Wounded Knee, 125 years later

[niyad]

Wounded Knee, 125 years later



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John Two-Hawks, left, Yamni White Eagle and Darwin Yellow Earrings stand at the Wounded Knee Memorial on Tuesday as part of a commemoration of the 125th anniversary of the massacre.



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Flakes of ceremonial tobacco fluttered from outstretched hands Tuesday morning as a frigid wind whispered over Wounded Knee, an echo of that day 125 years ago. Dec. 29, 1890: The day the U.S. Army 7th Cavalry massacred between 150 and 300 Lakota Sioux and buried them in a mass grave on a desolate hill. “They brought all the bodies back here and crushed them down into this pit we are standing on,” said Chubbs Thunder Hawk. “Imagine.”

About 75 onlookers joined Thunder Hawk at the gravesite while another 40 or so on horseback moved down the road to Pine Ridge, their last stop after nearly a whole week of retracing Chief Big Foot's route to Wounded Knee as part of the Chief Big Foot Band Memorial Ride.

For someone like Nathan Blind Man, imagining the horror of that day is not difficult. His grandfather Hopa Hoksila was one of the few Native Americans to survive Wounded Knee. Blind Man remembers his grandfather as a reserved man who rarely, if ever laughed, burdened with the trauma he endured as a 10-year-old boy in the winter of 1890.

In Blind Man’s telling, Hopa Hoksila and his little brother, Eaopi Tikala, managed to flee the massacre with their mother, Blue Whirlwind, who survived 14 bullet wounds fired from U.S. Army rifles. Her husband, Blind Man’s great-grandfather, didn’t make it out alive.

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http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/wounded-knee-years-later/article_0feff2cf-fbb4-5abc-9576-34e930853cb6.html

[PatrickforO]

1. The white European settlers systematically committed genocide against

all the tribes in this land. It is a great sadness for such an 'exceptional' country.

Could it be the only thing we're really exceptional at doing is killing lots of people really fast?

[2naSalit]

3. Answer to your question...

yes.

[niyad]

4. what salit said!!

have you read roxanne dunbar-ortiz' "an indigenous people's history of the united states"? I thought I knew at least some of the genocidal history of this country, but had only the smallest idea.

[Downwinder]

6. Killing -- People, beaver, buffalo, wolves, you name it.

The land and everything that grows on it.

[2naSalit]

2. Thanks for Posting

I have had to explain this to friends and inlaws from Europe and elsewhere... only the Europeans didn't know about this genocidal history here.

[niyad]

5. you are most welcome.