8 timers kørsel fra Wounded Knee 1973
Sidste i februar 1973 besatte aktivister fra AIM (America Indian Movement) landsbyen Wounded Knee i Pine Rigde reservatet i South Dakota. Stedet er historisk (1890 massakren), – det var uden tvivl derfor det var valgt til aktionen.
Det lå i et indianerreservat, men trods det blev landsbyen omringet af paramilitærer FBI enheder i pansrede mandskabsvogne.
AIM arbejdede for at højde indianernes stolthed, får dem til ikke at bøje nakken og acceptere elendigheden. En elendighed der bl.a. omfattede racistisk nedrakning, stor arbejdsløshed og et udbredt misbrug.
De var derfor også i opposition imod “hvide indianere”, der mest administrerede tillidsposter i reservaterne på de hvides vegne.
For mig selv som en 16 årig ung indianerromantiker, var det underligt at befinde mig kun 8 timers bilkørsel væk i en mindre by i Minnesota, hvor der lige ude for byporten også var placeret et mindre Dakota-reservat (Se bladet på billedet).
Jeg husker, at jeg var så heldig at have en meget progressiv ung lærer i faget “Social Science”, hvor vi havde mange gode debatter om det der foregik.
Jeg klippede også ivrigt i aviserne, her er et mindre klip fra en artikel, der udemærket giver udtryk for de stærke følelser begivenhederne vækkede:
The confrontation at Wounded Knee has been mentally painful for Enos Poor Bear.
He doesn’t believe in all the violence – the shooting and the malicious damage — nor in the talk about killing the “pigs” or dying heroically in a fight with the federal officers.
Poor Bear, after all, has been a responsible leader on the Pine Ridge Reservation, both as tribal president and as a member of the tribal council. He is a loyal American who still suffers from wounds he got in World War II.
But his 21-years-old son got shot at Wounded Knee. Shot by the federal offices who surrounded the town after it was taken over by the militant Indians.
“It ain’t right,” said Poor Bear. “My boy was a paratrooper in Vietnam and he got a purple heart fighting for his country. Now federal marshals have shot him. I tell you, it ain’t right.”
“In 1890, the blue coats shot down our people here, and they gave 18 of the soldiers the Congressional Medal of Honor for shooting mostly children and women, some of them pregnant. If them soldiers got medals then my boy ought to get a Medal of Honor, too, for getting shot here.”
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