Ruling Pine Ridge: Oglala Lakota Politics from the IRA to Wounded Knee

by Akim D. Reinhardt, Clara Kidwell

Overview

Incorporating previously overlooked materials, including tribal council records, oral histories, and reservation newspapers, Ruling Pine Ridge explores the political history of South Dakota’s Oglala Lakota reservation during the mid-twentieth century. Akim D. Reinhardt examines the reservation’s transition from the direct colonialism of the pre-1934 era to the indirect colonial policies of the controversial Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) and the advent of the tribal council governing system still in place today on Pine Ridge and on many other reservations. Reinhardt demonstrates how conflicting political values foregrounded by the new governing format led to an aggravation of social divisions on the reservation and eventually came to a head in 1973 with the occupation and siege of Wounded Knee. The siege is best understood, he claims, not as a political stunt of the American Indian Movement (AIM) but as a spontaneous, grassroots protest at least forty years in the making.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780896726567
Publisher:	Texas Tech University Press
Publication date:	03/15/2009
Series:	Plains Histories
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Akim D. Reinhardt is an associate professor of History at Towson University in Maryland. His work has also appeared in American Indian Quarterly, the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, and La Pensée.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations     xi
List of Tables     xiii
Foreword     xv
Acknowledgments     xxi
A Note on Terminology     xxv
A Note on Methodology and Sources     xxvii
1934-1946
Introduction: Hopscotching the Past     3
Indirect Colonialism: The Indian Reorganization Act     19
"Any Reasonable Request...": Office of Indian Affairs Political Power During the Early Oglala Sioux Tribal Council Era     42
"Detrimental For The Best Interests Of The Sioux People": The First Ten Years of the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council     77
1970-1973
The Next Wilson: The Transition from Gerald One Feather to Dick Wilson     113
Full Force Gale: Oglala Politics and the American Indian Movement     139
"That Great Symbolic Act": The Siege of Wounded Knee as a Grassroots Political Protest     164
Conclusion: Connecting the Part     189
Preambles of the Constitution of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, 1921 and 1936     217
Members of the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council, 1936     218
Members of the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council, April 1972     219
Presidents of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, 1936-2006     220
Notes     221
Bibliography     259
Index     267