Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the show. This one is not
Speaker 2: the other shows that are cool people who did cool stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Marta Kiljoy, and this is a history
Speaker 2: show about cool people who did cool stuff. My guest
Speaker 2: this week and last week and forever, well unfortunate enough forever,
Speaker 2: but we're going to have on as much as possible
Speaker 2: is Miriam.
Speaker 1: I'm Miriam him, so happy to be back.
Speaker 2: Miriam is our resident tall ship expert, which is definitely
Speaker 2: a big part of this. But we still haven't revealed
Speaker 2: the reason that Miriam is the guest this week, and
Speaker 2: it's at the end.
Speaker 1: I will, however, bring up tall ships whenever I can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I'm you know. Most of this is going
Speaker 2: to take place in the Dakotas, so I will be impressed.
Speaker 1: I texted you about the time the American Indian Movement
Speaker 1: took over the replica of the May Hour. Did we
Speaker 1: ever find out anything more about that?
Speaker 2: No, Unfortunately, it's not part of this. They took over
Speaker 2: so many things. There's like there are entire takeovers that
Speaker 2: are like footnotes in the book that I read and
Speaker 2: like it's impressive. Okay, but first, our producer, Sophie why
Speaker 2: it's me your producer, Sophie Hi. Our audio engineer is
Speaker 2: named Ian Hi.
Speaker 1: It's Ian Hi Hi.
Speaker 2: Ian Our theme music was written forced by Unwoman. And
Speaker 2: this is part four of a four part on Lakota
Speaker 2: resistance to the American Empire. And it's also a broader
Speaker 2: You will figure out titly and make it right, because
Speaker 2: this is absolutely broader than Lakota Resistance. It was like
Speaker 2: the first week was that, and now we're going to
Speaker 2: be talking about all this other stuff. There's so much,
Speaker 2: there's so much, and I was like this, I can't
Speaker 2: actually right now make this until six or eight parter.
Speaker 2: So I think I'll be back to do a lot
Speaker 2: more of this stuff. But where we last left our
Speaker 2: heroes and you will be completely not caught up if
Speaker 2: you don't go back and listen to at least Monday's episode,
Speaker 2: if not last week's episodes, is that the American Indian
Speaker 2: Movement is reigning champs of taking stuff over and Leonard Peltier.
Speaker 2: Peltier is on the run and well he will be
Speaker 2: soon that the time stuff is let's just go into it.
Speaker 2: We're gonna take this story over now to Pine Ridge.
Speaker 2: We're a super shitty, corrupt asshole named Dick Wilson. And
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that everyone with a name Dick is
Speaker 2: a bad person, but it's a little on the nose.
Speaker 1: You're setting yourself up. Like, if your name is Richard
Speaker 1: and you're gonna be a real piece of shit, maybe
Speaker 1: don't like introduce yourself with like call me Dick, because
Speaker 1: we're already gonna.
Speaker 2: Because it's like it would be a good ironic name. Really,
Speaker 2: if you're Richard and you're really sweet guy, go by Dick.
Speaker 2: It is like kind of funny. You know, yeah, your
Speaker 2: kids will because no one under the age of seventy
Speaker 2: goes by the name Dick. But this Dick, Dick Wilson
Speaker 2: had just become president of the Pine Ridge Tribal Council.
Speaker 2: He'd already almost been indicted for in Besleyne money even
Speaker 2: before he was ever president, and he is quoted as saying, quote,
Speaker 2: there's nothing in tribal law against nepotism. So he immediately
Speaker 2: gave huge salaries to his wife, brother, cousins, sons, and nephew.
Speaker 2: And these are salaries of like twenty five thousand a year,
Speaker 2: which I looked up twenty five thousand and nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: three is about one hundred and seventy three thousand today.
Speaker 2: Pretty nice salary. Wouldn't you feel like if.
Speaker 1: You're describing what you're doing as nepotism, that that's like
Speaker 1: kind you know, it's bad on the people that you're
Speaker 1: Like if you're like, ah, yes, let me hire my
Speaker 1: wife's son cousin for nepotism reasons, like you don't even
Speaker 1: want to try to pretend they're good at their jobs, Like.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, just to fucking just give them all of
Speaker 2: the money. He's he is an absolute grifter. The median
Speaker 2: salary on Pine Ray's reservation was eight hundred dollars a year,
Speaker 2: and he is paying more than twenty five times that
Speaker 2: to a fuck ton of his relatives. Man, this stick
Speaker 2: for some weird reason that we'll explain at great length
Speaker 2: over the course of the next hour. He hated the
Speaker 2: American Indian Movement. He hated Russell Means in particular because
Speaker 2: Russell Means kept was gonna run against him. You know,
Speaker 2: he kept arresting AIM leaders every chance he could. They
Speaker 2: kept trying to get him impeached. The votes to impeach
Speaker 2: him got more votes than he'd gotten as votes in
Speaker 2: the actual election, but nothing was done. He also a
Speaker 2: classic move here, had his own paramilitary force like every
Speaker 2: fascist ever. He had in addition to you know, being
Speaker 2: involved with the Bia police, he had the Guardians of
Speaker 2: the Oglala Nation or goons. They were known as goons,
Speaker 2: especially later in the story They're going to kill a
Speaker 2: fucked people. He sold off the land to white people
Speaker 2: at discount rates. He least one eighth of the reservation
Speaker 2: to private companies, and so the government loves him, Yeah,
Speaker 2: because I mean that this is their whole shit. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because they're all about the resource extraction and he is
Speaker 2: leasing out mineral rights and selling shit to white people.
Speaker 1: That's so much like you have to actually like get
Speaker 1: up pretty early in the morning and like put in
Speaker 1: the hours to to do that much harm.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, But but Dick was willing to do it.
Speaker 2: You know, Dick gets it done. That was his.
Speaker 1: Are we ma sure enough to take this topic on, Margaret,
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure. So when another guy, Wesley bad Heart
Speaker 2: Bull was murdered by a random white racist who literally
Speaker 2: said to his friend, I'm gonna go kill me an
Speaker 2: Indian and then went out and killed Wesley, badheart bull
Speaker 2: Aim showed up. There's this whole big thing. Riot is
Speaker 2: another way to describe it, but we'll go with things
Speaker 2: where basically Aim was like showed up to talk to officials,
Speaker 2: and so they all the cops attacked. The cops beat
Speaker 2: up Wesley's mother when she tried to enter the courthouse.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so folks rioted. They overturned two cop cars and
Speaker 2: set them on fire. The Chamber of Commerce next door,
Speaker 2: which was empty for the night, was burned to the ground.
Speaker 1: That's okay. Nobody knows what a chamber of commerce even does.
Speaker 2: I don't know what a chamber of commerce does. I
Speaker 2: wasn't sure it was. It referred to it as the
Speaker 2: abandoned Chamber of Commerce, and I was like, I think
Speaker 2: that means it's empty for the night. Maybe it was
Speaker 2: actually just an abandoned building. And they were like, fuck
Speaker 2: this building. I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1: You're legally allowed to send it on fire.
Speaker 2: I I mean, yeah, So the courthouse cops beat up
Speaker 2: a grieving mother on the steps of Custer Courthouse. Jesus
Speaker 2: in the city of You gotta warn me.
Speaker 1: You kept warning me when you weren't shocking me, and
Speaker 1: then you spring something like Custer Courthouse on me and
Speaker 1: that actually does shock me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, No, it was Custer Courthouse in the city
Speaker 2: of Custer, in the County of Custer, and Sarah Badheart Bull,
Speaker 2: the mother, was arrested alongside twenty nine others for these riots.
Speaker 2: She went on to spend five months in prison for
Speaker 2: the riot. Her son's killer got two months probation.
Speaker 1: Jesus.
Speaker 2: At this point, local folks are asking Aim to help
Speaker 2: deal with Dick Wilson and get justice for all of
Speaker 2: this shit that's happening, right, And so people decided to
Speaker 2: take a stand, and so they went to a symbolic place.
Speaker 2: They went to a small town called Wounded Knee, which
Speaker 2: was the place that the masker was at the end
Speaker 2: of last week's episodes of eighteen ninety. On February twenty seventh,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three, two hundred indigenous folks occupied the town
Speaker 2: and changed history. And because this stuff gets argued a lot, right,
Speaker 2: Aim is like, you have a run across the outside
Speaker 2: agitator thing.
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with the outside agitator thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So basically, whenever there's a rowdy thing, people are
Speaker 2: like Obviously people who live here would never be ra
Speaker 2: There is a mythical place called outside where all of
Speaker 2: the bad people come from, and so like later, Aim
Speaker 2: is going to be accused by the state of being
Speaker 2: outside agitator. So that's why I'm pointing out that AIM
Speaker 2: was instrumental in the occupation of Wounded Knee, but they
Speaker 2: were explicitly invited there by all of the traditional leaders
Speaker 2: of the Oglala Lakota people of all sorts of indigenous
Speaker 2: nations showed up, invited and occupied the town of Wounded Knee.
Speaker 2: To quote a woman named Madonna Gilbert quote, the elder said,
Speaker 2: what can we do to wake these Indians up? We
Speaker 2: have to take a stand somewhere. So we decided that
Speaker 2: the symbolic place would be Wounded Knee. What happened there
Speaker 2: was never expected. We figured we'd just be there two
Speaker 2: or three days. We were never told to bring food
Speaker 2: or anything. I just had my jacket in my purse
Speaker 2: and my two kids. We didn't realize what was happening
Speaker 2: until we were surrounded. We never broke the law in
Speaker 2: any way or did one thing wrong. It was the
Speaker 2: Feds who were breaking the law by being on the
Speaker 2: reservation without jurisdiction without it any real permission from the people.
Speaker 2: Because yeah, two hundred people show up to Wounded Knee
Speaker 2: to do a big symbolic thing. As soon as they
Speaker 2: show up, the US marshals surround the place. They with
Speaker 2: sandbags and machine gun nests, armored personnel carriers, one hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty three thousand rounds of five to five six
Speaker 2: ammunition for their M sixteens. The excuse that the government
Speaker 2: used is that the Indigenous people had white hostages, because
Speaker 2: there's white people who lived in Wounded Knee. It's true
Speaker 2: that white people lived in Wounded Knee. It is not
Speaker 2: true that the American Indian Movement had hostages. This is
Speaker 2: not speculation on my part. When most left when the
Speaker 2: occupation started, most of the white people left. No one
Speaker 2: stopped them from doing that. The others were like, now,
Speaker 2: we're good, we live here, We'll stay as voluntary hostages.
Speaker 2: Take it from yeah, take it from Wilbur Regert, who
Speaker 2: is eighty two years old at the time, or maybe
Speaker 2: when he was interviewed it ten years later. He's not
Speaker 2: a young man. He said, quote, we as a group
Speaker 2: of hostages, decided to stay on to save aim and
Speaker 2: our own property. Had we not, those troops would have
Speaker 2: come down here and killed all those people. The real
Speaker 2: hostages are the aim people because they were weren't allowed out,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, people being held somewhere is kind of definitionally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so like wow, yeah, like good on those people,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Fuck yeah. That is.
Speaker 2: Eventually all of the white residents left, not because of Aim,
Speaker 2: because of the threat and the actual violence from the government,
Speaker 2: because the government kept shooting up the town even though
Speaker 2: there were quote unquote hostages. There never change settler colonialism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if only there were a contemporary parallel to a
Speaker 1: government that was very, very very concerned about hostages except
Speaker 1: when it comes to keeping them safe, except when it
Speaker 1: comes to doing absolutely anything to keeping them safe.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So some of the people who are there.
Speaker 2: One Iglala woman said her grandfather had barely survived the
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety Wounded Knee massacre. So she wasn't going to
Speaker 2: leave her people to die alone. And she wasn't a fighter.
Speaker 2: She never picked up arms, but she stayed. On March ninth,
Speaker 2: the first firefight broke out. No one knows who started it.
Speaker 2: On March tenth, the government lifted the blockade hoping the
Speaker 2: aim rabble rousers, like the outside agitators would all just flee,
Speaker 2: you know, they didn't spoil her.
Speaker 1: I mean because the outside agitator thing the only like,
Speaker 1: it only makes sense if you are.
Speaker 3: A government provocateur trying to get people in trouble. Like
Speaker 3: a government provocateur trying to get people in trouble might
Speaker 3: embed themselves with a group, kick off some spicy shit,
Speaker 3: and then immediately leave. But like somebody who's actually trying
Speaker 3: to get a cause going or like trying to support something,
Speaker 3: they're not going to do that. So it's like law
Speaker 3: enforcement can only think like law enforcement like they can't actually, yeah,
Speaker 3: they have this mythical outside agitator who is just them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally like how the right wing is always like,
Speaker 2: oh they bust, They're like they bust across the country
Speaker 2: or whatever, and it's like, no, they bus across the country.
Speaker 2: Anti fascists they're everywhere.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like I've literally like I've been at like a
Speaker 4: while back, there was this, uh there were a bunch
Speaker 4: of protests in Lower Manhattan because there was an Islamic
Speaker 4: center being reopened near.
Speaker 1: Near the World Trade Center, Like and this like on
Speaker 1: Fox News became the ground Zero Mosque. It was a
Speaker 1: whole thing. I saw buses from like fucking Alabama show
Speaker 1: up in Manhattan and like unload entire church congregations to
Speaker 1: show up and oppose this, And it's like that's the
Speaker 1: thing that they always accuse us of doing, you know,
Speaker 1: because it's what they do.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, absolutely, So, no one flees on March tenth,
Speaker 2: or maybe some people, I don't whatever. The occupation continues.
Speaker 2: On March eleventh, the occupiers declare the Independent Glala Nation
Speaker 2: and propose to discuss its treaty with the US as equals.
Speaker 2: And the press eats this all up. The European press
Speaker 2: called it Wounded Knee too, and actually most of the
Speaker 2: press is positive at this point. As far as I
Speaker 2: can tell, the ceasefire was broken within days and the
Speaker 2: blockade was back on. Lawyers from Saint Paul formed the
Speaker 2: this is the best name any legal organization has ever had,
Speaker 2: as far as I can tell, they formed the Wounded
Speaker 2: Knee Lee Defense Slash Offense Committee. Hell yeah. The FBI
Speaker 2: declared that group a revolutionary organization for arguing that the
Speaker 2: blockade was illegal.
Speaker 1: I mean, fine, yeah, I know exactly, I could do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, their work in the court's got a temporary restraining
Speaker 2: order in place, and also got six lawyers and six
Speaker 2: car loads of food into the occupation.
Speaker 1: Nice. I like how you've been highlighting this a lot,
Speaker 1: but I just like want to mention, like how much
Speaker 1: you see aim like working from all angles on this,
Speaker 1: Like on the ground occupation court battles like going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at you know, at the same time and for the same.
Speaker 2: Goals, absolutely, and civil disobedience alongsided alongside armed occupations, just
Speaker 2: depending on what is necessary at that time, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so the army eventually shows up. Ironically, it's possible that
Speaker 2: the presence of the art army is what kept the
Speaker 2: FBI in the US marshals from just like running in
Speaker 2: and murdering everyone. That asshole tribal leader Dick Wilson and
Speaker 2: his goons. They set up another blockade around the government
Speaker 2: one trying to support the government one, and soon they're
Speaker 2: calling on non Native patriots to come and join with
Speaker 2: guns to put down the Oglala rebellion.
Speaker 1: Wait, who is calling for that, the the.
Speaker 2: Goons or yeah, Dick Wilson and his guys. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: they're calling on the white militias.
Speaker 1: Basically Yeah, when you definitely have the safety and well
Speaker 1: being of Indigenous people at heart, that's what you do,
Speaker 1: is you call for white militias.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Inside the occupation Leonard crow Dog, who, as I
Speaker 2: pointed out, was the one of the first spiritual leaders
Speaker 2: to support the American Indian movement. He brought back the
Speaker 2: ghost dance after receiving a vision from his great grandfather,
Speaker 2: and it was the first time that had been danced
Speaker 2: in eighty three years, according to at least I believe him.
Speaker 2: By March twenty sixth, the last phone line into the
Speaker 2: place was cut by the FEDS and the last news
Speaker 2: crew NBC was forced out by the FEDS, which is
Speaker 2: not when good things happen.
Speaker 1: No, when they make you turn off the cameras.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as soon as the news crews were gone, they
Speaker 2: just started shooting the shit out of the town. Five
Speaker 2: to twenty thousand rounds in total were shot on that
Speaker 2: one day alone into the town. The reason that more
Speaker 2: people didn't die is that a fuck ton of the
Speaker 2: aim folks were Vets and they'd been digging bunkers because
Speaker 2: they had just come back from from Vietnam. No one mmm,
Speaker 2: I think no one was killed that day there's a
Speaker 2: couple people are going to die. I'll talk about them.
Speaker 2: But one US marshal was wounded during that firefight, almost
Speaker 2: certainly by one of the goons. Even the US marshals
Speaker 2: admit that they were like, ah, this is the most
Speaker 2: likely thing, right, Well, you.
Speaker 1: Set up you set up a ring of yeah guys
Speaker 1: around a ring of guys around a town, Like you
Speaker 1: can't shoot over the inner ring of guys, Like that's
Speaker 1: that's not how blits work.
Speaker 2: No, the Patriot isn't there with artillery. They're there with
Speaker 2: fucking guns. Five members of AIM are later going to
Speaker 2: be charged for this wounding that even the US marshalls
Speaker 2: admit wasn't AIM. By the end of March, AIM was
Speaker 2: ready to negotiate, and they were starting to run out
Speaker 2: of food. Their demand was to start talking seriously about
Speaker 2: the fucking terms of the eighteen sixty eight treaty. And
Speaker 2: just as an aside, I can't remember if we talked
Speaker 2: about this last time or not. We act like the
Speaker 2: broken treaties are like endlessly long ago, right, I think
Speaker 2: was it you who brought this up? Eighteen sixty A
Speaker 2: is a hell of a lot more recent than plenty
Speaker 2: of the laws that we enforced in the United States,
Speaker 2: Like I don't know the fucking Constitution of the United States.
Speaker 1: I don't think I am the one who brought that up.
Speaker 1: But like, yeah, it's it also like you can't just
Speaker 1: be like, oh, well, it was a long time ago,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't matter when you're like yeah, like just
Speaker 1: saying like, well, if we wait long enough after the
Speaker 1: broken treaty, then it's like it's not broken anymore. And
Speaker 1: it's like, so by failing to redress the harm, you
Speaker 1: have negated the harm. Like No, that's the literal opposite
Speaker 1: of how that works. Like that works when you have
Speaker 1: like some drama in your social scene. Like that works
Speaker 1: for like your interactions with other people's polydrama, you know exactly.
Speaker 2: You're like, oh, like you are both kind of dicks
Speaker 2: and during that breakup and I'm kind of mad, and
Speaker 2: then a couple of years later you're like whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, that works if somebody is like, let's
Speaker 1: just cool off. But you can't, like you can't commit
Speaker 1: genocide and dispossess people and like commit massacres and be
Speaker 1: like let's just cool off for a bit. We've forgotten
Speaker 1: about it, haven't you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and so what the government said to them was, well,
Speaker 2: we can't talk about the eighteen sixty eight treaty because
Speaker 2: of the eighteen seventy one thing, where we can't negotiate
Speaker 2: with you like you're a government. And so Aim was like,
Speaker 2: I hate to be the one to explain how chronology works,
Speaker 2: but eighteen sixty eight is actually a lower number than
Speaker 2: eighteen seventy one, and the treaty precedes that. Russell means,
Speaker 2: who's one of the leaders of this occupation? He says,
Speaker 2: quote in his long quote, but I think it's worth it.
Speaker 2: This is our last gasp as a sovereign people. And
Speaker 2: if we don't get these treaty rights recognized as equal
Speaker 2: to the Constitution of the United States, as by law
Speaker 2: they are, then you might as well kill me, because
Speaker 2: I have no reason for living. And that's why I'm
Speaker 2: here in Wounded Knee, because nobody is recognizing the Indian
Speaker 2: people as human beings. They're laughing it off in Time
Speaker 2: magazine and Newsweek and the editors in New York and
Speaker 2: what have you. They're treating this as a silly matter,
Speaker 2: just as they've treated Indian people throughout history. We're tired
Speaker 2: of being treated this way, and we're not going to
Speaker 2: be treated like that anymore. You're going to have to
Speaker 2: kill us because I'm not going to die in some
Speaker 2: barroom brawl. I'm not going to die in a car
Speaker 2: wreck on some lonely road on the reservation because I've
Speaker 2: been drinking to escape the oppression of this goddamn society.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to die when I walk into Pine
Speaker 2: Ridge and Dickie's goons feel like I should be off.
Speaker 2: That's not the way I'm going to die. I'm going
Speaker 2: to die fighting for my treaty rights. Period. We haven't
Speaker 2: demanded any radical changes here, only that the United States
Speaker 2: government live up to its own laws. It is precedent
Speaker 2: setting that a group of radicals, when the minds of
Speaker 2: some are acting outside the law, are just in turn
Speaker 2: asking the law to live up to its own. We're
Speaker 2: not asking for any radical changes. We're just asking for
Speaker 2: the law to be equitably applied to all.
Speaker 1: Fuck yeah, I feel like that's what I say every
Speaker 1: time you get done reading a quote you've been reading
Speaker 1: some fucking bangers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, stick to the terms of the eighteen sixty eight
Speaker 1: Treaty is a moderate demand. Absolutely, get the hell off
Speaker 1: the entire continent would be a radical, though reasonable demand,
Speaker 1: right totally. And like the fact that they're willing to
Speaker 1: like come to the table with stick to the agreement
Speaker 1: you already made with us is like a huge concession
Speaker 1: on their part.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. You know what else is a huge concession. The
Speaker 2: fact that concessions, Oh that's good, I was going to say,
Speaker 2: is our concession to capitalism that we let it interject
Speaker 2: into anti capitalist history.
Speaker 1: I was picturing it like you're a movie theater and
Speaker 1: like sending people out to the lobby to the concessions.
Speaker 2: I actually don't know. I'm a live man. Im' be copyrighted.
Speaker 2: Go buy some popcorn from our advertisers. Here it goes.
Speaker 2: Here they are, and we're back. So by April fifth,
Speaker 2: the government signed an agreement with them, a delegation of
Speaker 2: folks would submit to arrest, post bond and go to
Speaker 2: d C to discuss all of this. Russell means Leonard
Speaker 2: Crowdog and Chief Tom Badcob did so. Get ready put
Speaker 2: on your shocked face.
Speaker 1: See every time you say that the US government breaks a.
Speaker 2: Promise, I know, but every time I don't say it,
Speaker 2: they do too. They just don't they're not good at
Speaker 2: keeping promises. It's almost like they never intended to. By
Speaker 2: the time they got to d C, the government went
Speaker 2: back on their word and said they wouldn't negotiate unless
Speaker 2: everyone in Wounded kne disarmed.
Speaker 1: That's a different thing from what they said before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's some bad history of people in Wounded
Speaker 2: Knee being asked to disarm. Yeah, it is less that
Speaker 2: history repeats itself and more like the US government has
Speaker 2: not changed in the fucking slightest.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, history doesn't repeat itself so much as the
Speaker 1: US government doesn't learn and expects that other people won't either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. Uh so, they literally just want to disarm
Speaker 2: the rebels and Wounded Knee after lying about being willing
Speaker 2: to negotiate again, and the delegation said, sure, we can
Speaker 2: do that. We will disarm only if everyone in Wounded
Speaker 2: Knee your side as well as ours, is disarmed. And
Speaker 2: the government is like flabbergasted. They're like what, there's like
Speaker 2: all of these like long quotes from cops who are like,
Speaker 2: but I need my gun. I can't do things without
Speaker 2: a gun. It's all I have. Yeah, this because gun
Speaker 2: control is all It's fucking been in the United States,
Speaker 2: is we want the guns in the hands of cops,
Speaker 2: not indigenous people resisting colonization. So by April eighth, folks
Speaker 2: were like, well, then I guess it's a long fucking
Speaker 2: siege because they didn't given supplies were carried in by supporters,
Speaker 2: I believe, both Indigenous and non Indigenous, who carried them
Speaker 2: through the snow at night, hiking for miles with forty
Speaker 2: pound bags of food past two different fucking encirclements, right, incredible, Yeah,
Speaker 2: one of which that's so brave. I don't know whether
Speaker 2: I'd be more I would be more afraid of hiking
Speaker 2: through the like militia blockade, because that's the one. No,
Speaker 2: they would both shoot you, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but like the I Yeah, it's it's very much
Speaker 1: a like six on one. It's like if somebody, if somebody,
Speaker 1: if I'm hiking past militia and cops or army or whatever,
Speaker 1: and like a scary noise happens, I know they're both
Speaker 1: going to open fire from all directions, you know.
Speaker 2: And shoot each other. And then you're actual.
Speaker 1: Shooting each other. I'm going to get shot. I'm going
Speaker 1: to go to jail after having been shot for them
Speaker 1: shooting each other, like it's a bad scene. It's very scary.
Speaker 1: I'm the that's very cool that people did that.
Speaker 2: Many were arrested, but more kept coming. And there was
Speaker 2: one particular outrageous stunt that like there's a whole book
Speaker 2: about three planes parachuted in fifteen hundred pounds of food.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, And this was like all these like Vietnam
Speaker 2: Vet hippie types, you know, and it was like so cool.
Speaker 1: They yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they and they like get a plane? Was that?
Speaker 2: Where did they get a plane? Well, that was a
Speaker 2: big part of it. They had like they were going
Speaker 2: to do this one plane and then it wasn't big enough.
Speaker 2: So then they were like, we're gonna get this really
Speaker 2: big plane, but then they couldn't get it. So then
Speaker 2: they were like, we're gonna take these three small planes
Speaker 2: and then like one of them like I think, god,
Speaker 2: oh god, I didn't write it into the script. I
Speaker 2: think one of them like lost its tail during part
Speaker 2: of the fucking delivery. I think it might have gotten shot.
Speaker 2: I can't remember. And it still did it, and they
Speaker 2: like amazing. They they did some seriously bad ashit to
Speaker 2: get fifteen hundred pounds of food into this occupation.
Speaker 1: I like during the seventies, security at airports was basically like, well,
Speaker 1: if you walk up and wave a piece of paper,
Speaker 1: you can probably steal a plane.
Speaker 2: Oh they didn't steal the plane. They rented planes or
Speaker 2: like they were all like a bunch of pilots. They
Speaker 2: were like flying their planes and like oh shit, okay, no,
Speaker 2: this is like this is like piloty people who are like, hell, yeah,
Speaker 2: is what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1: This isn't just people who came back from Vietnam knowing
Speaker 1: how to fly planes. This is people who were like
Speaker 1: still flying planes as their job and like hat access
Speaker 1: to planes.
Speaker 2: I think that they were back in renting planes. I
Speaker 2: can't remember.
Speaker 1: I don't know where you get planes, like, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know how this works. But no, awesome.
Speaker 2: I think some people had their own plane and some people.
Speaker 2: I listened to a really long thing about it that
Speaker 2: was totally worth listening to. But there's a lot of
Speaker 2: ins and outs that I didn't write into it. But
Speaker 2: what lanes were obtained, planes were obtained, food was dropped.
Speaker 2: Government snipers try to kill the children who went out.
Speaker 1: To get it.
Speaker 2: Jesus sometimes it gets represented or like as possibly understood
Speaker 2: by its participants, not only as more of a long
Speaker 2: hair versus short hair fight than red versus white, because
Speaker 2: a good chunk of the people laying siege were those
Speaker 2: goons and like Bia and all these folks right, a
Speaker 2: lot of them are indigenous, short hair indigenous folks and
Speaker 2: their short hair vigilante white allies. While the guys flying
Speaker 2: airplanes of food in were these like long haired white guys.
Speaker 2: Ah right, And at one point, to Ali suspicions.
Speaker 1: That also didn't realize the plane guys were white.
Speaker 2: Okay, oh yeah, I couldn't promise all of them are,
Speaker 2: but I believe they're probably not. At one point, in
Speaker 2: order to Ali suspicions, they pretended that they were a
Speaker 2: rock band who was going to air drop sound equipment
Speaker 2: ahead of a show.
Speaker 1: You know how rock bands, how rock bands are always
Speaker 1: how rock bands have their own air force and are always.
Speaker 2: They're like, we're metal Acalypse, Yeah, we're spinal tap yeah,
Speaker 2: and so and then absolutely this is about indigenous rights.
Speaker 2: But length of hair was a powerful symbol at them.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. The establishment in the sixties and seventies was
Speaker 1: absolutely terrified of anybody whose hair went past their ears. Yeah.
Speaker 2: April seventeenth, a Cherokee occupier named Frank Clearwater was gunned
Speaker 2: down in a firefight less than twenty four hours after
Speaker 2: he arrived. I read one version where he actually wasn't
Speaker 2: in the firefight. The firefight was happening and he was
Speaker 2: like in the church. Another man who died is a
Speaker 2: way murkier situation. A black civil rights activist named Ray
Speaker 2: Robinson showed up and then was never seen again. And
Speaker 2: there's an awful lot of versions about of this story,
Speaker 2: and I suspect everyone's lyne Frankly. The most likely thing
Speaker 2: is that AM activists killed him for one reason or
Speaker 2: another and buried his body. It's never been found. Some
Speaker 2: folks say that he was killed because people thought he
Speaker 2: was an FBI spy. Others say that they killed him
Speaker 2: in self defense, that he came at people with a knife.
Speaker 2: Other folks, generally anti AIM folks, say that personality conflicts
Speaker 2: made some people really angry, and that he came in
Speaker 2: preaching nonviolence and wouldn't pick up a gun in a firefight,
Speaker 2: and people were like, you fucking coward. No one who
Speaker 2: knows is talking like some of the AM leaders are
Speaker 2: like I've never heard that name, and people are like
Speaker 2: this guy like, no, I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 2: anything about him. This won't be This isn't the only
Speaker 2: potential murder by Aim during their years. Just but I
Speaker 2: don't know the I don't know. Yeah, the government would
Speaker 2: turn water off and on again to fuck with people.
Speaker 2: They couldn't turn it off permanently because it would disrupt
Speaker 2: water to the outlying areas where like white people might live.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It was during the Wounded Knee too, during Wounded Knee Too.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have a there's no definite article here that
Speaker 2: Marlon Brando refused an oscar for his performance in the
Speaker 2: Godfather and had an Indigenous woman named Sashine Little Feather
Speaker 2: give a speech in his place. It's a pretty it's
Speaker 2: worth watching.
Speaker 1: I think she was only only able to give a
Speaker 1: tiny part of the speech. Yes, is what I remember
Speaker 1: hearing that she had the two of them had collaboratively
Speaker 1: written a long statement that she was supposed to read,
Speaker 1: and she basically got thirty seconds to give a statement
Speaker 1: and then was like rushed out there before John Wayne
Speaker 1: could beat the shit out of her, which she was
Speaker 1: attempting to do.
Speaker 2: Yep, and in the prepared speech, which she then later
Speaker 2: read to press, it specifically talked about Wounded Knee. God
Speaker 2: forgot about the John Wayne and forget about the John
Speaker 2: Wayne part. I tried to forget about the John Wayne Park,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, like a real piece of shit, that guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Black Power icon Angela Davis tried to enter Wounded
Speaker 2: Knee in March and was turned away by the Feds.
Speaker 2: They're like, you're dangerous, you can't come in.
Speaker 1: Does that mean she got past the goons?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 2: Interesting, Yeah, probably, I don't know. Buddy Lamont was the
Speaker 2: next defender to be killed by the Feds. He was
Speaker 2: struck down by a sniper. His great grandparents were with
Speaker 2: Crazy Horse at Greasy Grass Creek. His great aunt and
Speaker 2: great uncle were murdered in Wounded Knee one. Buddy had
Speaker 2: gone off to Vietnam, idealistic and young, thinking he was
Speaker 2: fighting so his family could sleep safe at home. Then
Speaker 2: once he was home, he went to Wounded Knee. He
Speaker 2: wrote to his mother during the occupation, if anything happens
Speaker 2: to me, just bury me at Wounded Knee. I don't
Speaker 2: want to be any trouble, so just bury me in
Speaker 2: my bunker. The government stole his body for an awfully
Speaker 2: long time and basically ransomed it back. And there's like
Speaker 2: quotes from like when the like one of the Feds
Speaker 2: like sees how he died and is like, Oh, we're
Speaker 2: gonna have to change our story. Fuck. This is kind
Speaker 2: of near the end. May second, a government negotiator promised
Speaker 2: that he had the authority to ensure the government would
Speaker 2: discuss the Treaty of eighteen sixty eight with the indigenous chiefs.
Speaker 2: On May fifth, they led in a delegation of White
Speaker 2: House representatives to inspect the place, and at this point
Speaker 2: they were planning to surrender. They had this promise and
Speaker 2: the death of Buddy had destroyed a lot of them morale.
Speaker 2: So on May ninth, the defenders surrendered, half starved, with
Speaker 2: an agreement that a delegation from the White House would
Speaker 2: meet with their chiefs.
Speaker 1: And shot, we don't need to go through the.
Speaker 2: Yeah, uh you know again. By May thirty first, the
Speaker 2: US government didn't bother to show up to discuss anything
Speaker 2: with the chiefs. They sent a letter from A Nixon aid.
Speaker 2: None of the Feds or the goons were ever indicted,
Speaker 2: but more than five hundred Indigenous people were indicted for
Speaker 2: their participation or support. One hundred and eighty four people
Speaker 2: had their charges stick, mostly the men, because the government
Speaker 2: figured to be harder to convince a jury that the
Speaker 2: women who were there in numbers two were evil terrorists
Speaker 2: or whatever, you know. And it was near the end
Speaker 2: of this occupation that Leonard Peltier gets out of jail
Speaker 2: on bail. He was on his way to support the
Speaker 2: occupation with food relief when the occupation fell. He you know,
Speaker 2: he was out on bail for like attempted murder of
Speaker 2: two cops. He was like, I'm not going to get
Speaker 2: a fucking fair trial. So he skips his bail, he
Speaker 2: goes underground and becomes a fugitive. And it is possible
Speaker 2: that the occupation was the high point of aim organized
Speaker 2: and afterwards the divisions start to manifest more strongly. There
Speaker 2: are a few sources of tension. There's personality conflicts, there's
Speaker 2: centralized versus decentralized structure. There's to what degree discipline is
Speaker 2: required of members. There's whether or not members are required
Speaker 2: to drink or not or no one's being required to drink,
Speaker 2: whether members are allowed to drink, And then there's militancy
Speaker 2: One of their big splits was basically like do we
Speaker 2: take up arms and go to war against the US.
Speaker 2: At this point, Dennis Banks and Russell Means were more
Speaker 2: or less the figureheads of the two sides. Banks wanted
Speaker 2: discipline in sobriety, Means and crow Dog were fine with drinking.
Speaker 2: Everyone is accusing everyone of being FEDS. Some of this
Speaker 2: terms violent.
Speaker 1: Nothing ever changes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've thought about this a bunch, and I decided
Speaker 2: I don't want to get it too into the ins
Speaker 2: and outs of these divisions. Like half of what you
Speaker 2: read about AIM are these divisions and these like personality
Speaker 2: conflicts and then like real stuff that matters that happen
Speaker 2: between them and so. But I don't want to talk
Speaker 2: about too much, partly because it's really messy and complicated,
Speaker 2: and partly because I think that a move from the
Speaker 2: early seventies had divisions fostered by co intel pro is
Speaker 2: a better way to understand what happened than Yeah, that
Speaker 2: he said, she said, unless you unless someone wants to
Speaker 2: really get into it, you.
Speaker 1: Know, right, and like trying to rehash those conflicts right,
Speaker 1: probably just like does the work of of come intel.
Speaker 2: Pro right, And it's only worth pointing them out because
Speaker 2: we also need to be able to learn from our past.
Speaker 2: And these are some of the things that people were
Speaker 2: divided along. But one thing that's sort of helped in
Speaker 2: an awful way. Banks and Means are soon on trial
Speaker 2: together for their role and wounded knee. They basically are
Speaker 2: like taken out from the rest and like because they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: we're going to fuck these two, you know, We're like,
Speaker 2: these are the two, right, everyone else we're gonna get,
Speaker 2: but like, we're going to really get these two. So
Speaker 2: they have an eight month trial. The judge starts off
Speaker 2: assuming that the FBI and the prosecution are right, and
Speaker 2: like starts off with a bias against the defense, but
Speaker 2: he guess angrier and angry at the prosecution's deliberate mishandling
Speaker 2: of evidence. Banks and Means were found not guilty on
Speaker 2: one charge, and the judge dismissed the rest, basically being like, seriously, prosecution,
Speaker 2: what the fuck is wrong with you? The case against
Speaker 2: them was so bad that seven of the jurors went
Speaker 2: on a campaign for the rest of the charges against
Speaker 2: the remaining defendants to be dropped. Almost all of the
Speaker 2: remaining cases were dismissed or folks were found not guilty.
Speaker 2: I think Crodog and a few other people served some
Speaker 2: time for wounded need to. So the government was like, fine,
Speaker 2: we give up. You totally got away with it. You
Speaker 2: can have all your stuff, just kidding. If the courts
Speaker 2: don't work, the Feds, the militias and awe on, Dick
Speaker 2: Wilson will just fucking fight dirty. In nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 2: I didn't fall for it at that time. Yeah no, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm pretty gullible, but you did. In nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 2: Dick Wilson stole his own re election versus Russell Means
Speaker 2: Like the Commission of the US Commission of Civil Rights
Speaker 2: said more than a third of the ballots were tempered
Speaker 2: with and on election night his goons had been out
Speaker 2: shooting into the air and terrifying people, but the judicial
Speaker 2: system was like, n he's our guy, and he stayed
Speaker 2: in office. He then tried to drive everyone who voted
Speaker 2: for Means off the reservation at gunpoint, like this is
Speaker 2: the most corrupt man in the history of corrupt.
Speaker 1: Then, you know, I mean and and like that is
Speaker 1: some like dictator of a small nation. Shit that is
Speaker 1: not like local, that is not local politics as usual, right, totally,
Speaker 1: it's like, man, we better win the city council seat
Speaker 1: or we will be evicted by the new.
Speaker 2: Like holy shit, Yeah, totally from the place that are
Speaker 2: like people have lived forever.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: By nineteen seventy five, everyone who remained was armed and
Speaker 2: wouldn't walk around alone because his goons were killing so
Speaker 2: many people. Yeah, sixty four people were murdered that year,
Speaker 2: according to Aim. The FBI claims otherwise, I know which side.
Speaker 1: I'm more like that I'm not taking their word for
Speaker 1: any of this at this point.
Speaker 2: No, the town had the highest crime rate in the
Speaker 2: country that year. And the death that makes me saddest
Speaker 2: is that an eleven year old lost his life when
Speaker 2: he found the rifle his parents had to keep in
Speaker 2: order to keep him and themselves safe from the goons,
Speaker 2: and he died. And I think that there's just like
Speaker 2: a specific tragedy in the fact that sometimes people need
Speaker 2: to do cost benefit analysis and shoost to firearms in
Speaker 2: situations that are dangerous, and my heart breaks for his parents.
Speaker 2: So Dick Wilson, eventually he kind of goes too far.
Speaker 2: A bunch of the white lawyer, a bunch of white lawyers.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I can't wait to hear what ends up
Speaker 1: being too far for this guy?
Speaker 2: He attacks some white people.
Speaker 1: Oh I forgot about white people. Yeah, no, because the
Speaker 1: lawyers is just wild because I am white people.
Speaker 2: I know, and you're a lawyer, you're our lawyer. No,
Speaker 2: just don't.
Speaker 5: All right.
Speaker 2: So a bunch of like lawyers for AIM are there
Speaker 2: and he like shoots up their airplane and shit, like
Speaker 2: he's like personally involved in this attack. He like personally
Speaker 2: shows up to shoot at an airplane for the lawyers.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think the lawyers are no longer, but like,
Speaker 6: lawyers are like not the people you want to go
Speaker 6: after if you're trying to avoid legal consequences, because lawyers
Speaker 6: are legal consequences.
Speaker 1: They have those.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, it still doesn't. So so he doesn't shoot up
Speaker 2: the plane while they're in it. He shoots it up
Speaker 2: while they're not in it. But then he like threat
Speaker 2: and then he like smashes up their car while they're
Speaker 2: in it, and he's like saying things like now you've
Speaker 2: got a real res car because it's like fucked up,
Speaker 2: you know. And so he finally gets indicted, so he
Speaker 2: does this thing, which is clever but it doesn't work.
Speaker 2: But it kind of works since he's like, he's the government, right,
Speaker 2: he finds himself ten dollars for his actions.
Speaker 1: And then when the Feds, man, I wish he weren't
Speaker 1: such a piece of shit because that's hilarious.
Speaker 2: I yeah. So then when the Feds take him to court,
Speaker 2: he's like, oh, this is double jeopardy. I've already.
Speaker 1: Oh, he's literally doing the cop thing like I've already
Speaker 1: investigated myself.
Speaker 2: And well he's already been found guilty. He had to
Speaker 2: pay ten dollars. You can't hold someone, you know, like,
Speaker 2: you can't take someone a trial for the same crime twice, right.
Speaker 1: That is that is like some legal advice that the
Speaker 1: lawyer's on arrested development would give.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. And so this doesn't work. They're like, you
Speaker 2: can't do that where the Feds we don't give a
Speaker 2: shit about your fucking petty kingdom. But they quitted him
Speaker 2: anyway because he's the government's boy.
Speaker 1: Oh shit, wow, it did work out for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And if you want to be acquitted, then you
Speaker 2: should listen into our primary sponsor. Don't talk to cops, hi,
Speaker 2: Margaret Kiljoy here, boy, the world sure is a mess
Speaker 2: right now. Huh. Seems like every day there are more
Speaker 2: and more reasons to get out into the streets and protest.
Speaker 2: That's why when I get arrested, there's only one strategy.
Speaker 2: I trust. I shut the fuck up. I say, I
Speaker 2: would like to remain silent, I would like to talk
Speaker 2: to my lawyer, and then I shut the fuck up.
Speaker 2: In the United States of America, it's constitutionally protected and
Speaker 2: recommended by the National Lawyers Guild. That's shut thch f
Speaker 2: u c k up. Once again, that's shut thch e
Speaker 2: f uck up. Because you can't talk yourself out of custody,
Speaker 2: but you can talk yourself into a conviction.
Speaker 5: Providing identification to law enforcement required in some states and
Speaker 5: situations giving them an address expedient in most circumstances. Never
Speaker 5: discuss the events leading to arrest with anyone except your lawyer, doctor,
Speaker 5: or therapist. Posting pictures of protests and actions on social
Speaker 5: media may lead to complications. If you have already talked
Speaker 5: to cops or experienced confusion about talking to cops, call
Speaker 5: your attorney immediately, as these may be signs of more
Speaker 5: serious legal problems. The concept of not talking to cops
Speaker 5: does not provide legal advice, and the foregoing statements are
Speaker 5: for informational purposes only. If you have specific legal questions,
Speaker 5: consult an attorney, and we're back.
Speaker 2: So conditions are not great. Leonard Peltieri's on the run,
Speaker 2: but he is not afraid of a fight. So by
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy five he goes up to Pine Ridge and
Speaker 2: he's helping out alongside a bunch of other AIM folks
Speaker 2: and their stronghold. AIM stronghold is on the land of
Speaker 2: a family named Jumping Bull. They have a whole camp
Speaker 2: out with like thirty plus people living there, and they're
Speaker 2: more and more like trying to live in more traditional
Speaker 2: ways while they do it, and it's a they're doing
Speaker 2: really cool shit, like completely unrelated to the fighting the
Speaker 2: government stuff. AM warriors are out walking thirty a night
Speaker 2: to keep people safe, doing patrols. Whenever a house is
Speaker 2: shot up by goons, because this happens like fairly regularly,
Speaker 2: the goons will be like, hey, fuck you and shoot
Speaker 2: up a house, which is a whole thing that people
Speaker 2: don't talk about much with like rural organizing. I've the
Speaker 2: first time I spent much time in West Virginia. The
Speaker 2: all these like anti mountaintop removal miners were like having
Speaker 2: their houses shot up and stuff by like the pro
Speaker 2: There's just a lot people can get away with a
Speaker 2: certain type of specific thing in rural areas.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm trying to say, Yeah, yeah, and shooting
Speaker 1: up buildings is much more like a thing that happens,
Speaker 1: like yeah, in where you can just just kind of
Speaker 1: do that and drive away and you're the only vehicle
Speaker 1: on the road for thirty miles. You're you're gonna be fine.
Speaker 2: Right, So, whenever a house is shot up by goons,
Speaker 2: AIM is there, armed, ready to keep the family safe.
Speaker 2: They're also chopping firewood for elders. They're like re roofing stores.
Speaker 2: They're counseling people through alcoholism. They're running bingo nights. They're
Speaker 2: just doing community work. They're doing the har thankless work
Speaker 2: of keeping a community together through crisis. All the while
Speaker 2: they're talking about the treaties and they're talking about sovereignty.
Speaker 2: The AIM collective operated collectively. The vehicles, firearms, and food
Speaker 2: were all collectively possessed by all the folks doing that,
Speaker 2: and the women in town, not just the AIM women.
Speaker 2: They made a game of tearing down all the wanted
Speaker 2: posters for Peltier because they kept the government in Bia
Speaker 2: like kept putting up all the wanted posters for him,
Speaker 2: and so finally they had to put the posters like
Speaker 2: behind glass frames and all this shit, you know, by
Speaker 2: June first, nice, fine, Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's that's nice. That's nice. Solidarity. Yeah, totally down wanted
Speaker 1: posters of your guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because everyone knows he's there. Yeah, you know, by
Speaker 2: June first.
Speaker 1: No, there's no point pulling down the wanted posters if
Speaker 1: he's not there.
Speaker 2: Totally. By June first, nineteen seventy five, the Pine Ridge
Speaker 2: Traditional Sheet chiefs in Llcuting Charlie Redcloud, the ninety year
Speaker 2: old grandson of the previous Red Cloud, signed a formal
Speaker 2: resolution of sovereignty like once again like one of the
Speaker 2: primary things that Indigenous people keep doing is restating that
Speaker 2: they are a sovereign people, a sovereign nation, and there
Speaker 2: is good I hope they succeed. I hope it sticks.
Speaker 2: Around this time, a BIA cop shot Russell Means, who survived, so,
Speaker 2: of course, the cop then charged Russell Means for assaulting
Speaker 2: an officer. Right and Aim put out a statement that
Speaker 2: its members were to shoot back when fired upon even
Speaker 2: by law enforcement. So things are ramping up, and it's
Speaker 2: important to understand the way things are ramping up as
Speaker 2: gets to what we're gonna talk about now. On June
Speaker 2: twenty fifth, nineteen seventy five, two FEDS and two BIA
Speaker 2: cops showed up to Jumping Bull's property asking around about
Speaker 2: a nineteen year old named Jimmy Eagle who was wanted
Speaker 2: for stealing some cowboy boots and like maybe beating some
Speaker 2: guys up. They had no warrant and they were shoot away.
Speaker 2: The two FEDS waited nearby and harassed more youth.
Speaker 1: Knowing them away is exactly what you should do if
Speaker 1: the FEDS show up at your.
Speaker 2: Door without a warrant. Yeah, They're like, you don't have
Speaker 2: a warrant, this is trespassing, get.
Speaker 1: Out, Yeah, fuck off.
Speaker 2: Then the fateful day the next day, June twenty sixth,
Speaker 2: the two FBI agents come back to the stronghold of Aim.
Speaker 2: They want us to believe that two FEDS drove onto
Speaker 2: the reservation and into the heart of ames thing even
Speaker 2: though they knew about the whole like shoot back resolution
Speaker 2: over stolen cowboy boots. This is possible. It's possible that
Speaker 2: it is just outright arrogance that brought them to that place.
Speaker 2: But the day before, Dick Wilson had just illegally transferred
Speaker 2: an eighth of the reservation proper over to the US government.
Speaker 2: What a coincidence, and even wilder coincidence, the BIA swat
Speaker 2: team is just in the area doing maneuvers that day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this definitely sounds This definitely sounds like some people
Speaker 1: who care deeply about stolen boots.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, Although I wonder whether the two FBI aight
Speaker 2: because it does not go well for them. They might
Speaker 2: have just been set up. They might have just been pawns.
Speaker 1: I mean, nobody ever accused of the US government of like
Speaker 1: caring too much about the people who work for it.
Speaker 2: Either had totally Whatever the cause, these two FEDS show
Speaker 2: up into the center of an Aim compound and a
Speaker 2: firefight breaks out at two hundred yards with firing from
Speaker 2: the two houses the I don't know who shot first.
Speaker 2: My money is on Aim shooting first, but I don't
Speaker 2: get whatever. Both federal agents were wounded, one mortally wounded.
Speaker 2: He was probably going to when someone Probably no one
Speaker 2: will ever know for certain except for whoever this is,
Speaker 2: if they're still alive, walked up and executed them at
Speaker 2: close range, and it'll come up later that the gun
Speaker 2: that executed them was an Air fifteen shooting two two
Speaker 2: three ammunition. Agents responded as backup. Agents responding as backup
Speaker 2: were fired upon and a standoff occurs during which one
Speaker 2: AIM member, Joe Killswright, was killed. He was wearing one
Speaker 2: of the FBI agent's jackets when he died, or as
Speaker 2: one journalist who the one journalist who photographed the body
Speaker 2: suggested that actually the jacket was put on him after
Speaker 2: based on where the blood wasn't wasn't on that jet. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: goons and white militias show up to the area too,
Speaker 2: as do AIM supporters. So now there's like twenty AM members.
Speaker 2: They're on the land. The non combatants have got now
Speaker 2: by and large, there's a couple like younger boys who
Speaker 2: surrender at this point, and fortunately they successfully surrender through
Speaker 2: lots of complicated stuff. The twenty A members who are left,
Speaker 2: they're like, if we stick around, we're all going to
Speaker 2: die today. And so they escaped. And the way they
Speaker 2: did that is they figured that south was the more
Speaker 2: likely way. There was like they had they had one
Speaker 2: of the radios because they had killed, you know, two
Speaker 2: of the Feds. Yeah, say, they had the radio and
Speaker 2: so they knew that there was less of a blockade
Speaker 2: to their south, and so they started south and they
Speaker 2: weren't sure exactly which way to go, and they followed
Speaker 2: an eagle through the woods that like waited for them,
Speaker 2: and then they would like stop and then they would
Speaker 2: fly and show them this is the way to go
Speaker 2: now and stuff, you know. And the path that they
Speaker 2: took took them through the blockade. Like the path they
Speaker 2: took was blocked except for a brief moment when the
Speaker 2: agents took a break to go get a drink of water.
Speaker 2: Like literally, we have the like transcripts of the radio community,
Speaker 2: right and it was like hey, like since we're all
Speaker 2: about to attack, like y'all aren't as important right now,
Speaker 2: you can take a five minute break, you know.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And this is when the twenty A members get through
Speaker 2: the blockade. Eventually they're spotted. Incredible, I know, and it's
Speaker 2: like I don't know, like, yeah, no, that that happened,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, Eventually they're they're spotted as they're moving
Speaker 2: up this big open hill, right, they're on the other
Speaker 2: side of the road. They're outside the blockade, and the
Speaker 2: cops are shooting at them and chasing, but they're delayed
Speaker 2: by warning shots coming from their treating AIM members and
Speaker 2: to hear the AIM folks talk about it, the BIA
Speaker 2: cops actually the indigenous cops weren't trying too hard to
Speaker 2: aim well at them, and no one was injured on
Speaker 2: either side. A crowd of supporters formed at the barricades,
Speaker 2: and while they're like moving up this hill, these two
Speaker 2: young men on horseback just like ride up and escort them,
Speaker 2: and they are like, what are you doing. Like they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: we're here to help. And they're like are you even armed?
Speaker 2: And they're like we got twenty two. Like it's fine,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: God damn and and help. It's very cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they can like and the Feds can like
Speaker 2: see it all I think binoculars and shit. There's also
Speaker 2: a there's a government plane that's like following their escape,
Speaker 2: but eventually it has to go for more fuel and
Speaker 2: they get away. They you know, lose the trek at
Speaker 2: that point and then they go and they like stay
Speaker 2: with supporters and shit like that, and they go underground.
Speaker 2: And also while they're fleeing Indigenous residents from elsewhere in
Speaker 2: the reservation are firing at the FEDS from other positions,
Speaker 2: which slows them down and keeps them from pursuing. It
Speaker 2: is nearly certain that they all would have been killed
Speaker 2: if they hadn't escaped the blockade. AIM refuse to apologize
Speaker 2: for the killing. They stuck by their people. Eventually, a
Speaker 2: couple of weeks later, are Peltier flees in an RV.
Speaker 2: It gets pulled over in Oregon and he flees on foot,
Speaker 2: and he covers his escape by firing at the state
Speaker 2: trooper and he gets away. He gets into Canada. Two
Speaker 2: other AM members, Robert Robadou who's Peltier's cousin, and Dino Butler,
Speaker 2: are arrested for this. One other person's arrested in and
Speaker 2: they're like, no, we don't have enough charges. He won't stick.
Speaker 2: So these two, Robert and Dino go on trial for
Speaker 2: killing these agents. The federal jury found them not guilty
Speaker 2: by way of self defense. They were justified for shooting
Speaker 2: those officers according to the US courts.
Speaker 1: Wow, people do not often get found not guilty for
Speaker 1: reasons of self defense while shooting Feds. While shooting feds. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wow, And the big thing about it is that they're
Speaker 2: like the only they weren't. The whoever walked up and
Speaker 2: executed the cops who were wounded is the person that
Speaker 2: would not be able to get away with a self
Speaker 2: defense case. Essentially, according to the sort of way that
Speaker 2: all this court shit is going to unfold, On February sixth,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy six, Leonard Peltier is arrested in Alberta, Canada.
Speaker 2: His trial was fuckery from the start. An Indigenous woman
Speaker 2: named Myrtle Porbear was coerced into giving false testimony against him.
Speaker 2: She later retracted her statement, admitting she didn't even know
Speaker 2: Peltier personally and she wanted to testify against the FBI.
Speaker 2: The judge wouldn't let her, claiming that she was incompetent.
Speaker 2: Two other witnesses recanted, claiming that they were also coerced
Speaker 2: into their testimony by the FBI. He was also on
Speaker 2: trial for two killings that another trial had already proven
Speaker 2: were self defense and the like. The core of their
Speaker 2: argument is that they were executed with two two, three
Speaker 2: or five five six is the same thing. They were
Speaker 2: killed but with an AR fifteen, and Leonard Peltier was
Speaker 2: According to these witnesses, the only person with an AR fifteen.
Speaker 2: These are the witnesses who later said, no, that was
Speaker 2: all a lie. I had to say that because they
Speaker 2: were threatening me and you know, coursing me and all
Speaker 2: this shit. Right, Yeah, there was no like material evidence around,
Speaker 2: like the firing pin, like there was no forensic evidence
Speaker 2: that linked Peltier's gun to the Casnes that killed the cops.
Speaker 2: All the testament. It was a farce of a trial.
Speaker 2: Leonard Peltier claims his innocence. He holds that he shot
Speaker 2: at the agents, but that he was not the person
Speaker 2: who went up.
Speaker 1: In the court has already determined that shooting at the
Speaker 1: agents is self right fence.
Speaker 2: And I had a long time ago, and I didn't
Speaker 2: specifically read this while doing this research this week. I
Speaker 2: read a long time ago that the judge specifically told
Speaker 2: either didn't allow the jury to hear or didn't told
Speaker 2: the jury not to consider the fact that it was
Speaker 2: proven self defense in a different court case.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he gets two consecutive life sentences despite that,
Speaker 2: you know, fucking everything, right. In nineteen seventy seven, he
Speaker 2: went to prison. In nineteen seventy nine, he did what
Speaker 2: many cool people who do cool stuff did, which is
Speaker 2: he broke out of prison yeay, along with two others.
Speaker 2: One of those escapees, Dallas Thundershield, was shot dead by
Speaker 2: a guard just outside the prison. Another was caught a
Speaker 2: mile behind the walls. Peltier made it for three days
Speaker 2: before he was caught after stealing food money truck from
Speaker 2: a farmer to aid his escape. Peltier claims his innocence.
Speaker 2: The cop who arrested him in Canada said that Peltier
Speaker 2: was extradited illegally and didn't get a fair trial. When
Speaker 2: you have your arresting officer, yeah, claiming this. I would
Speaker 2: support Peltier either way. Just to be clear, we support
Speaker 2: our political prisoners even when they're innocent. But there's a
Speaker 2: reason that to talk about this case, I wanted to
Speaker 2: spend two episodes on the treatment of Lakota people in
Speaker 2: the nineteenth and two episodes on their treatment in the
Speaker 2: twentieth century, because I think that context is necessary to
Speaker 2: understand the self defense case. You know, Yeah, the movement
Speaker 2: for his clemency and its specifically he wants clemency, not
Speaker 2: a pardon, because he's like, I didn't fucking do it.
Speaker 2: I don't want to pardon. He's like, I will not
Speaker 2: accept a pardon because I didn't do it. I did
Speaker 2: not you know. The movement for his clemency has included
Speaker 2: everyone from Nelson, Mandela, Mother Teresa, the European Parliament. The
Speaker 2: UN's Human Rights Council released an analysis analysis of his
Speaker 2: detention showing that it breaks three articles from the Universal
Speaker 2: Declaration of Human Rights. The fucking Pope tried to convince
Speaker 2: Obama to commute his sentence. The US attorney who supervised
Speaker 2: the prosecution against Peltier has tried multiple times to get
Speaker 2: Peltier free, saying that the case that he ran was bad.
Speaker 1: So what you're saying is it's a real fringe position. Yeah,
Speaker 1: only wild people fringe stuff. Yeah, totally. The US attorney
Speaker 1: said to the Chicago Tribune that the case against Peltier
Speaker 1: was quote a very thin case that would likely not
Speaker 1: be upheld by courts today. It is a gross overstatement
Speaker 1: to label Peltier as a cold blooded murderer on the
Speaker 1: basis of the minimal proof that survived appeals in his case.
Speaker 1: So Obama was like, now I'm good, thank the FBI.
Speaker 1: My boys, fuck it, I don't care and Peltier is
Speaker 1: still in prison, but he has something that he wants
Speaker 1: to say to us. Because the reason that I had
Speaker 1: Miriam on this show is that Miriam's partner is one
Speaker 1: of his lawyers and was in communication with him about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is that is the big reveal that we teased
Speaker 1: last episode. This episode, I don't know whenever. My partner
Speaker 1: is one of the many lawyers on this on this case,
Speaker 1: and mister Peltier is sent a statement from prison which
Speaker 1: I am honored to read. Now, the Black Hills are
Speaker 1: a holy place to the Lakota Nation. The Fort lermi
Speaker 1: Tree eighteen sixty eight pledged that the Great Sioux Reservation,
Speaker 1: including the Black Hills, would be set apart for the
Speaker 1: absolute and undisturbed use and occupation of the Lakota Nation.
Speaker 1: The US military was obligated by law to keep settlers
Speaker 1: and prospectors from trespassing into the Black Hills, but law
Speaker 1: is meaningless if it is not enforced. The Fort Laramie
Speaker 1: Treaty has never lost its legal validity, but after the
Speaker 1: discovery of gold in the early eighteen seventies, the treaty
Speaker 1: was broken. The Black Hills were opened for settlement and
Speaker 1: illegally stolen from the Lakota Nation. These are our holy lands.
Speaker 1: After one hundred years, its long overdue for the treaty
Speaker 1: to be honored and for the United States to restore
Speaker 1: our sacred sites to us and stop robbing the minerals
Speaker 1: from the holy Earth as they have been doing for
Speaker 1: more than a century. Aim myself and many natives for
Speaker 1: generations fought for the return of the Black Hills, even
Speaker 1: though we had been so intimidated and so much violence
Speaker 1: done to us. Back in the seventies, the FBI tried
Speaker 1: to tell us that as a colonized people, we had
Speaker 1: to lay down and follow their rules. They did not
Speaker 1: understand that they were on our holy lands and that
Speaker 1: they were not following their own rules. Under Article six
Speaker 1: of the Constitution, treaties are the supreme law of the land.
Speaker 1: In order to abrogate or invalidate a treaty, Congress must
Speaker 1: make a clear statement of intent to terminate the treaty.
Speaker 1: The Treaty of eighteen sixty eight was never abrogated. Even
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the
Speaker 1: Black Hills were never lawfully taken from the Lakota Nation.
Speaker 1: We have never stopped fighting for the Black Hills, and
Speaker 1: we never will. I also have a message for the
Speaker 1: young Natives out there. I know a lot of you
Speaker 1: are suffering. Know that we love you, we need you.
Speaker 1: You are part of us. Learn your language, learn your culture.
Speaker 1: Who you are and who we are has always been
Speaker 1: a good thing, and we need you to keep living
Speaker 1: and being good on the earth. Don't despair, resist despair,
Speaker 1: and stand with us for the land, for the water,
Speaker 1: for the people. In the spirit of Crazy Horse Leonard Peltier.
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