KEY POINTS:
Nearly 120 years after the last massacre of Native Americans by the United States Cavalry at Wounded Knee, some of the lands confiscated from their descendants are to be returned to the Oglala Sioux.
Badlands National Park in South Dakota, which encompasses Wounded Knee, is one of the poorest parts of the US. It has few paved roads. Unemployment is shockingly high among the Sioux. Alcoholism is rampant and there are high rates of suicide and imprisonment of American Indians.
After decades of protests, the southern part of the park is set to return to Indian control. But many say it should be returned to the original owners for private use rather than to the tribal council as a park.
The shadow of Wounded Knee hangs over much of the discussion. The Sioux were among the last to fight against American expansion into the West. In the dying days of 1890, their leader, Sitting Bull, was assassinated. About 120 of his followers and 230 women and children took refuge at Pine Ridge, South Dakota, where they were surrounded by the Cavalry. About 300 men, women and children were killed.
In the 1970s, the American Indian Movement reoccupied the site, leading to more bloodshed, this time at the hands of the FBI and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
But what rankles for Anita Ecoffey, 65, an elder of the Oglala Sioux who lives in Wounded Knee, was her family's eviction from ancestral lands in the 1940s by the military. "To me this is as bad as what happened at Wounded Knee," she said.
Professor Karl Jacoby of Brown University said: "There weren't empty wilderness areas in the United States. They had to be created by the removal of Indians."
One of the Sioux activists who occupied Pine Ridge in 2000 says the land should be returned to its original Indians rather than remain a park. "That's not respecting the rights of the people who have nothing," said Keith Janis. "The national park system is environmental racism against the Indian people of this country."
- INDEPENDENT
