Cool Zone Media.
Hello, and welcome to the show. This one is not the other shows that are cool people who did cool stuff. I'm your host, Marta Kiljoy, and this is a history show about cool people who did cool stuff. My guest this week and last week and forever, well unfortunate enough forever, but we're going to have on as much as possible is Miriam.
I'm Miriam him, so happy to be back.
Miriam is our resident tall ship expert, which is definitely a big part of this. But we still haven't revealed the reason that Miriam is the guest this week, and it's at the end.
I will, however, bring up tall ships whenever I can.
Yeah, no, I'm you know. Most of this is going to take place in the Dakotas, so I will be impressed.
I texted you about the time the American Indian Movement took over the replica of the May Hour. Did we ever find out anything more about that?
No, Unfortunately, it's not part of this. They took over so many things. There's like there are entire takeovers that are like footnotes in the book that I read and like it's impressive. Okay, but first, our producer, Sophie why it's me your producer, Sophie Hi. Our audio engineer is named Ian Hi.
It's Ian Hi Hi.
Ian Our theme music was written forced by Unwoman. And this is part four of a four part on Lakota resistance to the American Empire. And it's also a broader You will figure out titly and make it right, because this is absolutely broader than Lakota Resistance. It was like the first week was that, and now we're going to be talking about all this other stuff. There's so much, there's so much, and I was like this, I can't actually right now make this until six or eight parter.
So I think I'll be back to do a lot more of this stuff. But where we last left our heroes and you will be completely not caught up if you don't go back and listen to at least Monday's episode, if not last week's episodes, is that the American Indian Movement is reigning champs of taking stuff over and Leonard Peltier. Peltier is on the run and well he will be soon that the time stuff is let's just go into it. We're gonna take this story over now to Pine Ridge.
We're a super shitty, corrupt asshole named Dick Wilson. And I'm not saying that everyone with a name Dick is a bad person, but it's a little on the nose.
You're setting yourself up. Like, if your name is Richard and you're gonna be a real piece of shit, maybe don't like introduce yourself with like call me Dick, because we're already gonna.
Because it's like it would be a good ironic name. Really, if you're Richard and you're really sweet guy, go by Dick. It is like kind of funny. You know, yeah, your kids will because no one under the age of seventy goes by the name Dick. But this Dick, Dick Wilson had just become president of the Pine Ridge Tribal Council. He'd already almost been indicted for in Besleyne money even before he was ever president, and he is quoted as saying, quote,
there's nothing in tribal law against nepotism. So he immediately gave huge salaries to his wife, brother, cousins, sons, and nephew. And these are salaries of like twenty five thousand a year, which I looked up twenty five thousand and nineteen seventy three is about one hundred and seventy three thousand today. Pretty nice salary. Wouldn't you feel like if.
You're describing what you're doing as nepotism, that that's like kind you know, it's bad on the people that you're Like if you're like, ah, yes, let me hire my wife's son cousin for nepotism reasons, like you don't even want to try to pretend they're good at their jobs, Like.
No, yeah, just to fucking just give them all of the money. He's he is an absolute grifter. The median salary on Pine Ray's reservation was eight hundred dollars a year, and he is paying more than twenty five times that to a fuck ton of his relatives. Man, this stick for some weird reason that we'll explain at great length over the course of the next hour. He hated the American Indian Movement. He hated Russell Means in particular because Russell Means kept was gonna run against him. You know,
he kept arresting AIM leaders every chance he could. They kept trying to get him impeached. The votes to impeach him got more votes than he'd gotten as votes in the actual election, but nothing was done. He also a classic move here, had his own paramilitary force like every fascist ever. He had in addition to you know, being involved with the Bia police, he had the Guardians of the Oglala Nation or goons. They were known as goons, especially later in the story They're going to kill a
fucked people. He sold off the land to white people at discount rates. He least one eighth of the reservation to private companies, and so the government loves him, Yeah, because I mean that this is their whole shit. Yeah, because they're all about the resource extraction and he is leasing out mineral rights and selling shit to white people.
That's so much like you have to actually like get up pretty early in the morning and like put in the hours to to do that much harm.
Yeah. Yeah, But but Dick was willing to do it. You know, Dick gets it done. That was his.
Are we ma sure enough to take this topic on, Margaret, I don't know.
I'm not sure. So when another guy, Wesley bad Heart Bull was murdered by a random white racist who literally said to his friend, I'm gonna go kill me an Indian and then went out and killed Wesley, badheart bull Aim showed up. There's this whole big thing. Riot is another way to describe it, but we'll go with things where basically Aim was like showed up to talk to officials, and so they all the cops attacked. The cops beat up Wesley's mother when she tried to enter the courthouse.
Jesus Christ.
Yeah, so folks rioted. They overturned two cop cars and set them on fire. The Chamber of Commerce next door, which was empty for the night, was burned to the ground.
That's okay. Nobody knows what a chamber of commerce even does.
I don't know what a chamber of commerce does. I wasn't sure it was. It referred to it as the abandoned Chamber of Commerce, and I was like, I think that means it's empty for the night. Maybe it was actually just an abandoned building. And they were like, fuck this building. I don't know what that means.
You're legally allowed to send it on fire.
I I mean, yeah, So the courthouse cops beat up a grieving mother on the steps of Custer Courthouse. Jesus in the city of You gotta warn me.
You kept warning me when you weren't shocking me, and then you spring something like Custer Courthouse on me and that actually does shock me.
Yeah, yeah, No, it was Custer Courthouse in the city of Custer, in the County of Custer, and Sarah Badheart Bull, the mother, was arrested alongside twenty nine others for these riots. She went on to spend five months in prison for the riot. Her son's killer got two months probation.
Jesus.
At this point, local folks are asking Aim to help deal with Dick Wilson and get justice for all of this shit that's happening, right, And so people decided to take a stand, and so they went to a symbolic place. They went to a small town called Wounded Knee, which was the place that the masker was at the end of last week's episodes of eighteen ninety. On February twenty seventh, nineteen seventy three, two hundred indigenous folks occupied the town
and changed history. And because this stuff gets argued a lot, right, Aim is like, you have a run across the outside agitator thing.
I'm familiar with the outside agitator thing.
Yeah, So basically, whenever there's a rowdy thing, people are like Obviously people who live here would never be ra There is a mythical place called outside where all of the bad people come from, and so like later, Aim is going to be accused by the state of being
outside agitator. So that's why I'm pointing out that AIM was instrumental in the occupation of Wounded Knee, but they were explicitly invited there by all of the traditional leaders of the Oglala Lakota people of all sorts of indigenous nations showed up, invited and occupied the town of Wounded Knee. To quote a woman named Madonna Gilbert quote, the elder said, what can we do to wake these Indians up? We have to take a stand somewhere. So we decided that
the symbolic place would be Wounded Knee. What happened there was never expected. We figured we'd just be there two or three days. We were never told to bring food or anything. I just had my jacket in my purse and my two kids. We didn't realize what was happening until we were surrounded. We never broke the law in any way or did one thing wrong. It was the Feds who were breaking the law by being on the reservation without jurisdiction without it any real permission from the people.
Because yeah, two hundred people show up to Wounded Knee to do a big symbolic thing. As soon as they show up, the US marshals surround the place. They with sandbags and machine gun nests, armored personnel carriers, one hundred and thirty three thousand rounds of five to five six ammunition for their M sixteens. The excuse that the government used is that the Indigenous people had white hostages, because there's white people who lived in Wounded Knee. It's true
that white people lived in Wounded Knee. It is not true that the American Indian Movement had hostages. This is not speculation on my part. When most left when the occupation started, most of the white people left. No one stopped them from doing that. The others were like, now, we're good, we live here, We'll stay as voluntary hostages. Take it from yeah, take it from Wilbur Regert, who is eighty two years old at the time, or maybe when he was interviewed it ten years later. He's not
a young man. He said, quote, we as a group of hostages, decided to stay on to save aim and our own property. Had we not, those troops would have come down here and killed all those people. The real hostages are the aim people because they were weren't allowed out, you know.
Yeah yeah, people being held somewhere is kind of definitionally.
Yeah, and so like wow, yeah, like good on those people, you know.
Fuck yeah. That is.
Eventually all of the white residents left, not because of Aim, because of the threat and the actual violence from the government, because the government kept shooting up the town even though there were quote unquote hostages. There never change settler colonialism.
Yeah, if only there were a contemporary parallel to a government that was very, very very concerned about hostages except when it comes to keeping them safe, except when it comes to doing absolutely anything to keeping them safe.
Yeah. Yeah, So some of the people who are there. One Iglala woman said her grandfather had barely survived the eighteen ninety Wounded Knee massacre. So she wasn't going to leave her people to die alone. And she wasn't a fighter. She never picked up arms, but she stayed. On March ninth, the first firefight broke out. No one knows who started it.
On March tenth, the government lifted the blockade hoping the aim rabble rousers, like the outside agitators would all just flee, you know, they didn't spoil her.
I mean because the outside agitator thing the only like, it only makes sense if you are.
A government provocateur trying to get people in trouble. Like a government provocateur trying to get people in trouble might embed themselves with a group, kick off some spicy shit, and then immediately leave. But like somebody who's actually trying to get a cause going or like trying to support something, they're not going to do that. So it's like law enforcement can only think like law enforcement like they can't actually, yeah, they have this mythical outside agitator who is just them.
Yeah, totally like how the right wing is always like, oh they bust, They're like they bust across the country or whatever, and it's like, no, they bus across the country. Anti fascists they're everywhere.
Yeah, Like I've literally like I've been at like a while back, there was this, uh there were a bunch of protests in Lower Manhattan because there was an Islamic center being reopened near.
Near the World Trade Center, Like and this like on Fox News became the ground Zero Mosque. It was a whole thing. I saw buses from like fucking Alabama show up in Manhattan and like unload entire church congregations to show up and oppose this, And it's like that's the thing that they always accuse us of doing, you know, because it's what they do.
Like yeah, absolutely, So, no one flees on March tenth, or maybe some people, I don't whatever. The occupation continues. On March eleventh, the occupiers declare the Independent Glala Nation and propose to discuss its treaty with the US as equals. And the press eats this all up. The European press called it Wounded Knee too, and actually most of the press is positive at this point. As far as I can tell, the ceasefire was broken within days and the
blockade was back on. Lawyers from Saint Paul formed the this is the best name any legal organization has ever had, as far as I can tell, they formed the Wounded Knee Lee Defense Slash Offense Committee. Hell yeah. The FBI declared that group a revolutionary organization for arguing that the blockade was illegal.
I mean, fine, yeah, I know exactly, I could do that.
Yeah, their work in the court's got a temporary restraining order in place, and also got six lawyers and six car loads of food into the occupation.
Nice. I like how you've been highlighting this a lot, but I just like want to mention, like how much you see aim like working from all angles on this, Like on the ground occupation court battles like going on. Yeah, at you know, at the same time and for the same.
Goals, absolutely, and civil disobedience alongsided alongside armed occupations, just depending on what is necessary at that time, you know. Yeah, so the army eventually shows up. Ironically, it's possible that the presence of the art army is what kept the FBI in the US marshals from just like running in and murdering everyone. That asshole tribal leader Dick Wilson and
his goons. They set up another blockade around the government one trying to support the government one, and soon they're calling on non Native patriots to come and join with guns to put down the Oglala rebellion.
Wait, who is calling for that, the the.
Goons or yeah, Dick Wilson and his guys. Yeah, so they're calling on the white militias.
Basically Yeah, when you definitely have the safety and well being of Indigenous people at heart, that's what you do, is you call for white militias.
Yeah. Inside the occupation Leonard crow Dog, who, as I pointed out, was the one of the first spiritual leaders to support the American Indian movement. He brought back the ghost dance after receiving a vision from his great grandfather, and it was the first time that had been danced in eighty three years, according to at least I believe him.
By March twenty sixth, the last phone line into the place was cut by the FEDS and the last news crew NBC was forced out by the FEDS, which is not when good things happen.
No, when they make you turn off the cameras.
Yeah, as soon as the news crews were gone, they just started shooting the shit out of the town. Five to twenty thousand rounds in total were shot on that one day alone into the town. The reason that more people didn't die is that a fuck ton of the aim folks were Vets and they'd been digging bunkers because they had just come back from from Vietnam. No one mmm, I think no one was killed that day there's a couple people are going to die. I'll talk about them.
But one US marshal was wounded during that firefight, almost certainly by one of the goons. Even the US marshals admit that they were like, ah, this is the most likely thing, right, Well, you.
Set up you set up a ring of yeah guys around a ring of guys around a town, Like you can't shoot over the inner ring of guys, Like that's that's not how blits work.
No, the Patriot isn't there with artillery. They're there with fucking guns. Five members of AIM are later going to be charged for this wounding that even the US marshalls admit wasn't AIM. By the end of March, AIM was ready to negotiate, and they were starting to run out of food. Their demand was to start talking seriously about the fucking terms of the eighteen sixty eight treaty. And just as an aside, I can't remember if we talked
about this last time or not. We act like the broken treaties are like endlessly long ago, right, I think was it you who brought this up? Eighteen sixty A is a hell of a lot more recent than plenty of the laws that we enforced in the United States, Like I don't know the fucking Constitution of the United States.
I don't think I am the one who brought that up. But like, yeah, it's it also like you can't just be like, oh, well, it was a long time ago, so it doesn't matter when you're like yeah, like just saying like, well, if we wait long enough after the broken treaty, then it's like it's not broken anymore. And it's like, so by failing to redress the harm, you have negated the harm. Like No, that's the literal opposite of how that works. Like that works when you have
like some drama in your social scene. Like that works for like your interactions with other people's polydrama, you know exactly.
You're like, oh, like you are both kind of dicks and during that breakup and I'm kind of mad, and then a couple of years later you're like whatever.
You know, Yeah, that works if somebody is like, let's just cool off. But you can't, like you can't commit genocide and dispossess people and like commit massacres and be like let's just cool off for a bit. We've forgotten about it, haven't you.
Yeah, well, and so what the government said to them was, well, we can't talk about the eighteen sixty eight treaty because of the eighteen seventy one thing, where we can't negotiate with you like you're a government. And so Aim was like, I hate to be the one to explain how chronology works, but eighteen sixty eight is actually a lower number than eighteen seventy one, and the treaty precedes that. Russell means,
who's one of the leaders of this occupation? He says, quote in his long quote, but I think it's worth it. This is our last gasp as a sovereign people. And if we don't get these treaty rights recognized as equal to the Constitution of the United States, as by law they are, then you might as well kill me, because I have no reason for living. And that's why I'm here in Wounded Knee, because nobody is recognizing the Indian
people as human beings. They're laughing it off in Time magazine and Newsweek and the editors in New York and what have you. They're treating this as a silly matter, just as they've treated Indian people throughout history. We're tired of being treated this way, and we're not going to be treated like that anymore. You're going to have to kill us because I'm not going to die in some
barroom brawl. I'm not going to die in a car wreck on some lonely road on the reservation because I've been drinking to escape the oppression of this goddamn society. I'm not going to die when I walk into Pine Ridge and Dickie's goons feel like I should be off. That's not the way I'm going to die. I'm going to die fighting for my treaty rights. Period. We haven't demanded any radical changes here, only that the United States
government live up to its own laws. It is precedent setting that a group of radicals, when the minds of some are acting outside the law, are just in turn asking the law to live up to its own. We're not asking for any radical changes. We're just asking for the law to be equitably applied to all.
Fuck yeah, I feel like that's what I say every time you get done reading a quote you've been reading some fucking bangers.
Yeah, I mean.
Yeah, stick to the terms of the eighteen sixty eight Treaty is a moderate demand. Absolutely, get the hell off the entire continent would be a radical, though reasonable demand, right totally. And like the fact that they're willing to like come to the table with stick to the agreement you already made with us is like a huge concession on their part.
Absolutely. You know what else is a huge concession. The fact that concessions, Oh that's good, I was going to say, is our concession to capitalism that we let it interject into anti capitalist history.
I was picturing it like you're a movie theater and like sending people out to the lobby to the concessions.
I actually don't know. I'm a live man. Im' be copyrighted. Go buy some popcorn from our advertisers. Here it goes. Here they are, and we're back. So by April fifth, the government signed an agreement with them, a delegation of folks would submit to arrest, post bond and go to d C to discuss all of this. Russell means Leonard Crowdog and Chief Tom Badcob did so. Get ready put on your shocked face.
See every time you say that the US government breaks a.
Promise, I know, but every time I don't say it, they do too. They just don't they're not good at keeping promises. It's almost like they never intended to. By the time they got to d C, the government went back on their word and said they wouldn't negotiate unless everyone in Wounded kne disarmed.
That's a different thing from what they said before.
Yeah, and there's some bad history of people in Wounded Knee being asked to disarm. Yeah, it is less that history repeats itself and more like the US government has not changed in the fucking slightest.
It's yeah, history doesn't repeat itself so much as the US government doesn't learn and expects that other people won't either.
Yeah, totally. Uh so, they literally just want to disarm the rebels and Wounded Knee after lying about being willing to negotiate again, and the delegation said, sure, we can do that. We will disarm only if everyone in Wounded Knee your side as well as ours, is disarmed. And the government is like flabbergasted. They're like what, there's like all of these like long quotes from cops who are like, but I need my gun. I can't do things without
a gun. It's all I have. Yeah, this because gun control is all It's fucking been in the United States, is we want the guns in the hands of cops,
not indigenous people resisting colonization. So by April eighth, folks were like, well, then I guess it's a long fucking siege because they didn't given supplies were carried in by supporters, I believe, both Indigenous and non Indigenous, who carried them through the snow at night, hiking for miles with forty pound bags of food past two different fucking encirclements, right, incredible, Yeah, one of which that's so brave. I don't know whether I'd be more I would be more afraid of hiking
through the like militia blockade, because that's the one. No, they would both shoot you, I don't know.
Yeah, but like the I Yeah, it's it's very much a like six on one. It's like if somebody, if somebody, if I'm hiking past militia and cops or army or whatever, and like a scary noise happens, I know they're both going to open fire from all directions, you know.
And shoot each other. And then you're actual.
Shooting each other. I'm going to get shot. I'm going to go to jail after having been shot for them shooting each other, like it's a bad scene. It's very scary. I'm the that's very cool that people did that.
Many were arrested, but more kept coming. And there was one particular outrageous stunt that like there's a whole book about three planes parachuted in fifteen hundred pounds of food. Hell yeah, And this was like all these like Vietnam Vet hippie types, you know, and it was like so cool.
They yeah, that's awesome.
Yeah, they and they like get a plane? Was that? Where did they get a plane? Well, that was a big part of it. They had like they were going to do this one plane and then it wasn't big enough. So then they were like, we're gonna get this really big plane, but then they couldn't get it. So then they were like, we're gonna take these three small planes and then like one of them like I think, god, oh god, I didn't write it into the script. I think one of them like lost its tail during part
of the fucking delivery. I think it might have gotten shot. I can't remember. And it still did it, and they like amazing. They they did some seriously bad ashit to get fifteen hundred pounds of food into this occupation.
I like during the seventies, security at airports was basically like, well, if you walk up and wave a piece of paper, you can probably steal a plane.
Oh they didn't steal the plane. They rented planes or like they were all like a bunch of pilots. They were like flying their planes and like oh shit, okay, no, this is like this is like piloty people who are like, hell, yeah, is what we're gonna do.
This isn't just people who came back from Vietnam knowing how to fly planes. This is people who were like still flying planes as their job and like hat access to planes.
I think that they were back in renting planes. I can't remember.
I don't know where you get planes, like, I don't I don't know how this works. But no, awesome.
I think some people had their own plane and some people. I listened to a really long thing about it that was totally worth listening to. But there's a lot of ins and outs that I didn't write into it. But what lanes were obtained, planes were obtained, food was dropped. Government snipers try to kill the children who went out.
To get it.
Jesus sometimes it gets represented or like as possibly understood by its participants, not only as more of a long hair versus short hair fight than red versus white, because a good chunk of the people laying siege were those goons and like Bia and all these folks right, a lot of them are indigenous, short hair indigenous folks and their short hair vigilante white allies. While the guys flying airplanes of food in were these like long haired white guys.
Ah right, And at one point, to Ali suspicions.
That also didn't realize the plane guys were white.
Okay, oh yeah, I couldn't promise all of them are, but I believe they're probably not. At one point, in order to Ali suspicions, they pretended that they were a rock band who was going to air drop sound equipment ahead of a show.
You know how rock bands, how rock bands are always how rock bands have their own air force and are always.
They're like, we're metal Acalypse, Yeah, we're spinal tap yeah, and so and then absolutely this is about indigenous rights. But length of hair was a powerful symbol at them.
Oh yeah. The establishment in the sixties and seventies was absolutely terrified of anybody whose hair went past their ears. Yeah.
April seventeenth, a Cherokee occupier named Frank Clearwater was gunned down in a firefight less than twenty four hours after he arrived. I read one version where he actually wasn't in the firefight. The firefight was happening and he was like in the church. Another man who died is a way murkier situation. A black civil rights activist named Ray Robinson showed up and then was never seen again. And there's an awful lot of versions about of this story,
and I suspect everyone's lyne Frankly. The most likely thing is that AM activists killed him for one reason or another and buried his body. It's never been found. Some folks say that he was killed because people thought he was an FBI spy. Others say that they killed him in self defense, that he came at people with a knife.
Other folks, generally anti AIM folks, say that personality conflicts made some people really angry, and that he came in preaching nonviolence and wouldn't pick up a gun in a firefight, and people were like, you fucking coward. No one who knows is talking like some of the AM leaders are like I've never heard that name, and people are like this guy like, no, I don't know, I don't know anything about him. This won't be This isn't the only potential murder by Aim during their years. Just but I
don't know the I don't know. Yeah, the government would turn water off and on again to fuck with people. They couldn't turn it off permanently because it would disrupt water to the outlying areas where like white people might live.
You know.
It was during the Wounded Knee too, during Wounded Knee Too. It doesn't have a there's no definite article here that Marlon Brando refused an oscar for his performance in the Godfather and had an Indigenous woman named Sashine Little Feather give a speech in his place. It's a pretty it's worth watching.
I think she was only only able to give a tiny part of the speech. Yes, is what I remember hearing that she had the two of them had collaboratively written a long statement that she was supposed to read, and she basically got thirty seconds to give a statement and then was like rushed out there before John Wayne could beat the shit out of her, which she was attempting to do.
Yep, and in the prepared speech, which she then later read to press, it specifically talked about Wounded Knee. God forgot about the John Wayne and forget about the John Wayne part. I tried to forget about the John Wayne Park, you know.
Yeah, no, like a real piece of shit, that guy.
Yeah, Black Power icon Angela Davis tried to enter Wounded Knee in March and was turned away by the Feds. They're like, you're dangerous, you can't come in.
Does that mean she got past the goons?
Oh?
Interesting, Yeah, probably, I don't know. Buddy Lamont was the next defender to be killed by the Feds. He was struck down by a sniper. His great grandparents were with Crazy Horse at Greasy Grass Creek. His great aunt and great uncle were murdered in Wounded Knee one. Buddy had gone off to Vietnam, idealistic and young, thinking he was fighting so his family could sleep safe at home. Then
once he was home, he went to Wounded Knee. He wrote to his mother during the occupation, if anything happens to me, just bury me at Wounded Knee. I don't want to be any trouble, so just bury me in my bunker. The government stole his body for an awfully long time and basically ransomed it back. And there's like quotes from like when the like one of the Feds like sees how he died and is like, Oh, we're gonna have to change our story. Fuck. This is kind
of near the end. May second, a government negotiator promised that he had the authority to ensure the government would discuss the Treaty of eighteen sixty eight with the indigenous chiefs. On May fifth, they led in a delegation of White House representatives to inspect the place, and at this point they were planning to surrender. They had this promise and the death of Buddy had destroyed a lot of them morale.
So on May ninth, the defenders surrendered, half starved, with an agreement that a delegation from the White House would meet with their chiefs.
And shot, we don't need to go through the.
Yeah, uh you know again. By May thirty first, the US government didn't bother to show up to discuss anything with the chiefs. They sent a letter from A Nixon aid. None of the Feds or the goons were ever indicted, but more than five hundred Indigenous people were indicted for
their participation or support. One hundred and eighty four people had their charges stick, mostly the men, because the government figured to be harder to convince a jury that the women who were there in numbers two were evil terrorists or whatever, you know. And it was near the end of this occupation that Leonard Peltier gets out of jail on bail. He was on his way to support the occupation with food relief when the occupation fell. He you know, he was out on bail for like attempted murder of
two cops. He was like, I'm not going to get a fucking fair trial. So he skips his bail, he goes underground and becomes a fugitive. And it is possible that the occupation was the high point of aim organized and afterwards the divisions start to manifest more strongly. There are a few sources of tension. There's personality conflicts, there's centralized versus decentralized structure. There's to what degree discipline is
required of members. There's whether or not members are required to drink or not or no one's being required to drink, whether members are allowed to drink, And then there's militancy One of their big splits was basically like do we take up arms and go to war against the US. At this point, Dennis Banks and Russell Means were more or less the figureheads of the two sides. Banks wanted discipline in sobriety, Means and crow Dog were fine with drinking.
Everyone is accusing everyone of being FEDS. Some of this terms violent.
Nothing ever changes.
Yeah, I've thought about this a bunch, and I decided I don't want to get it too into the ins and outs of these divisions. Like half of what you read about AIM are these divisions and these like personality conflicts and then like real stuff that matters that happen
between them and so. But I don't want to talk about too much, partly because it's really messy and complicated, and partly because I think that a move from the early seventies had divisions fostered by co intel pro is a better way to understand what happened than Yeah, that he said, she said, unless you unless someone wants to really get into it, you.
Know, right, and like trying to rehash those conflicts right, probably just like does the work of of come intel.
Pro right, And it's only worth pointing them out because we also need to be able to learn from our past. And these are some of the things that people were divided along. But one thing that's sort of helped in an awful way. Banks and Means are soon on trial together for their role and wounded knee. They basically are like taken out from the rest and like because they're like, oh, we're going to fuck these two, you know, We're like, these are the two, right, everyone else we're gonna get,
but like, we're going to really get these two. So they have an eight month trial. The judge starts off assuming that the FBI and the prosecution are right, and like starts off with a bias against the defense, but he guess angrier and angry at the prosecution's deliberate mishandling of evidence. Banks and Means were found not guilty on one charge, and the judge dismissed the rest, basically being like, seriously, prosecution,
what the fuck is wrong with you? The case against them was so bad that seven of the jurors went on a campaign for the rest of the charges against the remaining defendants to be dropped. Almost all of the remaining cases were dismissed or folks were found not guilty. I think Crodog and a few other people served some time for wounded need to. So the government was like, fine, we give up. You totally got away with it. You
can have all your stuff, just kidding. If the courts don't work, the Feds, the militias and awe on, Dick Wilson will just fucking fight dirty. In nineteen seventy four, I didn't fall for it at that time. Yeah no, yeah,
I'm pretty gullible, but you did. In nineteen seventy four, Dick Wilson stole his own re election versus Russell Means Like the Commission of the US Commission of Civil Rights said more than a third of the ballots were tempered with and on election night his goons had been out shooting into the air and terrifying people, but the judicial system was like, n he's our guy, and he stayed
in office. He then tried to drive everyone who voted for Means off the reservation at gunpoint, like this is the most corrupt man in the history of corrupt.
Then, you know, I mean and and like that is some like dictator of a small nation. Shit that is not like local, that is not local politics as usual, right, totally, it's like, man, we better win the city council seat or we will be evicted by the new.
Like holy shit, Yeah, totally from the place that are like people have lived forever.
You know.
By nineteen seventy five, everyone who remained was armed and wouldn't walk around alone because his goons were killing so many people. Yeah, sixty four people were murdered that year, according to Aim. The FBI claims otherwise, I know which side.
I'm more like that I'm not taking their word for any of this at this point.
No, the town had the highest crime rate in the country that year. And the death that makes me saddest is that an eleven year old lost his life when he found the rifle his parents had to keep in order to keep him and themselves safe from the goons, and he died. And I think that there's just like a specific tragedy in the fact that sometimes people need to do cost benefit analysis and shoost to firearms in situations that are dangerous, and my heart breaks for his parents.
So Dick Wilson, eventually he kind of goes too far. A bunch of the white lawyer, a bunch of white lawyers.
I'm like, I can't wait to hear what ends up being too far for this guy?
He attacks some white people.
Oh I forgot about white people. Yeah, no, because the lawyers is just wild because I am white people.
I know, and you're a lawyer, you're our lawyer. No, just don't.
All right.
So a bunch of like lawyers for AIM are there and he like shoots up their airplane and shit, like he's like personally involved in this attack. He like personally shows up to shoot at an airplane for the lawyers.
Yeah, I think the lawyers are no longer, but like, lawyers are like not the people you want to go after if you're trying to avoid legal consequences, because lawyers are legal consequences.
They have those.
Unfortunately, it still doesn't. So so he doesn't shoot up the plane while they're in it. He shoots it up while they're not in it. But then he like threat and then he like smashes up their car while they're in it, and he's like saying things like now you've got a real res car because it's like fucked up, you know. And so he finally gets indicted, so he does this thing, which is clever but it doesn't work.
But it kind of works since he's like, he's the government, right, he finds himself ten dollars for his actions.
And then when the Feds, man, I wish he weren't such a piece of shit because that's hilarious.
I yeah. So then when the Feds take him to court, he's like, oh, this is double jeopardy. I've already.
Oh, he's literally doing the cop thing like I've already investigated myself.
And well he's already been found guilty. He had to pay ten dollars. You can't hold someone, you know, like, you can't take someone a trial for the same crime twice, right.
That is that is like some legal advice that the lawyer's on arrested development would give.
Yeah, totally. And so this doesn't work. They're like, you can't do that where the Feds we don't give a shit about your fucking petty kingdom. But they quitted him anyway because he's the government's boy.
Oh shit, wow, it did work out for him.
Yeah, And if you want to be acquitted, then you should listen into our primary sponsor. Don't talk to cops, hi, Margaret Kiljoy here, boy, the world sure is a mess right now. Huh. Seems like every day there are more and more reasons to get out into the streets and protest. That's why when I get arrested, there's only one strategy. I trust. I shut the fuck up. I say, I would like to remain silent, I would like to talk to my lawyer, and then I shut the fuck up.
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So conditions are not great. Leonard Peltieri's on the run, but he is not afraid of a fight. So by nineteen seventy five he goes up to Pine Ridge and he's helping out alongside a bunch of other AIM folks and their stronghold. AIM stronghold is on the land of
a family named Jumping Bull. They have a whole camp out with like thirty plus people living there, and they're more and more like trying to live in more traditional ways while they do it, and it's a they're doing really cool shit, like completely unrelated to the fighting the government stuff. AM warriors are out walking thirty a night
to keep people safe, doing patrols. Whenever a house is shot up by goons, because this happens like fairly regularly, the goons will be like, hey, fuck you and shoot up a house, which is a whole thing that people don't talk about much with like rural organizing. I've the
first time I spent much time in West Virginia. The all these like anti mountaintop removal miners were like having their houses shot up and stuff by like the pro There's just a lot people can get away with a certain type of specific thing in rural areas.
That's what I'm trying to say, Yeah, yeah, and shooting up buildings is much more like a thing that happens, like yeah, in where you can just just kind of do that and drive away and you're the only vehicle on the road for thirty miles. You're you're gonna be fine.
Right, So, whenever a house is shot up by goons, AIM is there, armed, ready to keep the family safe. They're also chopping firewood for elders. They're like re roofing stores. They're counseling people through alcoholism. They're running bingo nights. They're just doing community work. They're doing the har thankless work of keeping a community together through crisis. All the while they're talking about the treaties and they're talking about sovereignty.
The AIM collective operated collectively. The vehicles, firearms, and food were all collectively possessed by all the folks doing that, and the women in town, not just the AIM women. They made a game of tearing down all the wanted posters for Peltier because they kept the government in Bia like kept putting up all the wanted posters for him, and so finally they had to put the posters like behind glass frames and all this shit, you know, by June first, nice, fine, Yeah.
That's that's nice. That's nice. Solidarity. Yeah, totally down wanted posters of your guy.
Yeah, because everyone knows he's there. Yeah, you know, by June first.
No, there's no point pulling down the wanted posters if he's not there.
Totally. By June first, nineteen seventy five, the Pine Ridge Traditional Sheet chiefs in Llcuting Charlie Redcloud, the ninety year old grandson of the previous Red Cloud, signed a formal resolution of sovereignty like once again like one of the primary things that Indigenous people keep doing is restating that they are a sovereign people, a sovereign nation, and there is good I hope they succeed. I hope it sticks.
Around this time, a BIA cop shot Russell Means, who survived, so, of course, the cop then charged Russell Means for assaulting an officer. Right and Aim put out a statement that its members were to shoot back when fired upon even by law enforcement. So things are ramping up, and it's important to understand the way things are ramping up as
gets to what we're gonna talk about now. On June twenty fifth, nineteen seventy five, two FEDS and two BIA cops showed up to Jumping Bull's property asking around about a nineteen year old named Jimmy Eagle who was wanted for stealing some cowboy boots and like maybe beating some guys up. They had no warrant and they were shoot away. The two FEDS waited nearby and harassed more youth.
Knowing them away is exactly what you should do if the FEDS show up at your.
Door without a warrant. Yeah, They're like, you don't have a warrant, this is trespassing, get.
Out, Yeah, fuck off.
Then the fateful day the next day, June twenty sixth, the two FBI agents come back to the stronghold of Aim. They want us to believe that two FEDS drove onto the reservation and into the heart of ames thing even though they knew about the whole like shoot back resolution over stolen cowboy boots. This is possible. It's possible that it is just outright arrogance that brought them to that place.
But the day before, Dick Wilson had just illegally transferred an eighth of the reservation proper over to the US government. What a coincidence, and even wilder coincidence, the BIA swat team is just in the area doing maneuvers that day.
Yeah, this definitely sounds This definitely sounds like some people who care deeply about stolen boots.
Yeah. Absolutely, Although I wonder whether the two FBI aight because it does not go well for them. They might have just been set up. They might have just been pawns.
I mean, nobody ever accused of the US government of like caring too much about the people who work for it.
Either had totally Whatever the cause, these two FEDS show up into the center of an Aim compound and a firefight breaks out at two hundred yards with firing from the two houses the I don't know who shot first. My money is on Aim shooting first, but I don't get whatever. Both federal agents were wounded, one mortally wounded.
He was probably going to when someone Probably no one will ever know for certain except for whoever this is, if they're still alive, walked up and executed them at close range, and it'll come up later that the gun that executed them was an Air fifteen shooting two two three ammunition. Agents responded as backup. Agents responding as backup were fired upon and a standoff occurs during which one
AIM member, Joe Killswright, was killed. He was wearing one of the FBI agent's jackets when he died, or as one journalist who the one journalist who photographed the body suggested that actually the jacket was put on him after based on where the blood wasn't wasn't on that jet. Meanwhile, goons and white militias show up to the area too, as do AIM supporters. So now there's like twenty AM members.
They're on the land. The non combatants have got now by and large, there's a couple like younger boys who surrender at this point, and fortunately they successfully surrender through lots of complicated stuff. The twenty A members who are left, they're like, if we stick around, we're all going to die today. And so they escaped. And the way they did that is they figured that south was the more likely way. There was like they had they had one of the radios because they had killed, you know, two
of the Feds. Yeah, say, they had the radio and so they knew that there was less of a blockade to their south, and so they started south and they weren't sure exactly which way to go, and they followed an eagle through the woods that like waited for them, and then they would like stop and then they would fly and show them this is the way to go now and stuff, you know. And the path that they
took took them through the blockade. Like the path they took was blocked except for a brief moment when the agents took a break to go get a drink of water. Like literally, we have the like transcripts of the radio community, right and it was like hey, like since we're all about to attack, like y'all aren't as important right now, you can take a five minute break, you know.
Wow.
And this is when the twenty A members get through the blockade. Eventually they're spotted. Incredible, I know, and it's like I don't know, like, yeah, no, that that happened, you know. Yeah, Eventually they're they're spotted as they're moving up this big open hill, right, they're on the other
side of the road. They're outside the blockade, and the cops are shooting at them and chasing, but they're delayed by warning shots coming from their treating AIM members and to hear the AIM folks talk about it, the BIA cops actually the indigenous cops weren't trying too hard to aim well at them, and no one was injured on either side. A crowd of supporters formed at the barricades, and while they're like moving up this hill, these two young men on horseback just like ride up and escort them,
and they are like, what are you doing. Like they're like, oh, we're here to help. And they're like are you even armed? And they're like we got twenty two. Like it's fine, you know.
God damn and and help. It's very cool.
Yeah, And they can like and the Feds can like see it all I think binoculars and shit. There's also a there's a government plane that's like following their escape, but eventually it has to go for more fuel and they get away. They you know, lose the trek at that point and then they go and they like stay with supporters and shit like that, and they go underground. And also while they're fleeing Indigenous residents from elsewhere in the reservation are firing at the FEDS from other positions,
which slows them down and keeps them from pursuing. It is nearly certain that they all would have been killed if they hadn't escaped the blockade. AIM refuse to apologize for the killing. They stuck by their people. Eventually, a couple of weeks later, are Peltier flees in an RV. It gets pulled over in Oregon and he flees on foot, and he covers his escape by firing at the state
trooper and he gets away. He gets into Canada. Two other AM members, Robert Robadou who's Peltier's cousin, and Dino Butler, are arrested for this. One other person's arrested in and they're like, no, we don't have enough charges. He won't stick. So these two, Robert and Dino go on trial for killing these agents. The federal jury found them not guilty by way of self defense. They were justified for shooting those officers according to the US courts.
Wow, people do not often get found not guilty for reasons of self defense while shooting Feds. While shooting feds. Yeah.
Wow, And the big thing about it is that they're like the only they weren't. The whoever walked up and executed the cops who were wounded is the person that would not be able to get away with a self defense case. Essentially, according to the sort of way that all this court shit is going to unfold, On February sixth, nineteen seventy six, Leonard Peltier is arrested in Alberta, Canada.
His trial was fuckery from the start. An Indigenous woman named Myrtle Porbear was coerced into giving false testimony against him. She later retracted her statement, admitting she didn't even know Peltier personally and she wanted to testify against the FBI. The judge wouldn't let her, claiming that she was incompetent. Two other witnesses recanted, claiming that they were also coerced into their testimony by the FBI. He was also on trial for two killings that another trial had already proven
were self defense and the like. The core of their argument is that they were executed with two two, three or five five six is the same thing. They were killed but with an AR fifteen, and Leonard Peltier was According to these witnesses, the only person with an AR fifteen. These are the witnesses who later said, no, that was all a lie. I had to say that because they were threatening me and you know, coursing me and all
this shit. Right, Yeah, there was no like material evidence around, like the firing pin, like there was no forensic evidence that linked Peltier's gun to the Casnes that killed the cops. All the testament. It was a farce of a trial. Leonard Peltier claims his innocence. He holds that he shot at the agents, but that he was not the person who went up.
In the court has already determined that shooting at the agents is self right fence.
And I had a long time ago, and I didn't specifically read this while doing this research this week. I read a long time ago that the judge specifically told either didn't allow the jury to hear or didn't told the jury not to consider the fact that it was proven self defense in a different court case.
That's fascinating.
Yeah, so he gets two consecutive life sentences despite that, you know, fucking everything, right. In nineteen seventy seven, he went to prison. In nineteen seventy nine, he did what many cool people who do cool stuff did, which is he broke out of prison yeay, along with two others. One of those escapees, Dallas Thundershield, was shot dead by a guard just outside the prison. Another was caught a
mile behind the walls. Peltier made it for three days before he was caught after stealing food money truck from a farmer to aid his escape. Peltier claims his innocence. The cop who arrested him in Canada said that Peltier was extradited illegally and didn't get a fair trial. When you have your arresting officer, yeah, claiming this. I would support Peltier either way. Just to be clear, we support
our political prisoners even when they're innocent. But there's a reason that to talk about this case, I wanted to spend two episodes on the treatment of Lakota people in the nineteenth and two episodes on their treatment in the twentieth century, because I think that context is necessary to understand the self defense case. You know, Yeah, the movement for his clemency and its specifically he wants clemency, not a pardon, because he's like, I didn't fucking do it.
I don't want to pardon. He's like, I will not accept a pardon because I didn't do it. I did not you know. The movement for his clemency has included everyone from Nelson, Mandela, Mother Teresa, the European Parliament. The UN's Human Rights Council released an analysis analysis of his detention showing that it breaks three articles from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The fucking Pope tried to convince
Obama to commute his sentence. The US attorney who supervised the prosecution against Peltier has tried multiple times to get Peltier free, saying that the case that he ran was bad.
So what you're saying is it's a real fringe position. Yeah, only wild people fringe stuff. Yeah, totally. The US attorney said to the Chicago Tribune that the case against Peltier was quote a very thin case that would likely not be upheld by courts today. It is a gross overstatement to label Peltier as a cold blooded murderer on the basis of the minimal proof that survived appeals in his case. So Obama was like, now I'm good, thank the FBI.
My boys, fuck it, I don't care and Peltier is still in prison, but he has something that he wants to say to us. Because the reason that I had Miriam on this show is that Miriam's partner is one of his lawyers and was in communication with him about this. Yeah, that is that is the big reveal that we teased last episode. This episode, I don't know whenever. My partner is one of the many lawyers on this on this case, and mister Peltier is sent a statement from prison which
I am honored to read. Now, the Black Hills are a holy place to the Lakota Nation. The Fort lermi Tree eighteen sixty eight pledged that the Great Sioux Reservation, including the Black Hills, would be set apart for the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation of the Lakota Nation. The US military was obligated by law to keep settlers and prospectors from trespassing into the Black Hills, but law
is meaningless if it is not enforced. The Fort Laramie Treaty has never lost its legal validity, but after the discovery of gold in the early eighteen seventies, the treaty was broken. The Black Hills were opened for settlement and illegally stolen from the Lakota Nation. These are our holy lands.
After one hundred years, its long overdue for the treaty to be honored and for the United States to restore our sacred sites to us and stop robbing the minerals from the holy Earth as they have been doing for more than a century. Aim myself and many natives for generations fought for the return of the Black Hills, even though we had been so intimidated and so much violence done to us. Back in the seventies, the FBI tried to tell us that as a colonized people, we had
to lay down and follow their rules. They did not understand that they were on our holy lands and that they were not following their own rules. Under Article six of the Constitution, treaties are the supreme law of the land. In order to abrogate or invalidate a treaty, Congress must make a clear statement of intent to terminate the treaty.
The Treaty of eighteen sixty eight was never abrogated. Even the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Black Hills were never lawfully taken from the Lakota Nation. We have never stopped fighting for the Black Hills, and we never will. I also have a message for the young Natives out there. I know a lot of you are suffering. Know that we love you, we need you. You are part of us. Learn your language, learn your culture.
Who you are and who we are has always been a good thing, and we need you to keep living and being good on the earth. Don't despair, resist despair, and stand with us for the land, for the water, for the people. In the spirit of Crazy Horse Leonard Peltier.
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