American Indian Movement leader Carter Camp recalls the Wounded Knee siege, which ended May 8, 1973

On Feb. 2, 1973, Carter Camp led the first warriors into the hamlet of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in southwest South Dakota, home of the Oglala Lakota. He was a citizen of the Ponca nation, one of the many tribes forced at gunpoint to leave their home turf to live on land in Oklahoma that was taken from other Natives. On May 8, he was also the last to leave of about 250 Indians of many tribes who had seized and occupied the hamlet for 73 days. I am proud to have been one of the occupiers for 51 of those days, arriving shortly after the takeover, and lucky to have known Carter.

Carter Camp in an interview at Wounded Knee.

The action was initiated by the American Indian Movement, the most militant pan-Native organization since the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota took down the 7th Cavalry in Montana’s Medicine Tail Coulee in 1876. Although other AIM leaders claimed most of the media attention during and after the occupation, it was Carter who worked the most diligently to keep things together under difficult circumstances, including nearly daily exchanges of gunfire between AIM, its allies, and federal marshals and FBI agents. Carter was also the only leader to spend two years at Leavenworth federal prison for disputed actions during the siege. For him there would be no book deals, no film roles, no adoring groupies, just service to Native peoples and the respect of those of us who knew the extent of his sacrifice and his wise and calm leadership. He was both our leader and our inspiration.

The takeover of Wounded Knee was both practical and symbolic. A protest against the terrible, abusive tribal leadership at Pine Ridge and the continuing violation by the federal government of more than 300 treaties with the tribes. In 1890, the 7th Cavalry had killed 300 Minneconjou and Hunkpapa Lakota at Wounded Knee, about half of them women and children, in the last major violent clash between the Plains tribes and the U.S. Army. Twenty soldiers got Medals of Honor for their action. Scores of Lakota got a mass grave.

On the left, Carter Camp on the phone at Wounded Knee in 1973. I was unable in 2013 to make it to the 40th reunion of Wounded Knee vets at his Honor Dance at the Ponca Cultural Center in White Eagle, Oklahoma. My friend and colleague Neeta Lind took the photo of him there while he and I reminisced on the phone.

One circumstance that kept the 1973 situation from turning into a repeat of that bloodbath was Richard Nixon’s fear of what politicians like to call “negative optics.” Killing a bunch of Indians at the site of one of the most notorious massacres in U.S. history with the media watching might not play so well with many Americans. Many of us at the occupation thought there was a good chance we would die on that ground, and we prepared ourselves for that possibility. This wasn’t our imagination. It was later determined that the marshals, bureau agents, and others trying to end the siege fired 133,000 rounds of ammunition at us before it was over. 

Forty years later, in December 2013, Carter died. Before then, he had written a brief remembrance of his time at Wounded Knee. Today, on this 47th anniversary weekend of the end of the siege, read his words:

Ah-ho My Relations.

Each year with the changing of the season I post this remembrance of Wounded Knee ‘73. I wrote it a few years ago when some of our brave people had walked to Yellowstone to stop the slaughter of our Buffalo relations. When I did I was surprised at the response from people who were too young to remember WK73 and I was pleased that some old WK vets wrote to me afterwards. So each year on this date I post the short story again and invite you-all to send it around or use as you will. As you do I ask you to remember that our reasons for going to Wounded Knee still exist and that means the need for struggle and resistance also still exist. Our land and sacred sites are threatened as never before even our sacred Mother herself is faced with unnatural warming caused by extreme greed.  

In some areas of conflict between our people and those we signed treaties with, it is best to negotiate or "work within the system" but, because our struggle is one of survival, there are also times when a warrior must stand fast even at the risk of one's life. I believed that in 1973 when I was thirty and I believe it today in my sixties. But Wounded Knee 73 was really not about the fight to me, it was about the strong statement that our traditional way of living in this world is not about to disappear and our people are not a "vanishing race," as wasicu education would have you believe. As time has passed and I see so many of our young people taking part in a traditional way of living and believing I know our fight was worth it and those we lost for our movement died worthy deaths.  Remembering Wounded Knee 1973 Ah-ho My Relations, Today is heavy with prayer and reminisces for me. Not only are those who walk for the Yellowstone Buffalo reaching their destination, today is the anniversary of the night when, at the direction of the Oglala Chiefs, I went with a special squad of warriors to liberate Wounded Knee in advance of the main AIM caravan.

For security reasons the people had been told everyone was going to a meeting/wacipi in Porcupine, the road [that] goes through Wounded Knee. When the people arrived at the Trading Post we had already set up a perimeter, taken 11 hostages, run the BIA cops out of town, cut most phone lines, and began 73 days of the best, most free time of my life. The honor of being chosen to go first still lives strong in my heart.

That night we had no idea what fate awaited us. It was a cold night with not much moonlight and I clearly remember the nervous anticipation I felt as we drove the back-way from Oglala into Wounded Knee. The Chiefs had tasked me with a mission and we were sworn to succeed, of that I was sure, but I couldn't help wondering if we were prepared.

The FBI, BIA and marshalls had fortified Pine Ridge with machinegun bunkers and APCs with M-60's. They had unleashed the GOON squad [Guardians of the Oglala Nation, a vigilante arm of the corrupt tribal chairman] on the people and a reign of terror had begun, we knew we had to fight but we could not fight on wasicu terms. We were lightly armed and dependent on the weapons and ammo inside the Wounded Knee Trading Post, I worried that we would not get to them before the shooting started.

As we stared silently into the darkness driving into the hamlet I tried to foresee what opposition we would encounter and how to neutralize it. We were approaching a sacred place and each of us knew it. We could feel it deep inside. As a warrior leading warriors I humbly prayed to Wakonda for the lives of all and the wisdom to do things right. Never before or since have I offered my tobacco with such a plea or put on my feathers with such purpose. It was the birth of the Independent Oglala Nation.

Things went well for us that night, we accomplished our task without loss of life. Then, in the cold darkness as we waited for Dennis [Banks] and Russ [Means] to bring in the caravan (or for the fight to start), I stood on the bank of the shallow ravine where our people had been murdered by Custer's 7th Cavalry. There I prayed for the defenseless ones, torn apart by Hotchkiss cannon and trampled under hooves of steel by drunken wasicu. I could feel the touch of their spirits as I eased quietly into the gully and stood silently... waiting for my future, touching my past.

Finally, I bent over and picked a sprig of sage - whose ancestors in 1890 had been nourished by the blood of Red babies, ripped from their mothers dying grasp and bayonetted by the evil ones - As I washed myself with that sacred herb I became cold in my determination and cleansed of fear. I looked for Big Foot and YellowBird in the darkness and I said aloud ---

"We are back my relations, we are home". Hoka-Hey

Carter Camp- Ponca Nation

Thanks to my friend Casey Camp-Horinek, Carter’s sister, and his brother Dwain Camp for permission to reprint his words here today. Like Carter, they are highly respected Native activists within their own Ponca tribe, in the pan-Indian movement, in the effort to bring a Native perspective to addressing the climate crisis, and in fighting against the ongoing impacts of colonialism on indigenous peoples around the world. 

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