WOUNDED KNEE LEGAL DEFENSE/OFFENSE COMMITTEE:

On February 27, 1973, approximately 300 Indians on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, led by members of the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization (OSCRO) and the American Indian Movement (AIM), occupied the village of Wounded Knee. During the 71-day siege, the occupants established the Independent Oglala Nation and demanded the U.S. Government's recognition of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty with the Sioux Nation, the removal of the Oglala Sioux tribal council, and new elections.

In March 1973, under the guidance of AIM, seventeen lawyers and legal workers from across the country established the Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee (WKLD/OC) in Rapid City, South Dakota. As outlined in a proposal submitted at the time, the committee's objectives were to provide an adequate defense for those charged with crimes in or about Wounded Knee, to encourage the return of the rule of law to the area surrounding Wounded Knee, to permit residents to return to their homes, to prohibit federal agents from making further illegal arrests, and to make the facts about Wounded Knee known to the American public. While pursuing these objectives WKLD/OC became an active participant in the negotiations that led to the end of the siege and the stand-down on May 8, 1973.

Over 400 people were arrested at Wounded Knee resulting in 275 cases in federal, state, and tribal courts. WKLD/OC represented all defendants in the federal and tribal Wounded Knee cases. The Wounded Knee federal cases included 7 defendants charged with major conspiracy (so-called leadership cases) and 127 defendants faced with charges involving breaking and entering, larceny, conspiracy, and interfering with federal marshals (Consolidated Wounded Knee Cases). The 97 persons tried in the tribal courts of the Oglala Sioux Tribe were charged almost exclusively with either riot or unlawful assembly as defined in the tribal code.

The Committee also handled related cases arising from events prior to the occupation and afterwards including protests at Scottsbluff, Nebraska, and Custer, Rapid City, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

In addition to its efforts at providing an adequate defense, WKLD/OC undertook several offensive actions, bringing about a dozen civil suits against several authorities, including the Oglala Sioux tribal council and its president, Dick Wilson, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Due to a determination that it would be impossible to obtain a fair trial in South Dakota, the federal leadership trials were moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and the consolidated cases to Lincoln, Nebraska, Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Bismarck, North Dakota. The South Dakota state cases were tried in Sioux Falls, Aberdeen, and Rapid City. These relocations, which transpired over a three-year period, required that WKLD/OC maintain a number of offices, thereby placing a heavy burden on the Committee's personnel, administrative functions, and financial resources. The various trial locations and chronology also played a significant role in the formulation of legal strategy.

WKLD/OC's organizational structure evolved in response to the politically charged nature and high profile of the trials, the relocations described above, its reliance on volunteer workers, and the constant need for funds. Early on, subcommittees were formed to manage the various facets of the defense efforts, which included tactical investigation, legal coordination, jury survey and investigation, office coordination, press/publicity, and fund-raising. Although the subcommittees' duties changed and overlapped, they are described generally below.

The investigative team maintained a house in Manderson, South Dakota, where it kept up contact with the people and problems of the Pine Ridge Reservation. The team was under constant harassment by supporters of Dick Wilson, known as the Goon Squad.

The legal committee dealt with lawyer recruitment, defendant and lawyer contacts, legal research, and investigation. It also administered subpoenas; managed witness, exhibit, and court pleadings files; indexed trial transcripts; and kept daily trial summaries. These efforts allowed the committee to effectively handle a massive amount of evidence and communicate legal strategy among the various trials.

Press and public relations activities included issuing press releases and managing press coverage, publishing a newsletter, and coordinating solidarity groups nationwide.

WKLD/OC's reliance on volunteers resulted in a continual change in personnel that, coupled with close living and working quarters, necessitated the establishment of strict office rules and internal security. The issue of security was addressed from the outset and became more acute as the trials progressed and the presence of government informants became known. Staff turnover also created a need for an orientation process that would inform new members of the history, structure, and objectives of AIM and the committee.

Many of the difficulties WKLD/OC faced were the direct result of the zealous effort with which the U.S. government pursued the Wounded Knee cases. The defendants argued that the government's objective was to use the indictments to destroy AIM and stem the activism it fostered among Indian people. The impact of the legal battles fought by WKLD/OC upon the broader political and social objectives of the Indian movement of the 1970s is open to debate; however, the direct result of its defense efforts was a 92.3% acquittal and dismissal rate in what may have been one of most massive and complex series of legal proceedings in U.S. history.

Historical data was taken from the papers.

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These documents are organized into the following sections:

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Availability:

The collection is open for research use.

Preferred Citation:

[Indicate the cited item and/or series here]. Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee Records. Minnesota Historical Society.

See the Chicago Manual of Style for additional examples.

Accession Information:

Accession numbers: 11,994; 12,233; 12,016; 12,445; 12,677; 12, 771; 14,017; 14,628; 15,037; 15,959

Location of Master Files:

Digital masters of the audiovisual material are maintained on the Society's secure digital collections storage servers and are managed and preserved in accordance with archival best practices.

The original audiocassettes, audio reels, and videocassettes were disposed after the material was digitally reformatted into MOV and WAV files.

Processing Information:

Processed by: Frank Hennessy, March 1996; Christopher G. Welter, January 2010.

Digital audiovisual files transferred from the master audiocassettes, audio reels, and videocassettes by the Minnesota Historical Society for preservation purposes (February, 2020).

Digitization was made possible by the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund through the vote of Minnesotans on November 4, 2008.

Catalog ID number: 990017329140104294

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This portion of the collection chronicles the events surrounding Wounded Knee and relates the repercussions of those events upon each other and upon the American Indian protest movement of the 1970s. Beyond its function as a chronicle, the files contain an extensive collection of legal documents tracing the evolution of the legal issues, arguments, and strategy adopted by WKLD/OC as the Wounded Knee and related trials unfolded.

The collection's initial group of papers provide an account of incidents involving AIM prior to the occupation of Wounded Knee. Among these events was a disturbance at a Chicano-Indian unity conference in Scottsbluff, Nebraska (January 13-14, 1973), which resulted in numerous arrests, and a riot at the Custer, South Dakota courthouse during a protest over the murder of an Indian, Wesley Bad Heart Bull, by a white businessman who was subsequently charged with second degree manslaughter, rather than first degree murder, and received a two month suspended sentence (February 6, 1973)

The main body of the papers documents the Wounded Knee occupation and ensuing legal battles. Papers related to the occupation's aftermath recount a riot at the Minnehaha County Courthouse in Sioux Falls, South Dakota during the trial of those arrested at Custer (April 30, 1974); the widespread harassment and violence on the Pine Ridge reservation following the occupation; a shoot-out at Oglala, South Dakota (June 26, 1975), which resulted in the deaths of two FBI agents and the life imprisonment of Leonard Peltier; and legal actions related to the publication of Peter Matthiessen's account of the Oglala incident in his book, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.

Some of the pivotal issues and arguments raised during the trials and documented in the collection's legal records include the government's lack of jurisdiction under the 1868 treaty with the Sioux Nation, the constitutionality of the Major Crimes Act and the Civil Disobedience Act of 1968, the illegal use of the U.S. military during the siege, and governmental misconduct during the occupation and trials.

The legal records also depict a number of the Committee's defense strategies, including its attempts to refuse judges felt to be prejudiced against the defendants, particularly Judge Andrew Bogue of Rapid City; its efforts to change the location of trials due to prejudice; its employment of systematic jury selection and investigation, a fairly new and controversial practice; and the filing of several defense appeals.

The records associated with these legal issues and maneuvers consist of indictments, subpoenas, criminal dockets, motions, briefs, memoranda, pleadings, affidavits, transcripts, jury lists, questionnaires, and surveys.

The legal records and evidence described above were organized and made accessible through a filing and indexing system shared by the various WKLD/OC offices. The major file series include defendant and witness files, subject files, an active and closed case file, and radio logs. Personal name, subject, and date indexes covering the various files are also included.

Files kept by WKLD/OC's legal coordinator, Kenneth Tilsen, follow those kept at WKLD/OC offices. A large number of the cases represented in this series are also documented in the preceding WKLD/OC files, however there are some additional cases and some from the preceding series that are considerably expanded. These would include Richard Marshall's appeal of his conviction in the Scenic murder case (1976-1981); the events and legal proceedings following the Oglala shoot-out, including the murder of Anna Mae Aquash (1976-1985) and post-trial matters related to Leonard Peltier (1975-1986); and the lawsuits filed against Viking Press and Peter Matthiessen by FBI special agent David Price and South Dakota governor William Janklow in their attempts to block the publication of Matthiessen's account of the Oglala shoot-out (1983-1990).

Both the WKLD/OC office and Tilsen files contain records related to offensive measures taken by WKLD/OC encompassing a series of civil lawsuits against the tribal council and federal government. These suits began during the Wounded Knee occupation and continued throughout the trials. Their primary thrust was to unseat Dick Wilson and halt what they believed to be his administration's abuses on the reservation, which included the use of vigilantes to harass and intimidate opponents, employment and other forms of discrimination against persons seen as AIM sympathizers, and orders barring WKLD/OC lawyers from entering the reservation. In the OST Election Suit WKLD/OC disputed Wilson's defeat of Russell Means, citing several instances of voter rights violations during the 1974 election for council president.

Civil actions against the federal government included a suit filed by WKLD/OC for a preliminary injunction against FBI harassment and surveillance that interfered with the Committee's preparation of an adequate defense, and a suit filed by a group of Wounded Knee residents challenging the government's use of military force in civil law enforcement during the Wounded Knee occupation.

The records described thus far are augmented by research files covering numerous legal topics and miscellaneous background files which provide information on AIM, Oglala Sioux tribal politics and government, and the New Oglala Sioux Nation established within Wounded Knee during the occupation. There is also a group of general files covering a broad range of topics, many of them focused on Indian issues in general.