Former South Dakota Sen. James Abourezk, taking questions at
the Dakota Conference at Augustana College last year, was taken aback when
Adrienne Fritze stood up to correct him.
Just a few minutes earlier, Abourezk had cracked wise about
the day he went to the occupied village of Wounded Knee two days after the
American Indian Movement had taken over.
He suggested that they were all in on some kind of joke with
their AIM captors. He had come to negotiate their release. Having failed to do
so, he decided that they weren’t captives at all.
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| Wounded Knee, 1940. Photo by John Vachon. Library of Congress |
The former South Dakota lawmaker didn’t count on another
non-AIM witness being in the crowd that day.
Fritze, who was 12 years old at the time, was the niece of
Clive and Agnes Gildersleeve, the long-time owners of the trading post.
She had read and heard for almost 40 years the
misrepresentations of her family in history books, along with AIM’s twisted
rationalization for destroying a community, and taking away all their
possessions. She was standing right in front of Abourezk, Sen. George McGovern
and the TV crew when they came in for the photo op on March 1, 1973.
She did not find Abourezk’s lighthearted anecdote amusing.
I won’t go into the exchange between the two that followed
other than to say that Fritze said her and her family were under duress every
minute of the almost nine days they were there. They were threatened with
knives and guns, and held against their will. The occupiers stole any possession
of any value in front of their noses, and they were powerless to stop them.
In short, those fighting for their liberty, did so, by
taking others’ liberty away.
Abourezk’s attempt to recover after Fritze confronted him
with these uncomfortable facts was quite sad, and one of the low points of a
conference that had many low points.
It’s all in the new book, Wounded Knee 1973: Still Bleeding.
The “Still Bleeding” secondary title refers to many who are
suffering as a result of the occupation. The Fritzes, Adrienne and her mother
Jeanne, the last two living hostages, are among them.
Tim Giago, founder of several Native American newspapers
including The Native Sun News, and a
former Wounded Knee resident, has written eloquently over the years about the
Gildersleeves.
I did not know them personally as he did. All I can say is
that since I first began doing research at Pine Ridge almost 10 years ago, I
have never met anyone who had a bad word to say against them.
If there is one thing Wounded
Knee 1973: Still Bleeding contributes to the historical record, I hope it’s
a more balanced description of the hostages, and their predicament.
AIM leaders, and sympathetic historians, have put forth two
assertions. One, that they were happy and willing hostages. And two, as Russell
Means suggested minutes after Abourezk and Fritze’s exchange, that they
basically deserved it.
I’m not trying to brag when I say I am the first journalist
or historian to interview Adrienne and Jeanne. I just want to point out that I
was the first to even bother asking them for 39 years.
That is telling. Writers have accepted the simplistic
“crooked white trader” and “willing hostages” narrative for four decades.
The happy and willing hostages idea has its roots in quotes
that Agnes Gildersleeve and her brother Wilbur Riegert — both mixed-blood
Ojibwes — gave to the press.
Agnes, in front of cameras and in private conversations,
said she wasn’t sure she wanted to leave. Certainly, she had ambivalent
feelings. The stated reason for not wanting to leave was because she feared
what would happen to her home of 40 years after she left.
Well guess what happened to her home of 40 years after she
left? It was burned to the ground.
Riegert, an elderly wheel-chair bound hostage, I believe has
been particularly aggrieved by historians. This was a man who loved Lakota
culture and religion and spent his life collecting art and artifacts, and
writing unpublished histories about the people he had lived among his entire
adult life.
In the book, Like a
Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee, authors Paul
Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior quote him as telling a print reporter that
he sympathized with AIM’s demands.
First of all, interviews given with armed AIM leaders
standing a few feet away are done so under duress (You would think a smart guy
like Abourezk would know that).
In any case, this is undoubtedly true. Riegert was well
aware of all the injustices perpetrated against the Oglala Lakotas, would have
loved to have seen the Black Hills returned to them, as well as many of the
other demands fulfilled.
Like a Hurricane
isn’t a completely bad book. But Smith and Warrior cherry picked facts to make
Riegert and the Gildersleeves look like villains. It is an influential book,
and used as textbook n college classes, so the misconception continues.
The other assertion is that they were corrupt, so they got
what was coming to them.
I hope my readers know by now that I don’t back away from
uncomfortable facts. And the fact is that the white trader system on Pine Ridge
in the first half of the 20th century on Pine Ridge was tremendously
corrupt.
AIM leaders asserted that the Wounded Knee Trading Post
engaged in shady business practices, and Riegert’s museum was exploiting the
Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890.
I have come across no evidence that the Gildersleeves
engaged in such practices. I believe that Riegert was sincere in wanting to
share his love and knowledge of the local culture with any tourist who came to
see his museum.
I duly note in the book that Jim Czywczynski invoked the
Fifth Amendment 95 times in order not to incriminate himself at a Wounded Knee
trial when asked about his business practices. (Yes, the same man who tried to
sell the Oglala Sioux Tribe the land at Wounded Knee at a huge mark-up last month).
He bought the trading post for the Gildersleeves and ran it during its final
years.
At the end of the day, the occupiers had no right to take
hostages, steal, loot and destroy lives under any circumstances.
There were many other Wounded Knee residents besides the 11
hostages. Their untold stories will have to wait for another column.
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