Spotted Elk
On February 28, 1973, members of the American Indian Movement, with their allies and supporters, including Fools Crow, seized and occupied the village of Wounded Knee. It was here, in 1890, that the followers of Spotted Elk, another, earlier traditional leader, had been massacred by the United States Army's 7th Cavalry Regiment. Two weeks before that, Sitting Bull himself had been killed, by police acting at the behest of these new rulers. Thus had begun the relentless suppression of the Lakota nation: their institutions, the religion, and even the language. Each decade since that "time of great melancholy", when hopes for sovereignty had "died in bloody snow", brought renewed demands for more Lakota land, always in violation of treaty agreements.