The fall 2023 issue of South Dakota History, the quarterly journal of the South Dakota Historical Society, is a special issue commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Wounded Knee 1973 Occupation.
Akim D. Reinhardt prefaces the photo essay with a summary of the fraught political history of Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and the many meanings associated with the place of Wounded Knee. Images of the occupation, sourced from the Oglala Lakota College Archives and the Denver Public Library, feature English captions by Reinhardt with Lakota translations by Alex FireThunder.
In "The Aim But Not the Means," South Dakota state historian Benjamin F. Jones reconsiders the genesis, goals, and methods of the American Indian Movement. Jones addresses myths and realities of the occupation and places it within the larger historical context of a country still reeling from the Vietnam War and the growing Watergate scandal.
Kelly O'Dea analyzes the international impact of Wounded Knee 1973 through the prism of print media in East Germany. German citizens, long fascinated with North America's Indigenous peoples, expressed solidarity with the American Indian Movement, while their country's newspapers pounced on the opportunity to criticize the U.S. government.
Finally, Sam Herley details the rich oral histories of the occupation currently housed in the South Dakota Oral History Center at the University of South Dakota. The Wounded Knee oral histories are an invaluable resource that continues to inform research on a range of historical topics. Herley draws attention to the oral histories' many strengths—and weaknesses.