - and once they surrounded
them and closed the roads off, nobody could get in.
Because we heard that the FBI had set up
roadblocks. We knew you could not drive out or in.
They went there for a demonstration,
they were surrounded by gun emplacement on all sides
And the alternative was to somehow walk out and get shot.
We didn't go there to
shoot Native American people,
we didn't go there to
create any problems, they had broken the law.
We went there to protect the community.
It certainly couldn't have been their plan to get in there
and get stuck, but that's what happened, they got stuck.
It was the first morning the AIM leaders spoke,
and they're saying why we got to stay here. And they're all
speaking in the sense that we got to stay together.
When we took over Wounded Knee
I knew from a military point of view that
they would move to take action against us very quickly.
I didn't know how far they would go.
SOUND OF AIRPLANE
Air Force phantom jets flew over taking reconnaissance photos.
Jets were flying over, here comes all these troops
marching down the street with guns and machine guns.
The Indians went through the tribal ritual
of preparing themselves for battle.
So we were in a state of war.
My perception of Dennis Banks is that
he operated on the military model.
That he was like a general
and he expected you to follow orders.
The AK-47s was probably the most dangerous weapon
they had for us and the Springfield rifles.
They dug bunkers where they could have
a barricade to fire from.
We didn't start the shooting,
it was the BIA police that started the shooting.
It's been said that some nights as many as 10,000
rounds of fire were exchanged.
There was gun fire every day.
Lot of us Vietnam vets were
the security guards on many occasions
and that's what led me to thank the United States of America
for teaching me how to fight. For now I had a purpose
to fight and that was for our own rights and our own dignity.
I knew this was my place to go to defend
my land, my treaties, to defend my own people.
I believe the government did
everything in its power to try to settle the matter
and probably to learn
what the American Indian Movement was all about.
In fact, after several days - the takeover,
Senators Jim Aberesk and Senator George McGovern
came to the reservation.
I took them in to Wounded Knee,
someone poked a
revolver through the window and held it to my head
and asked a couple of questions and
the Senators got out and walked away and they had a meeting.
There were times when we would come up here and
try and negotiate, every afternoon there would
be a meeting... and when the meetings were through
the shooting would begin over again.
There never ever seemed to be an answer to what they wanted.
Their goal was not negotiable because no one knew what it was.
What was happening at that point
was intermittently the US Marshals and FBI agents
would let people in,
the media would come in, the clergy would come in -
And all of a sudden all these Indian people
started coming out of the woodwork literally
and saying we are going to go there in support.
There was thousands of people who came here,
over two thousand people came here at that time.
I was learning everyday the
immense diversity of Indian peoples,
it was not this monolith of Indian,
it was all these different peoples
and they all had different histories
and Wounded Knee had brought them all together
recognizing that there needed to be a focal point.
On March 3rd Stan Holder woke me up
and said that there was a noise out there
and that he couldn't figure out what it was...
And as we looked around with binoculars there was 35
armoured vehicles, armoured personnel vehicles.
They had 30 calibre machine guns mounted on top.
We have moved a total of 15 APCs into the area,
hopefully we will be successful in creating a tighter
perimeter than we previously had.
Is this an attempt to essentially starve them out?
I would not say that.
This is an attempt to change their lifestyle
to the point where they would like to come out peacefully.
No they couldn't possibly starve us out because
the fact that we have too many people
that are concerned all across the country.
I think the response from America and the American public
will prevent it from happening.
To tell you the truth I would like to see them try it,
because I can think of nothing more,
creating more sympathy for our cause
than this Gestapo type action.
They did a pole in April of 1973
on what the public thought about Wounded Knee
and there was something like 51%
of the American public supported the Indian people
and their takeover of Wounded Knee and even their use
of firearms, because there was no other resource to help them.
Every day I would get up and I would make my rounds
go see how people are doing and
check on what the pantry looked like - it was getting bare.
I would go up to the monument.
I would go there and ask for spiritual help.
I would say, we're here for closure for one thing,
to bring closure to the massacre,
but also to seek help from you.
Leonard Crow Dog he had this prophetic, shaman look.
Leonard could definitely put the fear of the gods in you
with his ceremonies and all and I think it was probably
something that held a lot of the people together.
The people there were together in a way
that is hard to describe.
There's just a total feeling of everybody's commitment
to everybody else.
What little food was totally shared.
Everything was totally shared.
We all met each evening and we had our little powwows and then
of course a lot of inspirational talks, and we talked about life
and we talked about family,
we talked about Mother Earth and Father Sky
and how it was relevant to our future way of life.
It was all about community. We were trying to
bring back the old ways, we were demonstrating who we were.
Dennis and Russell were synonymous with Wounded Knee
and their relationship appeared
during all this time to be extremely close.
And again they wanted to negotiate,
so I called the White House again and said
we have these real strong
Indian people who would like to go and help be helpful
in the negotiation
so it doesn't escalate into someone getting hurt.
And they said
okay, we're interested. And just in a matter of maybe
seven hours or so they called back and said "oh, we've got it
all worked out." And it wasn't just a matter of another day
that the FBI guy was shot. So then it just went to pieces.
During Wounded Knee we had some hot heads. What
broke one of the truces is one of our guys shot
an FBI guy in the hand. There were occasionally
people like that and it only took one of them.
During that period of time there was many nights where
a lot of gunfire was exchanged.
Our United States Marshal from Omaha, Nebraska
was shot in the chest near Denby.
A US Marshal was seriously injured
which we've always believed was by crossfire that missed,
by gunfire from the Marshal service and FBI themselves.
He was merely standing on a old car body looking
to the Northwest towards Wounded Knee with his
binoculars and he was shot through the chest and
severed his spine and was paraplegic for many years.
Frank Clearwater was killed that next day.
Two of our young AIM warriors were shot and killed.
Frank Clearwater and a week later
Buddy Lamont was shot and killed in a fire fight.
My Uncle Buddy Lamont was shot and killed.
We were in one of the bunkers when they said that somebody
was down. And word reached us that it was Buddy. We saw
where the bullet went right through him, right through his
heart and out the back. And um, it was a very sad day.
And it was a feeling that
if it was any longer more people would be killed
and I just couldn't , I couldn't bear that responsibility.
The responsibility of a Leader that
that when people are killed underneath you,
you just feel so lost and...
and how do you tell the parents that...
that their son or daughter has been killed and...
feel depressed.
Everything was going against us. They had blocked off, sealed
off the roads, all the trails they were using to bring food in
to us. The ammunition was down, we were down to like 5 or 6
shells per weapon and we only had like 10 or 15 at that point.
We decided then that we would, we would end it.
I believe it was the 8th day of May,
a agreement was worked out where
they would turn themselves in to law enforcement.
We moved into Wounded Knee at that time with no resistance.
We feared that the FBI
and the Federal Marshals would try to assassinate Dennis Banks,
so we had to get him out of there.
And the plan was made where we would take him out
the night before the stand off.
And Crow Dog said he was going to make us invisible.
So the next day when it got dark, we left,
went north towards Porcupine, which was 11 miles away...
and you could hear all this automatic gunfire.
But at one point there was a Jeep that came over this hill,
we were out in the flat area, the tree line was maybe
30 feet away. And we just laid down there
and they didn't see, we laid in the shadow,
the Jeep went by with the two Federal Marshals
and the pipe had made us invisible.
There was a strong feeling that we had succeeded,
but there was also a feeling
that we should have done more to accomplish more there.
MUSIC
Sure they wanted to destroy AIM,
I mean their choices were rather obvious.
We were being pulled apart because of our
time in the courtrooms,
some of our people were on trial in Cedar Rapids, Iowa,
some were on trial in Sioux Falls, South Dakota
and the Leadership trial was happening
up in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
The Banks-Means Trial in Twin Cities starting February '74.
And that was the 9 months trial. People referred
to it as the AIM Trial. Judge Nichol was
a very interesting man,
he was a man who expected the government to live up to fairly
high standards which they were not capable of
living up to... We had a 10 day interruption
dealing with the evidence of the illegal use
of the military during Wounded Knee.
There was some equipment provided by the military.
Every piece of that equipment was operated
by a United States Marshal's employee.
Ultimately, Nichol found that the use of the military was
illegal, and several of the counts were dismissed by him.
Well Doug Durham showed up sometime before
the end of the stand down.
He made himself kind of Dennis' bodyguard and confident.
And I asked him, I said let me see what are your skills?
He says "I'm a pilot".
I started working with him and he was good at his job.
He had an airplane and he could do this and he could do that.
When we had the trials he became the self-appointed
gatekeeper to see who could come in and out of
the conference room, after all we had
four lawyers and two defendants.
He was a very forceful personality,
and I said he was a forceful personality,
he really was... and he bullied a lot of people.
The people who didn't like him were building, building support.
But the people who did like him, I guess, myself.
And then, we were flying back from Rapid City
and he said you know what we should do Dennis,
we should get a bomb
and bomb the-
we were looking at the capitol of Pierre, South Dakota,
flying over it, and that's when I said
"Doug, we're not about that".
He acted as - like a provocateur and he was always
pushing himself around and pushing other people around.
Russell Means didn't trust him,
Clyde Bellecourt didn't trust him
and Vernon Bellecourt didn't trust him.
But Dennis Banks trusted him.
The chief security officer for Indian activists
during the Wounded Knee takeover told a news conference today
that he had been a paid informer for the FBI.
His name is Douglas Durham.
For approximately two years I was a paid FBI operative
operating in the American Indian Movement at the highest level.
I felt betrayed.
The Federal Judge in our case asked the question,
he said "I didn't know how far my government would stoop
to gain a conviction against Dennis Banks.
He said but now I know.
He ultimately dismissed the case after one of
the jurors got sick and the government made it clear
that they would not agree to an eleven person jury
because the jurors who had been released, that is the
alternate jurors who had been released at the beginning of
deliberations said that "oh clearly
there were going to be not guilty verdicts for all."
GUNFIRE
Two FBI agents are killed at the Jumping Bull place.
For which Leonard Peltier is now serving
multiple life sentences for.
And the whole thing changed.
The day of the Oglala incident
Dennis was on his way to the Custer trial.
All kinds of charges involving rioting,
and assault and carrying a weapon while rioting.
Janklow was Attorney General for South Dakota.
He ran on a hate campaign of hating the American
Indian Movement and he left his post as Attorney
General and he came to prosecute me personally.
The trial was not going well because
the lawyer that was representing Dennis Banks
was an eastern law professor
and he just didn't relate to the people in Custer county,
and I think it was half way through the jury selection
that Dennis Banks decided
that he would take over and represent himself.
He did his own closing argument.
I've never seen anybody do a better job
of a closing argument than Dennis did.
And I was in the court room that day and I always tell people
that the court room was so quiet when he got done giving his
closing argument that you could hear his footsteps
as he walked back across the carpet.
And it wasn't until the trial
when Dennis Banks gave his closing argument,
that I learned that " a good day to die"
doesn't mean we want to kill you...
it's a good day for people
to stand up for what they believe in
and if you have to be killed in the process,
it's still something that's worthwhile.
So I think there were 22 or 24 counts
and I think he was found guilty on 2 or 3.
I finally decided that having him post bond
was certainly the most reasonable thing to do,
pending his sentencing, because otherwise I was very much afraid
that we were going to have blood shed and a terrible riot.
The media asked me if I thought Dennis would show up
and I said I was absolutely sure he would,
so they had quoted me as being confident
that Dennis would show up.
He jumped bail and was on the run for a long time.
MUSIC
And this is the time of our lives where
my father was granted sanctuary by Governor Jerry Brown.
I got the extradition warrant from at that time it
was Governor Janklow, so he wanted him extradited.
Janklow became Governor and tried very hard to extradite him
back from California, but at that time
Brown refused to extradite him.
Dennis had been living a good life
since he'd been here, he'd been a positive
force in the community and I thought given the historic
relationship between the US and Native Americans,
I'd thought that given the totality
of all the circumstances,
it would be better to deny the extradition request.
We were living in Davis, CA and my dad was
first attending school and then became the Chancellor of
DQU which was a tribal college in northern California.
And then a new governor was coming in...
a Republican governor named Duekmejian.
So we moved, and we went to New York,
and we were living on the Onadoga reservation there.
Janklow was still trying to put pressure on
Governor Cuomo but Cuomo wouldn't listen to him.
And then it was during our time in New York
when my father decided to turn himself in.
To be confined to a reservation
that was two miles by six miles...
I thought, I didn't - I couldn't
carry out what I wanted to do with my life.
And it was to take place at the airport...
and they put the handcuffs on him...
I saw the press just running towards us...
I was ten years old,
I remember looking at my dad and he seemed at that point
so vulnerable.
He came back and turned himself in and was sentenced.
I didn't think there was any advantage for him being away
for ten years and I gave him the same sentence I would
have given him if he had shown up when he was supposed to.
I was not depressed,
because I knew that door was going to open.
There used to be a guard who tapped his night stick
all along here but when I'd see him coming,
I could look through these and see him coming
a little ways and I'd sing, I'd sing the AIM song and
those guys would say "sing it louder, Banks, sing
it louder" so then there was some other Indians
guys beneath a tier down below me would say
"go ahead Banks do the lead and we'll follow". So I'd
SINGING
... and they would join in.
SINGING
And then I do remember being there the day he got out,
he just kind of walked out...
wasn't any press there... just us.
You know life sort of resumed... very quietly.
I think it's really unfortunate that he wasn't
around during those ten years to lead his people
into something that would be better than it is
today... everything kinda stopped once he left.
Kind of like the downfall of the Movement,
after all that, after the occupation and years later
drugs and alcohol came into the picture...
some of the - I don't think, I never did see Dennis drink
or use drugs, but I know some of the other Movement members did.
After those events began to calm down a little bit,
not a lot but a little bit, there were opportunities
through government grants and training programs and other
opportunities for Indians that were never there before -
so it makes me think that that was worth it...
you know that if you...
if you let the bully just keep smacking you in the face
and you never do anything about it and then one day you jump up
and hit him with a rock, things are going to change.
Every Movement that's ever happened in our country has had
to have a militant arm to it or nothing would change.
They started funding Indian education, you know
and they started opening up different jobs and so forth,
we forced them to hire Indians in the Bureau of Indian Affairs,
we forced them to hire Indians in Indian health service,
they weren't.
Everybody started asserting their Treaty rights,
everybody started asserting their "pride",
everybody started just "talking the talk" more.
Because the message went out that it's okay to be
Indian, it's okay to be educated, its okay to practice
your own religion, to practice your own singing
and your dances... in fact, they're important.
They took the blows for us when nobody else did,
and they had no blueprint, they had no one to follow...
so they had to do all that and take all the blows themselves,
whatever their mistakes might have been along the way -
there was an incredible contribution.
As I remember it,
one of the reasons that they gave us for forming
chapters for the American Indian Movement at the time was that
we need to come together, we need to band together in order
to help one another survive as well as to excel in life...
and we can do this with the American Indian Movement.
The American Indian Movement need only exist as long as it
needs to exist and I think that what it did,
I think, was it served its purpose
the American Indian Movement served its purpose.
It was needed at that moment in history
and I'm sure it will come again,
just as sure as this sun that comes up and goes down...
when you abuse people, so long
that the only thing that they can turn to is
confrontational politics... they're going to do that!
After AIM began to make waves, make news...
law enforcement especially and I don't know about
the rest of the community, became more and more educated
about the issues with the American Indian people
and see those in a different way, see those issues
in a different way. And I know that personally,
Dennis helped me with that when we talked,
he would talk to me about those issues in a way that
I could get a hold of - what it was like to grow up in
the boarding school issues and
all of those kind of things that...
your point that they forgot to tell me that in school, right,
I didn't know that... and so all of a sudden
I'm getting more educated. I think the American
Indian Movement helped bring that awareness that
there was some ugly stuff that happened to
the American Indian People and we needed to know that.
DRAMATIC MUSIC
At the height of Wounded Knee, in that era there was
so much energy, there was so much enthusiasm -
it almost built up to a size that was not sustainable,
I mean these men couldn't keep riding this wave at
this height... it was too much.
The energy had to come down,
it crested and it was time for these men to
go back to their roots... the men and the women...
and so that's what he did, he came back to his roots
and he came to work on the Pine Ridge reservation and
he worked at Lone Man School as a drug and alcohol
counsellor and he started working with the kids...
so then he started a series of runs and walks across
the country, around the world.
And the message I think is always the same
"what can we do to work on behalf of our people?"
And "what is that common purpose so
that we can all be unified in doing that together?"
He just never stops.
MUSIC
Did I achieve anything?
I'll go to my grave knowing that I tried my part
to bring about meaningful change...
go to the Spirit World that way...
that I did, I did my very best.