Pine Ridge Reservation Residents Discuss AIM (1973)

to give us a mind, we've got our own way too. We can't live by somebody else's thinking. By dividing up the land, the government tried to destroy the collective basis of Indian economy and tribal life. The attempt was also made to destroy Indian culture. Indian religion was outlawed. Families got welfare checks only if their children went to the BIA or a mission school where they were forbidden to speak their own languages. Missionaries flocked in and built 137 churches on Pine Ridge reservations. By the 1970s, Pine Ridge reservation had 54% unemployment, a growl-a-average life expectancy was 46 years, and white violence towards the Indians continued. In February 1972, Raymond Yellow's under from Porcupine on Pine Ridge reservation was beaten by two whites, the hare brothers. Throw a naked into an American-leting dance, beaten again, and locked in a truck. He was found two days later, sitting up dead in a parked car, covered with welts and burns.

His convicted murderers received a three-month sentence and a suspended sentence for a charge of second-degree manslaughter. Raymond Yellow's under his uncle of mine and his sister's up, and he all lived in Porcupine. So when that happened, they went to BIA for help, they went to the trads for help, they went to some private attorneys for help, because they won't let him see the body, they won't let him see the autopsy report, and you see the coffin when they brought it back. When A.M. came in and helped the family, looking to help him, and his death, and that made the older people that are living out on the reservation, I mean, out in the country, they kind of lifted up their head and they were kind of speaking out then, and they

didn't talk and bond against BIA, tribal government, or a long-order system on the reservation, plus some of the non-Indian ranchers that are living on the reservation, been abusing Indian, and it was brewing, and it finally happened, it wanted me. At the same time, resentment of new tribal president Dick Wilson grew, and this is the most corrupt government you ever want to know about. I grew up in a dirty corruption that there's no... I couldn't explain it any worse than that, there's a worse we have ever had. He just sold us down the river too, FHA, he was going to miss our lands, you know, two different cattle out there, it's clear down the Texas without us knowing it. People on the reservation organized the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization to fight Wilson, we were just beaten, so bad, we wanted to do something and try to get him out

of there because we were abused, we were beat up, and she was just harassing like that has happened, and we just kept having meetings and meetings down in Calico and Cal somebody came up with the idea of civil rights, and we're out with a pretty good idea, so that's the song we went along with it, that's the time it was something we had to do and we had to do it, you know, real quick, right, because they beat people up and walk for us, for me they were always constantly harassment, they broke the windows out of the car, they cut our tires, they chased my kids home from school, they call my kids all kinds of dirty names, when I go down tell them they follow me in the grocery store, and it was just things like that and that cop, it finally got the visa out, but in the front of our, you know, across the street, walking the house on that mall, and it just gets from bad to us, and that's why I just kept fighting, and I think what we're doing is not, really do, I mean, because I enjoy one that suffered, there's a lot of, in fact,

I think there's a lot of people in time that suffering that are still suffering yet because of the mall. Starting last fall, the civil rights organization held a series of community meetings to bring impeachment proceedings for misuse of tribal funds against Dick Wilson. Based by growing opposition, Wilson and Stan Lyman, head of Pine Ridge, BIA, called in federal marshals in early February to back up the tribal police, but three council members backed by the civil rights organization and older tribe members brought impeachment proceedings against Wilson on February 14, we talked with Ellen Moose Camp, civil rights leader from Pine Ridge. From that time on, we went on down the Calico to have our meetings and to decide what we were going to do next. We decided that we did need the American Indian Movement in here because our men were scared. They hung to the back. It was mostly the women that went forward and spoke out and we were practically pushing our men to make them help us.