Wounded Knee Bulletin #1 [caption title]

Rapid City, S.D.: March 19, 1973. Very good.. 4pp., mimeographed on two pink sheets, stapled. Minor wear. A powerful document issued by the Lakota Coalition in the wake of the takeover of Wounded Knee by the American Indian Movement in 1973. The document was issued by the Lakota Coalition through the Wounded Knee Aid Center, and summarizes a meeting between tribal leaders and American government officials held on March 11, 1973. The defining event at the meeting is reported here, when the American Indian Movement "declared their independence from U.S. government control and domination." The authors then turn to a history of mistreatment which begins: "It goes without saying that the starting point for this historical development lies in the inhuman treatment of the Indian people by successive white U.S. governments from Washington's time up to the present. Whole tribes have been wiped out, treaties have been consistently broken and the current living conditions of the Indian people are nothing less than wretched."

The authors then list eight major problems that have developed in Native American communities as a result of poor treatment by the American government, mainly by breaching the terms of almost 400 treaties throughout the centuries. These problems include shorter life expectancy, higher suicide rates, malnutrition, unemployment, higher school dropout rates, substandard housing, and more. The document then details a long list of "specific events leading to the takeover of Wounded Knee" and page three is almost wholly taken up with a section on the "Workings of the Independent Oglala Nation." The latter basically frames the operation of the newly-independent nation, which includes "349 people sworn in...including 189 Oglala people, 160 Indians and Chicanos from other tribes, and seven whites and blacks." The concluding passages include calls for demonstrations, the dissemination of further information, and further fundraising for the group. OCLC reports just four copies of this groundbreaking protest document, at Yale, Newberry, Northwestern, Kansas, (Inventory #: 5480)