The protest followed the failure of an effort of the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization (OSCRO) to use impeachment to remove tribal president Richard Wilson, whom they accused of corruption and abuse of opponents.

Oglala and AIM activists controlled the town for 71 days while the United States Marshals Service, FBI agents, and other law enforcement agencies cordoned off the area.

Afterward AIM leaders Dennis Banks and Russell Means were indicted on charges related to the events, but their 1974 case was dismissed by the federal court for prosecutorial misconduct,[3] a decision upheld on appeal.

The rate of violence climbed on the reservation as conflict opened between political factions in the following three years; residents accused Wilson's private militia, Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOONs), of much of it.

[9] For years, internal tribal tensions had been growing over the difficult conditions on the Pine Ridge Reservation, which has been one of the poorest areas in the United States since it was set up.

Many of the tribe believed that Wilson, just elected tribal chairman in 1972, had rapidly become autocratic and corrupt, controlling too much of the employment and other limited opportunities on the reservation.

[12] Oglala Sioux opposition to such elected governments was long-standing on the reservation; at the same time, the limited two-year tenure of the president's position made it difficult for leaders to achieve much.

There had been increasing violence on the reservation, which many attributed to Wilson's private militia, Guardians of the Oglala Nation, attacking political opponents to suppress opposition.

An example was the January 27, 1973, murder of 20-year-old Wesley Bad Heart Bull in a bar in Buffalo Gap, South Dakota, which the tribe believed was due to his race.

On February 6, AIM led about 200 supporters to a meeting at the courthouse in Custer, South Dakota, where they expected to discuss civil rights issues and wanted charges against the suspect raised to murder from second-degree manslaughter.

However, Wilson was able to avoid a trial, as the prosecution was not ready to proceed immediately, the presiding official would not accept new charges, and the council voted to close the hearings.

Women elders such as OSCRO founder Ellen Moves Camp, Gladys Bissonette, and Agnes Lamont urged the men to take action.

[12] They decided to make a stand at the hamlet of Wounded Knee, the renowned site of the last large-scale massacre of the American Indian Wars.

Dennis Banks and Russell Means were prominent spokesmen during the occupation; they often addressed the press, knowing they were making their cause known directly to the American public.

On March 8, the leaders declared the territory of Wounded Knee to be the independent Oglala Nation and demanded negotiations with the U.S. Secretary of State, William P.

[13] A small delegation, including Frank Fools Crow, the senior elder, and his interpreter, flew to New York to attempt to address and be recognized by the United Nations.

[24] On March 13, Harlington Wood Jr., the assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ), became the first government official to enter Wounded Knee without a military escort.

The vision told me to revive this ceremony at the place where Chief Big Foot's ghost dancers, three hundred men, women, and children, had been massacred by the army, shot to pieces by cannons, old people, babies."

Security took them to the museum and Leonard Crow Dog gave them food and an approximately 30-minute lecture on Indian history and why they were occupying Wounded Knee, afterwards escorting them to the federal lines.

[31][full citation needed] Ray Robinson, a black civil rights activist, went to South Dakota to join the Wounded Knee occupation.

[36] They also received support from the Congressional Black Caucus as well as various actors, activists, and prominent public figures, including Marlon Brando, Johnny Cash, Angela Davis, Jane Fonda, William Kunstler, and Tom Wicker.

However, actor Marlon Brando, an AIM supporter, asked Sacheen Littlefeather, President of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee, to speak at the 45th Academy Awards on his behalf, as he had been nominated for his performance in The Godfather.

[39] Although Angela Davis was turned away by federal forces as an "undesirable person" when she attempted to enter Wounded Knee in March 1973,[40] AIM participants believed that the attention garnered by such public figures forestalled U.S. military intervention.

Residents complained of physical attacks and intimidation by President Richard Wilson's followers, the so-called GOONS or Guardians of the Oglala Nation.

Churchill states that the deaths of AIM activists went uninvestigated, even though there was an abundance of FBI agents on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation at the time.

The government refused to accept a verdict of eleven jurors and sought a mistrial; in the meantime, the defense team filed a motion for judgment of acquittal.

[47][full citation needed] The legacy of the Siege of Wounded Knee is rife with disagreements, due to the controversial approaches of AIM and the FBI.

[13] It has also been suggested that the FBI and the federal government in general were too focused on Watergate at the time to give the situation at Wounded Knee the attention it deserved.

Special Agent in Charge at the time, Joseph H. Trimbach, has argued that AIM used federal funds to purchase weaponry, rather than aid the American Indian people.

During the one-hundred-year anniversary of the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre, in 1990, Russell Means barred South Dakota Governor George S. Mickelson from taking part in commemorating the dead there.