Wounded Knee should be a national monument, not a profit centre

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/01/wounded-knee-national-monument


The Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota has one of the highest poverty rates in the US. Photograph: Jennifer Brown/Corbis

Wednesday 1 May 2013, we may learn the fate of the massacre site at Wounded Knee, a plot of land on the Pine Ridge Reservation that is currently owned by one James Czywczynski. Though the land would be worth only$7,000 if a tribe member were to sell that much land back to the tribe, Czywczynski believes the site's historical significance justifies his asking price of $3.9m for two 40-acre tracts.

He also wants to be compensated for the loss of his trading post and museum, which he bought back in 1971. That was two years before the historic American Indian Movement (AIM) occupation and battle against the US government in 1973, which some called "Wounded Knee II". It was during that standoff that the trading post burned to the ground, along with his museum and house.

There is no arguing the site's historical significance. Most know it only as the place where the Indian wars ended, in 1890, and would leave it at that. In fact, in that incident over 300 unarmed men, women and children were killed at Wounded Knee, while 20 soldiers were awarded congressional medals of honor for their part in the massacre. An ongoing campaign, via Avaaz.org, seeks to rescind the medals. It is the story of an American holocaust that have probably never heard about or saw in any textbook.

In 1990, Congress issued a formal apology to the descendants for the massacre, although the resolution did not provide any reparations or declare the site a national monument, which was requested by the Wounded Knee Survivors Association. Today, there are no monuments or museums at the site, only a graveyard and memories.