Tim Giago Commemorates the Destruction of Wounded Knee: February 27, 1973

Tim Giago

"There is a trial to be held starting June 17, 2008 in Rapid City. John Boy Graham, a member of AIM, has been accused of murdering Anna Mae Pictou Aquash. Her body was discovered near the village of Wanbli on Feb. 24, 1976...I think every member of the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council, and President Steele, should be seated in the courthouse in Rapid City as many of the horrid details about the death of Anna Mae and the destruction of Wounded Knee come to light."---Tim Giago

Mr. Giago has published an article in memory of February 27, 1973, the day that AIM terrorists attacked the Lakota town of Wounded Knee and reduced the community to rubble.

Most of the terrorist leaders who attacked the town were never punished because they hypocritically depicted themselves as "liberators." How did destroying people's homes, church, store, and lives liberate poor Indians?

When the Soviet Union fell, a defector from the KGB archives named Vasili Mitrokhin brought out documentation that the AIM lawyer Mark Lane had a relationship with the Soviet KGB. [See more on this here and here.]

I think that the take-over of Wounded Knee was an example of what the KGB calls "active measures." Sometimes active measures are just propaganda, but sometimes the KGB instigates violence in order to achieve its goal of discrediting an enemy. This is a kind of terrorism, but they blame the FBI, CIA, U.S. Army, and so on.

I think that these AIMsters went into Wounded Knee in order to draw the FBI into a fight so that they could discredit the FBI. Since February 27, 1973, the FBI has been blamed unfairly for violence and murder on Pine Ridge.

Mark Lane was also the lawyer for the more than 900 people at Jonestown who were murdered in 1978. Mark Lane escaped into the jungle when his clients were murdered and then wrote a book that blamed Jonestown on the CIA.

Mr Giago's article is titled "A Holiday That Should Never Be":

For some odd reason, and I will explain what I mean by odd later, the tribal government of the Oglala Sioux Tribe celebrates a reservation-wide holiday on February 27.

On Feb. 27, 1973, a group of American Indian Movement members occupied the Pine Ridge Reservation village of Wounded Knee. The village soon became “The Knee” to the occupiers.

In the 71 day occupation an entire village was pillaged and destroyed and more than 30 families, the original inhabitants of Wounded Knee, mostly Lakota people, were left homeless. A trading post, actually more of a grocery store than trading post, was burned to the ground and the Sacred Heart Catholic Church was also destroyed.

The Village of Wounded Knee was never rebuilt. A Lakota woman named Pinky Plume built another store and gas station in the community of Manderson, a village very near Wounded Knee that was a life saver to the people that had lost the services provided by the Trading Post at Wounded Knee.

The ousted citizens of Wounded Knee Village have tried without success to have their homes rebuilt. In the interim, the leaders of AIM have raised millions of dollars for its projects and legal defense funds, but have not contributed a single dollar to rebuild the village they helped to destroy.

I am not the only member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe to find the adoption of a holiday to commemorate the destruction of a historical village not only odd, but enraging.

...[S]ome of the individuals behind this charade call Feb. 27, 1973 the day that Wounded Knee was liberated. Liberated? How about destroyed, burned to the ground, demolished. Some liberation.Any news reporter who wants to find out about the reality I speak of should track down some of the former residents of Wounded Knee and see if they are celebrating this reservation holiday.

I lived in Wounded Knee when I was a child. My father worked as a store clerk for Clive and Agnes Gildersleeve, the owners of the Wounded Knee Trading Post. One of my childhood playmates was Joan, the daughter of Clive and Agnes. The Gildersleeves were taken as hostages by AIM members on the night of Feb. 27, 1973. The business they had operated as the Wounded Knee Trading Post since 1930 was destroyed as was their home.

...Many of the people that occupied the Village of Wounded Knee that night weren’t even members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the agony after that night brought nothing but poverty to the people. That day did absolutely nothing to improve the conditions of the Oglala Lakota people. In fact, it probably set us back by 20 years.

...To learn about the other side of the occupation of Wounded Knee get a copy of the book American Indian Mafia [my link] by Joe Trimbach. It is a pretty detailed description of what happened inside of Wounded Knee in 1973 [Full text].