Danver Steven L. (Edited). Revolts, Protests, Demonstrations, and Rebellions in American History: An Encyclopedia (ENG)

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Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)

Beginning in the late 1960s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) relinquished much

of the con trol it had previously held over tribal governments on American Indian

reservations and began to emphasize Indian self-determination, particularly in

supporting ofﬁcials chosen in reservation elections. On the Pine Ridge Reserva-

tion, BIA superintendent Stanley D. Lyman followed this policy and backed

elected tribal chairman Dick Wilson, despite his frequent and obvious abuses of

power. Lyman also a pproved Wilson’s resolutions banning the Amer ican Indian

Movement (AIM) from Pine Ridge. In addition, the bureau funded Wilson’s aux-

iliary police force, commonly called the “GOON Squad,” created to suppress

AIM activity on the reservation. When, in February 1973, the tribal council

impeached the chairman, Wilson requested that federal agents come to Pine Ridge

to defend against what Wilson predicted would be an AIM invasion of the reserva-

tion. U.S. marshals and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents soon arrived on the

reservation, fortiﬁed the BIA ofﬁce in the town of Pine Ridge with sandbags and

machine guns, and began train ing BIA police in anti-demonstration tactics.

Opposed to both Wilson and the federal presence, anti-Wilson resi dents of Pine

Ridge formed the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization (OSCRO). OSCRO

invited AIM to the reservation after the impeachment proceedings fai led and

Lyman refused to take action on their complaints about Wilson. Four days after

the end of the Wilson’s hearing, AIM, OSCRO, and other anti-Wilson Lakotas

began their occupation of Wounded Knee and demanded a federal investigation

into BIA corruption.

Throughout the siege at Wounded Knee, BIA police were active as armed par-

ticipants. On the ﬁrst day, BIA ofﬁcers followed AIM members and supporters

to Wounded Knee and were among the ﬁrst t o e stablish roadblocks around the

town. BIA police assisted GOONs, often providing them with supplies. Despite

orders from a federal judge to allow food and medicine into Wounded Knee,

Wilson’s police maintained roadblocks beyond the perimeters established by

federal agents and prevented those provisions from gett ing to the activists. These

vigilante roadblocks deﬁed the court, but Lyman made arrangements to supply

them with food and equipment. Despite the large BIA presence at Wounded Knee,

the bureau had little participation in the siege-ending negotiations, which were

conducted primarily by the Justice Department.

The BIA continued to oppose AIM activism on Pine Ridge for yea rs after

Wounded Knee. Until 1976, when Wilson left ofﬁce, BIA police worked with

the GOON Squad to intimidate, assault, and kill AIM members and supporters.

Some BIA ofﬁcers even moonlighted as GOON Squad members. GOON/BIA

1079

violence, including the murder or attempted murder of leading activists, decimated

AIM and reduced its effectiveness.

—Jacob F. Lee

Further Reading

Castile, George Pier re. To Show Heart: Native American Self-Dete rmination and Federal

Indian Policy, 1960–1975. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998.

Lyman, Stanley David. Wounded Knee 1973: A Personal Account. Edited by Floyd A.

O’Neil, June K. Lyman, and Susan McKay. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991.

Reinhardt, Akin D. Ruling Pine Ridge: Oglala Lakota Politics from the IRA to Wounded

Knee. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2007.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

In November 1972, after the American Indian Movement (AIM) occupation of the

Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) building in Washington, D.C., the Federal Bureau

of Investigation (FBI) classiﬁed AIM and its leaders as extremists. The bureau tar-

geted AIM in a campaign intended to undermine the organization’s effectiveness.

Although the investigation of AIM came after the ofﬁcial end of the FBI’s counter-

intelligence program (COINTELPRO), the bureau’s tactics were not unlike those

they had used against similar groups in the late 1960s. Common strategies

included inﬁltration, spreading disinformation, and according to some, murdering

leading activists.

FBI agents ﬁrst arrived on the Pine Ridge Rese rvation in February 1973, after

BIA ofﬁcials requested assistance in preventing civil disturbances stemming from

the rese rvation’s i nternal political upheaval. On February 27, FBI agents helped

set up road blocks outside Wound ed Knee, and over 150 agents took part in the

siege. AIM members believed that agents also provided automatic riﬂes to anti-

AIM reservation police. Additionally, FBI action extended well beyond the reser-

vation. Under federal law, the FBI could arrest anyone suspected of crossing state

lines to engage in civil disorder, and agents across the country detained numerous

people transporting loads of food, medicine, and other supplies to Wounded Knee.

After the siege ended in May 1973, the bureau worked diligently to gain convic-

tions of the activists who had occupied Wounded Knee. However, in 1974, a

federal court threw out most of the charges against the activists because of FBI

misconduct. According to the court, the FBI withheld and altered ﬁles, elicited per-

jury from witnesses, and had placed an informant among the legal defense team.

Following the Wounded Knee occupation and the subsequent trials, the FBI

continued its anti-AIM activities and maintained a presence on Pine Ridge

1080 Wounded Knee II (1973)

Reservation. Agents disrupted the organization through constant surveillance and

frequent arrests, and inﬁltrators worked from within to discredit the movement.

The knowledge that informants had inﬁltrated AIM fueled dissension and distrust

within the group. By the mid-1970s, many AIM leaders were in jail or had gone

into hiding. AIM distrust of each other as well as law enforcement led to increased

violence on P ine Ridge. In February 1976, AIM member Anna Mae Aquash was

found dead on Pine Ridge. Although many at the time believed that she was killed

by g overnment agents, in the 200 0s, federal convictions indicated t hat she was

killed by AIM members who suspected her of being an FBI informant. Many

activists feared they woul d be assassinated, and at least 69 AIM supporters were

killed on Pine Ridge between 1973 and 1976. Despite heavy federal presence,

few of the deaths were ever fully investigated.

—Jacob F. Lee

Further Reading

Churchill, Ward, and Jim Vander Wall. A gents o f Repression: The FBI’s S ecret Wars

Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement. Boston: South

End Press, 1988.

Cunningham, David. There’s Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and

FBI Counterintelligen ce. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

Powers, Richard Gid. Broken: The Troubled Past and Uncertain Future of the FBI.

New York: Free Press, 2004.

Pine Ridge Reservation

Established in 1889 after the division of the Great Sioux Reservation created by

the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, Pine Ridge Reservation is an Oglala Lakota res-

ervation located in southwestern South Dakota. In 1890, Pine Ridge was the scene

of one of the worst Indian massacres in United States history. Beginning in 1889,

members of tribes across the plains adopted the Ghost Dance re ligion, which

promis ed, am ong other things, the return of the near-extinct bison and the disap-

pearance of all non-Indians. Army o fﬁcials and Indian agents, worried about the

Ghost Dance, worked to curb its spread. In December 1890, reservation police

killed Lakota medicine man Sitting Bull while attempting to arrest him and c re-

ated a panic among other Lakotas, including Miniconjou leader Big Foot. Big Foot

and his followers left their reservation in central South Dakota and headed toward

Pine R idge, where they hoped to ﬁnd safety. On December 28, the U.S. 7th Cav-

alry surrounded Big Foot’s band at Wounded Knee. The following morning, the

soldiers disarmed the Lakotas, and when a ﬁrearm went off accidentally, they

Wounded Knee II (1973) 1081

opened ﬁre on the una rmed Indians. Of th e 350 men, wome n, and children w ho

followed Big Foot, approximately two-thirds were killed. Wounded Knee instantly

became a symbol of federal mistreatment of Indians.

In the 20th century, Pine Ridge continued to be turbulent, particularly in regard to

tribal p olitics. Matters came to a head in the e arly 1970s, when Dick Wilson was

elected tribal chairman. Wilson was the target of frequent complaints of nepotism,

corruption, and intimidation. In 1973, dissatisfaction with Wilson led to a series of

demonstrations, and when an impeachment hearing failed, the anti-Wilson faction

in vited members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) to come to the reserv ation.

Pine Ridge’s traditional tribal leaders, knowing the site’s symbolic power, advised the

AIM and its supporters to occupy Wounded Knee as a protest against Wilson.

Hostilities between Wilson’s followers and AIM supporters continued after the

end of the siege at Wounded Knee. Until 1976, when Wilson’s tenure as chairman

ended, Pine Ridge was a virtual police state as Wilson’s private police force killed,

assaulted, and threatened Wilson’s critics. In the last three years of Wilson’s

administration, Pin e Ridge had a higher murde r rate than ei ther Detroit or Wash-

ington, D.C., two cities often cited as the “murder capital” of the United States

during that time. One notable incident of reservation violence was the case of

AIM member Leonard Peltier, who was convicted for the 1975 murders of two

Federal Bureau of Investigation agents on Pine Ridge. Whether he was responsible

for their deaths or whether he was framed because of his involvement of AIM was

never determined to the satisfaction of many on the reservation.

—Jacob F. Lee

Further Reading

Frazier, Ian. On the Rez. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.

Lazarus, Edward. Black Hills/W hite Justice: The Sioux Nation versus the United States,

1775 to Present. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.

Reinhardt, Akim D. Ruling Pine Ridge: Oglala Lakota Politics from the IRA to Wounded

Knee. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2007.

Wilson, Dick (1934–1990)

Born in 1934, Richard “Dick” Wilson served as tribal chairman of the Pine Ridge

Reservation from 1972 to 1976. A former plumber, Wilson had previously served

on the tribal council as a representative of the town of Pine Ridge. During his cam-

paign for chairman, he wore his hair long, symbo lizing his sympathy with tradi-

tional Oglala values, and even supported American Indian Movement (AIM)

activism. However, by his April 1972 inauguration, Wilson wore a crew-cut

1082 Wounded Knee II (1973)

hairstyle, and his actions soon alienated many full-blood tribal members. Allega-

tions of corruption and nepotism tainted the Wilson admini stration, and Wilson’s

autocratic tendencies angered many Oglalas.

In late 1972, Wilson also began to publicly oppose AIM, following its occupa-

tion of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) ofﬁce in Washington, D.C. Wilson spe-

ciﬁcally targeted AIM lea der and Pine Ridge tribe member Russell Means, who

had announced that he would oppose Wilson in 1974’s tribal chairman election.

In November 1972, at Wilson’s urging, the tribal government pass ed legislation

to prevent AIM, particularly Means, from operating on the reservation. Wilson

also vowed to cut off Means’s braids should the AIM leader come to Pine Ridge

and hung a reward poster in his ofﬁce that offered $1,000 for Means’s pickled

body. Moreover, Wilson created the GOON Squad, a private police force intended

to suppress AIM and its supporters.

After being impeached in February 1973, Wilson rep eatedly delayed the hear-

ings and spread baseless rumors that AIM planned to invade Pine Ridge. To defend

against the imagined AIM intentions, Wilson requested that federal agents come to

the reservation to back the tribal government. The federal presence further infuri-

ated anti-Wilson Oglalas. Wilson survived the impeachment and immediately led

the council to pass more resolutions targe ting AIM. Four days late r, t he siege at

Wounded Knee began.

Wilson was soon relegate d to a minor role in the affair. Although the protest

originated as a statement against Wilson, it quickly expanded in scope as more

federal agencies became involved. Wilson had little involvement in the negotiations

that eventually ended the siege. Instead, he and his GOONs harassed those who

came to Pine Ridge to support AIM. They maintained roadblocks outside the perim-

eters established by federal ofﬁcers and, in deﬁance of a federal court order, pre-

vented food, medical supplies and other materials from entering Wounded Knee.

Following the occupation, Dick Wilson and his GOON Squad continued to tar-

get his opponents. Betw een 1973 and 1976, when Wilson left ofﬁce, the GOONs

murdered, assaulted, and intimidated AIM members and supporters. Despite the

controversy surrounding Wilson, he was reelected as tribal chairman in 1974, pos-

sibly because of election fraud but also because Russell Means and a traditional

tribal leader split the votes of Wilson’s opponents. Wilson died in 1990 on the Pine

Ridge Reservation.

—Jacob F. Lee

Further Reading

Matthiessen, Peter. In the Spirit of Crazy Horse: The Sto ry of Leonard Peltier and the

FBI’s War on the American Indian Movement. New York: Viking, 1983.

Reinhardt, Akim D. Ruling Pine Ridge: Oglala Lakota Politics from the IRA to Wounded

Knee. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2007.

Wounded Knee II (1973) 1083

Sagebrush Rebellion

(1979–1981)

The Sagebrush Rebellion was a political and legal movement originating in the

western United States that aimed t o transfer or “return” title to the public lands

from federal control to the states. Critics claimed that the plan was concocted by

greedy westerners tied to big money who were intent on privatizing the public

domain.

The idea to transfe r the public lan ds from governmental to private or state

control has been an ongoing issue in the West long before “sagebrush rebels” came

onto the scene. Although most western states signed over to the federal

government their right to the public domain as a condition for statehood, western-

ers have long protested federal ownership of the public lands. Various attempts at a

large-scale transfer failed in the 1920s and 1940s, which was due in part to the col-

umnist and historian Bernard DeVoto’s scathing criticisms in articles published in

Harper’s magazine.

For more than a decade, antigovernment sentiment festered in the West in the

wake of passage of environmental regulations governing t he use of the nation’s

public lands and resources. Westerners felt particularly threatened by passage in

1976 of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which virtually reversed

the long-standing policy of disposal and stated that the public domain would

remain public in perpetuity.

The ﬁrst salvo in the Sagebrush Rebellion came in 1979 when the Nevada legis-

lature passed Assembly Bill 413 and laid claim to Nevada’s right to own and man-

age 49 million acres of the public lands within its borders. In reality, it was a

meaningless act, since the federal government did not inte nd to cede ownership

of the land and Nevada had no authority to seize it, but it symbolically represented

the anger many westerners felt toward an overbearing federal presence in the

West. Elsewhere in the West, the movement spread like brushﬁre among

congressional delegate s, state legislatures, and county governments. During that

same two-year period, western politicians attempted to push through several

pieces of legislation on the national and state level to transfer federal lands to

western states. Congressional delegates from all 11 western states in the

continental United States actively promoted themselves as sagebrush rebels. In

1085

1979 and again in 198 1, Utah senator Orrin Hatch led the way in introducing a

major piece of legislation that called for the “return” and “rightful title” of public

lands in the West to the states.

If it was clear where the West’s congressional delegates stood on the issue, less

obvious was the response of western governors who were considerably more cau-

tious in supporting sagebrush legislation. Some, like Utah’s Scott Matheson,

signed a sagebrush bill passed by the state legislature. However, Matheson under-

stood it would be a nonissue until the courts ruled in favor of the states. Other gov-

ernors, notably Richard Lamm of Colorado and Bruce Babbitt of Arizona,

adamantly opposed the idea of a transfer and refused to sign supportive legislation.

The hesita ncy of the governors to support a transfer reﬂected a division among

their constituency; polls taken in the Rocky Mountain states showed that support

for the movement was one-third of those surveyed i n 1979 and a slight majority

in 1981.

Some claimed the term “rebellion” was a misnomer because the movement

operated within legal and constitutional bounds. Although no heads rolled, it was

perhaps bloody rhetorically, since some rebels spoke of a “second American Rev-

olution” and of environmentalists as “selﬁsh,” “radical,” “dandelion pickers,” and

“a cult of toadstool worshippers.” In rural areas, Bureau of Land Management

(BLM) personnel and environmentalist s faced threats of violence. On July 4,

1980, county commissioners in Grand County, Utah, organized a protest centered

around the bulldozing of a road on federal land earmarked for wilderness study

that about 250 people attended. For their part, opponents of the movement, deter-

mined to tarnish the image of the rebellion and its proponents, launched an aggres-

sive offensive o f their own. Organizat ions like the Sierra Club, the Wilderness

Society, and other groups organized calling lists, established anti-rebellion com-

mittees, and labeled the movement a “land grab” and “sagebrush ripoff.”

Two events marked the height of the rebellion in late 1980 and early 1981: the

conference of the Advancement of States’ Equal Rights (LASER) held in Salt

Lake City and attended by about 500 “rebels,” and the election of Ronald Reagan

and the nomination of James Watt as secretary of the interior. For a time, sage-

brush rebe ls had great designs for a revolution i n the West, never more so than

when the president-elect declared, “I am a sagebrush rebel.” Yet, despite the media

attention and support among some members of the national Republican Party, the

movement did not h ave much of a chance. Rebels never did agree on a coherent

strategy, or even whether the movement was about a la nd transfer or simply a

government more responsive to western concerns. Although several western states

passed “sagebrush” l egislation, these had no bite, and Congress never seriously

considered passing national legislation transferring ownership of the public lands

to the states. In the end, the new secretary of the interior pulled the plug on a

1086 Sagebrush Rebellion (1979–1981)

transfer when he announced that the Sagebrush Rebellion had been won. Many

sagebrush rebels, like James Watt, no longer saw the urgency in wresting the pub-

lic lands from the federal government now that rebels ran the show. The Sagebrush

Rebellion effectively died in 1981, but the discontent underlying the movement

continues to be felt especially in the rural West, where public land issues are par-

ticularly acute.

—Jedediah S. Rogers

See also all entries under Stamp Act Protests (1765); Boston Massacre (1770); Regulator

Movement (1771); Pine Tree Riot (1772); Boston Tea Party (1773); Shays’ Rebellion

(1787); Whiskey Rebellion (1794); B rooks- Baxter War (1874); Green Corn Rebellion

(1917); Battle of Athens (1946); World Trade Organization Protests (1999); Day without

an Immigrant (2006).

Further Reading

Cawley,R.McGreggor.Federal Land, Western Anger: T he Sagebrush Rebellion and

Environmental Politics. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1993.

Graf, William L. Wilderness Preservation and the Sagebrush Rebellions.Savage,MD:

Rowman & Littl eﬁeld Publishers, 1990.

Lamm, Richard D., and Michael McCarthy. The Angry West: A Vulnerable Land and Its

Future. Boston: Houghton Mifﬂin, 1982.

Shanks, Bernard. This Land Is Your Land: The Struggle to Save America’s Public Lands.

New York: Random House, 1984.

Sagebrush Rebellion (1979–1981) 1087