Latest news with #WoundedKnee
CBS News
23-06-2025
- CBS News
Oglala Sioux Tribe asked to approve search for civil rights activist at Wounded Knee
The Oglala Sioux Tribal Council will be asked to approve a search for the remains of a Black civil rights activist who disappeared during the 1973 Wounded Knee standoff. He is likely buried on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Perry Ray Robinson Jr. was 35 years old when he left his home in Bogue Chitto, Alabama, in April 1973 to answer a call for help from the American Indian Movement. For 71 days, AIM members and supporters occupied the village and exchanged gunfire with federal agents gathered around its perimeter. Robinson never returned, was later declared dead without his body being found, and no one was ever charged. His name came to light after two men were indicted in 2003 on charges they killed Canadian Annie Mae Aquash in December 1975 in South Dakota's badlands. Arlo Looking Cloud was arrested in Denver. A federal jury in Rapid City convicted him in 2004 of murder. He was sentenced to life in federal prison, but that was later reduced to 20 years because of his cooperation and acceptance of responsibility. He was released in 2019. The other man, John Graham, fought extradition from his native Canada. A state jury in Rapid City convicted him of murder in 2010 and he is serving a life prison sentence at the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls. Hulu documentary about Aquash Justin Baker, 40, who lives in Mission on South Dakota's Rosebud Indian Reservation, started the latest effort to search for Robinson's body. He has been following the Aquash and Robinson cases since Looking Cloud and Graham were indicted. That included reading media accounts and documents released as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. Baker said he also spent considerable time with Leonard Crow Dog, a Sicangu Lakota medicine man and AIM's spiritual leader who died in 2021. Baker said he was prompted to action after watching a recent documentary about Aquash on the streaming service Hulu entitled " Vow of Silence: The Assassination of Annie Mae." Witnesses testified that Aquash, who also responded to AIM's request for help and rose to prominence in the organization, was killed because she was suspected of being an informant. "I started thinking, 'Why can't they do something for this man, Ray Robinson?'" Baker said. He called Paul DeMain of Hayward, Wisconsin, the former editor of the News From Indian Country newspaper who extensively investigated the Aquash and Robinson cases. Among the people DeMain put Baker in touch with was Robinson's widow, Cheryl Buswell-Robinson, and their son, Deeter Robinson. "I asked Deeter, I said, 'What would you like me to tell people?' And he said what it was like growing up without a dad, not having somebody at my sporting events, not having a man's guidance, not having a father to lean on, and it caused a lot of hardships in my life," Baker said of the conversation. "This is somebody's family that was destroyed and is still hurting 52 years later, and there are still people remaining silent." Concerns about 1890 massacre site DeMain had already done extensive work trying to identify Robinson's likely resting place. Baker took up the cause using tribal channels. "I wanted to create a grassroots effort because I think everything else has been tried already," he said. Baker presented a resolution to and received unanimous support for it in May from the Sicangu Lakota Treaty Council. That group in the Great Sioux Nation advocates for Native treaty rights and inherent sovereignty. The document's purpose was to start building support for a culturally sensitive search for Robinson's remains on the Pine Ridge reservation. Baker then went to the Oglala Sioux Tribe's land committee on Pine Ridge, which rejected the request for a search, saying it could unearth remains or artifacts from the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre. Baker said the search would only involve a cadaver dog or ground-penetrating radar that would not disrupt the land. And the area already has been disturbed, he said. "Wherever Ray is laying was already disturbed through the form of buildings, construction within the downtown Wounded Knee area, or it was disturbed in 1973 from digging bunkers," Baker said. Baker has drawn up a resolution he plans to present to the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council, which includes the Sicangu Lakota Treaty Council resolution and letters of support from elders, descendants of the 1890 massacre and others. The document, viewed by South Dakota News Watch, calls for all Lakota tribes, in collaboration with Buswell-Robinson and cultural experts, to create a working group to oversee a non-invasive search for the remains of Robinson. The effort would include historic preservation officers, spiritual leaders and elders, the Robinson family, Indigenous archaeologists and forensic scientists and independent advisers. "This resolution does not seek the removal or exhumation of any remains but seeks only to locate, document and honor the possible resting place of Perry Ray Robinson Jr.," it states. The document also calls for transparency and respect of those who died in 1890 and might have been killed on the site in 1973. "We're asking to search the ground that already has been disturbed and is a long way from the burial of the 1890 massacre victims," Buswell-Robinson said. Tribal leaders did not respond to a request for comment. Widow hopes for Robinson's return Besides a son, who has children, the Robinsons have two adult daughters in Detroit, Desiree Marks and Tamara Fant, who have their own children and grandchildren. "I'm 80 and doing fine. I'd like to get Ray back here before I'm dead," Buswell-Robinson said. "I'm excited about it because Justin (Baker) is so excited. "He's been wonderful to follow and has a strategy." Buswell-Robinson said that because she's in Detroit, she doesn't have the connections or know the local structures or politics like Baker does. Based on her recollections and letters she wrote in the years after her husband's disappearance, she believes he probably was killed because he naively thought he could turn an unorganized situation into a focused demonstration. His nonviolent approach probably was not well received at what was a violent situation, Buswell-Robinson said. And it's possible AIM members suspected he was a federal informant, which he was not, she said. FBI documents include references to fresh graves Two American Indians were confirmed to have died during the 1973 siege, and rumors of other deaths persist. FBI documents that are now public suggest the possibility of other people buried at Wounded Knee during the occupation. A May 1973 memo says the FBI talked to a man who reported grave sites just outside of Wounded Knee. Another, a few days later, states that an Interior Department official "observed several fresh graves" at Wounded Knee. One of the graves belonged to one of the two Native Americans killed, the memo states. There's no mention of Ray Robinson in the FBI correspondence, but two documents reveal the presence of two Black people toward the end of the standoff. A May 5, 1973, transcript of an interview with a man who claimed to be at Wounded Knee the week prior stated "he heard that one black man and one black woman had recently arrived." A May 21, 1973, FBI memo reported that a Native woman who left the village a month earlier counted 200 Indians, 11 whites and two Blacks. Buswell-Robinson said those two were most likely Ray Robinson and a woman from Alabama who went with him. She returned after the standoff. He didn't.
Associated Press
23-06-2025
- Associated Press
Tribe asked to allow search for civil rights activist at Wounded Knee
The Oglala Sioux Tribal Council will be asked to approve a search for the remains of a Black civil rights activist who disappeared during the 1973 Wounded Knee standoff. He is likely buried on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Perry Ray Robinson Jr. was 35 years old when he left his home in Bogue Chitto, Alabama, in April 1973 to answer a call for help from the American Indian Movement. For 71 days, AIM members and supporters occupied the village and exchanged gunfire with federal agents gathered around its perimeter. Robinson never returned, was later declared dead without his body being found, and no one was ever charged. His name came to light after two men were indicted in 2003 on charges they killed Canadian Annie Mae Aquash in December 1975 in South Dakota's badlands. Arlo Looking Cloud was arrested in Denver. A federal jury in Rapid City convicted him in 2004 of murder. He was sentenced to life in federal prison, but that was later reduced to 20 years because of his cooperation and acceptance of responsibility. He was released in 2019. The other man, John Graham, fought extradition from his native Canada. A state jury in Rapid City convicted him of murder in 2010 and he is serving a life prison sentence at the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls. Hulu documentary about Aquash Justin Baker, 40, who lives in Mission on South Dakota's Rosebud Indian Reservation, started the latest effort to search for Robinson's body. He has been following the Aquash and Robinson cases since Looking Cloud and Graham were indicted. That included reading media accounts and documents released as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. Baker said he also spent considerable time with Leonard Crow Dog, a Sicangu Lakota medicine man and AIM's spiritual leader who died in 2021. Baker said he was prompted to action after watching a recent documentary about Aquash on the streaming service Hulu entitled ' Vow of Silence: The Assassination of Annie Mae.' Witnesses testified that Aquash, who also responded to AIM's request for help and rose to prominence in the organization, was killed because she was suspected of being an informant. 'I started thinking, 'Why can't they do something for this man, Ray Robinson?'' Baker said. He called Paul DeMain of Hayward, Wisconsin, the former editor of the News From Indian Country newspaper who extensively investigated the Aquash and Robinson cases. Among the people DeMain put Baker in touch with was Robinson's widow, Cheryl Buswell-Robinson, and their son, Deeter Robinson. 'I asked Deeter, I said, 'What would you like me to tell people?' And he said what it was like growing up without a dad, not having somebody at my sporting events, not having a man's guidance, not having a father to lean on, and it caused a lot of hardships in my life,' Baker said of the conversation. 'This is somebody's family that was destroyed and is still hurting 52 years later, and there are still people remaining silent.' Concerns about 1890 massacre site DeMain had already done extensive work trying to identify Robinson's likely resting place. Baker took up the cause using tribal channels. 'I wanted to create a grassroots effort because I think everything else has been tried already,' he said. Baker presented a resolution to and received unanimous support for it in May from the Sicangu Lakota Treaty Council. That group in the Great Sioux Nation advocates for Native treaty rights and inherent sovereignty. The document's purpose was to start building support for a culturally sensitive search for Robinson's remains on the Pine Ridge reservation. Baker then went to the Oglala Sioux Tribe's land committee on Pine Ridge, which rejected the request for a search, saying it could unearth remains or artifacts from the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre. Baker said the search would only involve a cadaver dog or ground-penetrating radar that would not disrupt the land. And the area already has been disturbed, he said. 'Wherever Ray is laying was already disturbed through the form of buildings, construction within the downtown Wounded Knee area, or it was disturbed in 1973 from digging bunkers,' Baker said. Baker has drawn up a resolution he plans to present to the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council, which includes the Sicangu Lakota Treaty Council resolution and letters of support from elders, descendants of the 1890 massacre and others. The document, viewed by South Dakota News Watch, calls for all Lakota tribes, in collaboration with Buswell-Robinson and cultural experts, to create a working group to oversee a non-invasive search for the remains of Robinson. The effort would include historic preservation officers, spiritual leaders and elders, the Robinson family, Indigenous archaeologists and forensic scientists and independent advisers. 'This resolution does not seek the removal or exhumation of any remains but seeks only to locate, document and honor the possible resting place of Perry Ray Robinson Jr.,' it states. The document also calls for transparency and respect of those who died in 1890 and might have been killed on the site in 1973. 'We're asking to search the ground that already has been disturbed and is a long way from the burial of the 1890 massacre victims,' Buswell-Robinson said. Tribal leaders did not respond to a request for comment. Widow hopes for Robinson's return Besides a son, who has children, the Robinsons have two adult daughters in Detroit, Desiree Marks and Tamara Fant, who have their own children and grandchildren. 'I'm 80 and doing fine. I'd like to get Ray back here before I'm dead,' Buswell-Robinson said. 'I'm excited about it because Justin (Baker) is so excited. 'He's been wonderful to follow and has a strategy.' Buswell-Robinson said that because she's in Detroit, she doesn't have the connections or know the local structures or politics like Baker does. Based on her recollections and letters she wrote in the years after her husband's disappearance, she believes he probably was killed because he naively thought he could turn an unorganized situation into a focused demonstration. His nonviolent approach probably was not well received at what was a violent situation, Buswell-Robinson said. And it's possible AIM members suspected he was a federal informant, which he was not, she said. FBI documents include references to fresh graves Two American Indians were confirmed to have died during the 1973 siege, and rumors of other deaths persist. FBI documents that are now public suggest the possibility of other people buried at Wounded Knee during the occupation. A May 1973 memo says the FBI talked to a man who reported grave sites just outside of Wounded Knee. Another, a few days later, states that an Interior Department official 'observed several fresh graves' at Wounded Knee. One of the graves belonged to one of the two Native Americans killed, the memo states. There's no mention of Ray Robinson in the FBI correspondence, but two documents reveal the presence of two Black people toward the end of the standoff. A May 5, 1973, transcript of an interview with a man who claimed to be at Wounded Knee the week prior stated 'he heard that one black man and one black woman had recently arrived.' A May 21, 1973, FBI memo reported that a Native woman who left the village a month earlier counted 200 Indians, 11 whites and two Blacks. Buswell-Robinson said those two were most likely Ray Robinson and a woman from Alabama who went with him. She returned after the standoff. He didn't. ___ This story was originally published by South Dakota News Watch and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
Voice of America
08-02-2025
- Politics
- Voice of America
Native American news roundup, Feb. 2-8, 2025
Each year, the Sitanka Wokiksuye, or Chief Big Foot Memorial Ride, remembers the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre with a 14-day journey on horseback from the Cheyenne River Reservation to the site of that violence on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation. By the late 1880s, the Native American Lakota tribe was confined to reservations, their traditional ways of life forbidden, and the buffalo, critical to their survival, were decimated. Left to survive on inadequate U.S. government rations, the Lakota and many other tribes found hope in the Ghost Dance, a messianic movement that promised a return to their former way of life. The U.S. Army interpreted the dance as a call to arms and sent the 7th Cavalry to suppress the dancing and arrest Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull, who the U.S. government believed was orchestrating rebellion. Sitting Bull was shot dead, and his half-brother, Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitanka, dubbed Big Foot, led his followers to consult with the Oglala leadership on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The Army intercepted them and forced them to camp at Wounded Knee village; the next day, while confiscating weapons, a shot rang out, triggering the Army to open fire. By the end of the day, Big Foot and about 300 Lakota, including unarmed women, and children, lay dead. The event was celebrated as a victory for the U.S. Army, and the government awarded Medals of Honor to 20 cavalry soldiers for their actions. This year, the Big Foot riders and their supporters hoped that President Joe Biden might revoke those medals. Oliver 'O.J.' Semans has spent years lobbying U.S. administrations to 'take back honor wrongly bestowed.' The Sicangu Lakota voting rights advocate from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota lost many ancestors in that violence and said, 'If Biden's going to do anything, the best day would be December 29th' as that is the anniversary of the massacre. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced the Remove the Stain Act in 2019, calling on the Army to revoke those Medals of Honor. Despite some bipartisan support and backing from Native leaders and advocacy groups, the bill did not advance. Administrative action This July, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a review of medals of honor given for what he called the 'engagement' at Wounded Knee to assess whether awardees violated the laws and military ethics of the era. "It's never too late to do what's right," said an unnamed senior defense official quoted in the Pentagon press release that announced the decision. "And that's what is intended by the review that the secretary directed, which is to ensure that we go back and review each of these medals in a rigorous and individualized manner to understand the actions of the individual in the context of the overall engagement." Austin directed a review panel of five members – three from the Department of Defense and two from the Interior Department -- to gather all relevant historical records and assess the actions of those soldiers based not on today's standards but by those at the time. "This is not a retrospective review," said another unnamed DoD official in the same Pentagon press release. "We're applying the standards at the time. And that's critical because we want to make sure that as these are reviewed and as a recommendation is made to the secretary and then to the president that we have applied the standards appropriately, while ensuring that we look at the context.' The U.S. Army's 1863 General Orders No. 100, also known as the 'Lieber Code,' banned using excessive force, killing noncombatants, attacking during a ceasefire, and looting. The Army held two sets of hearings on the matter in early 1891, interviewing officers and witnesses that included newspaper reporters, a surgeon and a Catholic priest. 'The Army was on the cusp of being a modern professional force, and so they at least made an effort to investigate allegations of crimes at Wounded Knee,' said Dwight S. Mears, author of 'The Medal of Honor: The Evolution of America's Highest Military Decoration.' In the end, the Army excused the cavalry's actions as accidental and unintentional, and the U.S. Secretary of War recommended commendations. 'There was no political will to prosecute anybody, but they did collect a lot of evidence,' Mears said, 'and if you sift through that with a critical eye, you can find a whole bunch of places where officers misrepresented themselves, which is a crime under oath.' Three months after the massacre, the first Medal of Honor for Wounded Knee was awarded to an officer who, according to the medal citation 'killed a hostile Indian at close quarters, and although entitled to retirement from service, remained to the close of the campaign.' An award without guidelines The U.S. Medal of Honor was created in 1863 to recognize acts of bravery, gallantry, and other distinguished actions in battle. "But the Army didn't publish any standards for awarding it until 1889, so the commanding general of the Army just gave the medal out however he saw fit,' Mears explains. In 1916, Congress directed the Army to review more than 2,600 medals and determine whether any had been issued 'for any cause other than distinguished conduct by an officer or enlisted man in action involving actual conflict with an enemy.' After an eight-month review, the Army struck more than 900 medals from the record. All of the Wounded Knee medals remained in place. This year's Wounded Knee review panel was given until October 15 to present its findings. By mid-November, Cheyenne River Sioux President Ryman LeBeau reported that the panel had voted three-to-two in favor of maintaining all medals awarded. Semans believes that review was flawed from the start. 'Military historians weren't used, and it was done over such a short period of time that evidence really couldn't be put together,' he said. Senator Warren and South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds asked the Interior and Defense departments to extend the review's deadline to give stakeholders — including tribes, survivor descendants and historians a chance to weigh in. "The devil is in the details,' Mears said. 'If you don't know what actually happened at Wounded Knee, you might assume that every member of the 7th Cavalry, you know, just stood up and executed Lakota. And that is not what the record supports.' To date, neither the Pentagon nor the White House has made any statement about the review panel's findings. 'We have no additional updates to share at this time,' a Defense Department official told VOA.
