Directors Greeting

1973 A.I.M. Occupation, A Short Story of the Painted Faces - By Curley Youpee

Wounded Knee, South Dakota, at that time was a very small village - some 200 Lakota's lived there amongst modern dwellings, a scattering of ancient stone monuments, endless fields of ravine complexes, about 200 AIM freedom fighters and an expansive news network of camera packing journalists of many shapes, sizes, and colors.

This story starts under a bright midmorning sun, blaring on the top of his lungs, an excited announcer begins calling upon everyone to gather for a ceremony. Some claimed it was a face painting ceremony, others said it was a blessing ceremony in case of death, yet some said it was a warrior making ceremony; a rite of passage.

There were no onlookers that day, every able-bodied supporter was pulled into the line to get a marking with some red okra. I have to say, it appeared Crow Dog and Fools Crow were having a bit of fun painting folks on the forehead, down the cheek, across the nose and even on the chin. As I got closer for my turn, an unexpected fear attacked my senses.....I did not want to be painted on the chin or forehead, it just didn't seem Indian to do so.

Lo and behold it was my lucky day, I was painted with a line over my upper nose area and across the right cheek. Proudly, I now stood amongst the more colorful selection of front line warriors who were ready for action.....and that action came a lot sooner than I expected. Just as a dozen or so of us received our crimson color of passage, a hysterical fellow was bellowing something in the back of the crowd and causing a bit of commotion.

Continuing in this disturbance, one of the leaders pushed through the gathered body and explained that the marshals were now breaching the DMZ and could be on their way to attack us. He pointed to us of the painted face clan and in a slicing gesture, ordered ten of us to go and push the enemy back. Okay.....that sounded easy enough for someone who never engaged in or experienced any form of military warfare. However, with all the Vietnam veterans present I felt safe enough to follow by example. After some initial hooping and hollering, which I later learned was to pump up the heart, we piled into an old green hippy type van and raced to engage the enemy as fast as old green could go.

We arrived at the area to carry on our campaign against these law enforcement shenanigans who were blatantly disregarding our established boundaries. Busting the doors open of old green we peeled out of our troop hauler with the appropriate war cries for the occasion, and then proceeded to rush to the top of the hill.

Surprisingly, just as we were about halfway up the hill, in a rush of dust an Army Personnel Carrier (APC) peeked over the top and without warning started firing a fifty caliber machine gun at us. It was deafeningly loud, scary and nothing at all like I expected. I truly believed my death, as well as the others, would come quickly on that dusty hill minus any measure of Lakota gallantry.

With just an arsenal of our best rabbit and squirrel shooters, we were forced to take cover in the tall dry grasses upon that hilly slope. The machine gun continued firing on us for another minute, nipping through the grasses above where we lay.....our mistake that day was that we were bunched up too close together and now easily pinned down solid. I thought what a fine mess this was.....not a chance of counting coup for my winter stories.

Suddenly someone cried out I'm hit, another hollered out casualty. Many more echoed casualty.....casualty. I thought damn, how many of the troops were shot and bleeding or possibly dead. I also wondered what polite attention and respect would I be afforded if I should have a funeral.

***I need to break here and mention that I come from the Hunkpapa and Miniconju people. My blood relatives were brutally slaughtered at Wounded Knee in the 1890 massacre. It was my great grandmother's brother Black Coyote (no he wasn't deaf like some tell it in the story) who wouldn't give up his gun which started the calvary shooting at everyone. My grandmother said her uncles Black Coyote, Dog Skin Necklace, and Looking Thunder were all killed there by the U.S. Calvary. However, my great, great-grandmother Nakehihina "Trample" escaped with one daughter and a grandchild. The daughter eventually married a White Hat from the stronghold.***

All of a sudden the shooting stopped from the top of the hill and the electric dust maker vanished just as fast as it broke over the hill, but now with the sound of an electric blender tailing it. Some of our troops were still hollering out casualty, casualty like it would bring a time out and keep the machine gun away. A rustling of the grasses made me look up to see others high tailing it for the van. Two of ours were half carrying another who had been shot in the hand. I can not imagine how that could have happened.....was he waving to draw the fire or what. Still a mystery. With a couple of rounds being fired back towards the hilltop we all piled back into the hippy van and rush our firefight casualty back to the village for medical attention.

To conclude, I believe that either the marshals ran out of bullets and had to high tail it out of there, or they knew they hit one or more within the AIM body and didn't want to catch the blame from the media for violating the rules of engagement.....which was earlier agreed upon by all parties involved.

Lastly, after that experience, my better judgment placed me in a very thick bunker with people I knew from Denver and Minneapolis, for the duration of my stay. 

Curley Youpee; Denver AIM

(At the 71 day standoff at the Wounded Knee protest, Curley was part of the night team that slipped 39 people with fully loaded packsacks into Wounded Knee bypassed US Marshall barricades.)