The Road to Wounded Knee

The Road to Wounded Knee, Robert Burnette and John Koster, Bantam, 1974

This book gives the background behind the 1973 Indian siege at Wounded Knee, South Dakota; not just the immediate background, but the more general background of how Indians are still treated in America.

Only Indians have been subject to a conscious policy of genocide by the American government, and have been denied freedom of religion by the same government. Orders are on file at the Departments of the Army and Interior authorizing the destruction of all vestiges of Indian religion. Indian education was another attempt to turn Indians into whites. Set up several hundred miles from the reservations they were supposed to serve, in many cases Indian boarding schools equaled concentration camps, with beatings, and worse, for anyone who spoke their native language or tried to practice their native religion.

Before the coming of the white man, archaeological evidence shows that North America was almost totally free of infectious disease; smallpox killed more Indians than all the wars with the white man. Most
people would call them fraudulent real estate deals at gunpoint; the US government called them "treaties", and broke all 371 of them signed with the Indians. In 1954, a federal law called Public Law 280 gave five states almost complete jurisdiction over the reservations within their borders. In Minnesota
and Wisconsin, two of the states, authorities used their power to remove Indian children from their parents and place them in foster homes, even if both Indian parents lived at home. It was another way to break up the culture and penalize Indian mothers who applied for welfare.

The authors also look at tribal government, which they characterize as a blueprint for corruption. There is also an account of the Indian occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in Washington just before the 1972 election, and an account of just what happened in 1973 at Wounded Knee.

The treatment of Native Americans by the US Government chronicled in this book will make most people sick. When it happens in other countries, the US is the first to talk about human rights and the rule of law, but it has a hard time delivering those same rights here at home. For those with a strong
stomach, this is very highly recommended.