Events Shaped The Women Of Wounded Knee -- 2 Recall Their Growth In Indian Activism

WOUNDED KNEE, S.D. - Madonna Thunder Hawk prefers coming here as seasons change, she says, when time's passage is evident in the leaves and air.

She comes here to awaken what is buried within. Wounded Knee is a place of death - the 1890 massacre of more than 200 Sioux by the 7th Cavalry, the 71-day siege in 1973 by the American Indian Movement in which two more were killed. Yet, to Thunder Hawk, it is a symbol of life.

"Our people are survivors, you know? This is just another page in the ongoing history of our people," she says. "The struggle never ends."

It has been 25 years since Thunder Hawk, 58, walked upon these hills through darkness and steep ravines - avoiding roadblocks and arrest, her backpack heavy with ammunition for the AIM cause.

She was one of a small group hiking 12 miles in from Porcupine. Among those with her was Lorelei DeCora, who three years earlier at age 16 became one of the youngest members of the AIM board of directors.

They were distant relatives, but it wasn't until they became involved in AIM, a civil-rights movement born in 1968, that they drew close. The two of them traveled together, protested together, were arrested together.

The 1973 conflict started as a result of turmoil between two factions on the Pine Ridge reservation. AIM had been called in by a group of traditional Oglala elders who said they were under attack by Richard Wilson, the elected tribal chairman, and his "goon squad."

The conflict came to symbolize the disparity between those adhering to traditional Indian cultures and those living nontraditional lives. But when the shooting started and federal agents became involved, the conflict pitted AIM against the U.S. government.

About half of those involved in the occupation were women, Thunder Hawk says. And after Wounded Knee, when many of the male leaders, including her cousin Russell Means, were arrested or on the run, women took on greater responsibilities. Thunder Hawk and DeCora helped form Women of All Red Nations when it became dangerous to declare affiliation with AIM.

They fought to save the sacred Black Hills from developers and did a water study on Pine Ridge that indicated dangerous levels of radiation, eventually resulting in a new water system. Thunder Hawk, who earned a bachelor's degree in human services, started a group home/survival school in Rapid City during the Wounded Knee trials. The school was moved to Pine Ridge.

DeCora, 44, earned a bachelor's degree in nursing. She helped establish the Porcupine Clinic. Both remain activists on their home reservations, Thunder Hawk at Cheyenne River in South Dakota, DeCora at the Winnebago reservation in Nebraska.

DeCora's life as an activist began at age 15, while she was attending high school in Sioux City, Iowa, 20 miles from the Winnebago reservation. A book titled "Hawkeye Tales" was being used in public schools. It described American Indians as savages and referred to women as "squaws."

DeCora led a successful drive to remove the book from schools. A year later, she helped found a youth center for American Indians and led an effort to stop a construction project on a burial ground.

It was in Sioux City that she met Thunder Hawk and became involved in AIM. At Wounded Knee, they became medics, working with volunteer physicians who would fly in.

In the beginning, Wounded Knee was exciting, she says. Ironically, there was a sense of freedom.

"We were surrounded by the military might of the United States, but we were a community that had no police, no monetary system, no laws other than what we wanted to make."

All that changed the day Frank Clearwater died in the fighting with federal agents.

"The whole top of his head was blown off," DeCora says. "Everything up to that point was fun, but when I saw that, I thought, `This man just gave his life, so this better be worth it.' My whole perception of Wounded Knee changed at that moment, and I wondered, `What are we accomplishing here?' "

The second person killed in the shootout was Buddy LaMonte, whose death led to the end of the siege. LaMonte had told his family that if he was killed, he wanted to be buried at Wounded Knee.

"The Feds agreed to let Mrs. LaMonte bury her son there if we agreed to give up the day after the funeral. We had a meeting, and an elder, a medicine man, stood up with tears in his eyes and said it was time to end this. I stood up and said, `Our chief has spoken to us. We said we would follow the direction of the chiefs.' "

An ancestor of DeCora's in the 1700s was the only woman to serve as chief of the Winnebagos. It had been prophesied, DeCora's grandmother told her, that every few generations the chief's spirit would emerge through female descendants.

It is that spirit, DeCora says, that has guided her.

Even as a teenager, she says, people listened to her. During Wounded Knee, even though it was men like Russell Means and Dennis Banks who represented AIM in front of the cameras, the words of DeCora and the other women were valued.

"I spoke at a NOW (National Organization for Women) conference about the role of women in the struggle of American Indians," she says, "and I told them that we don't have the luxury as a people to address issues of equality. If your people are dying and they're hungry, then you have to address those issues before you have time to address other issues."

Still, she says, it is important that women share their stories, pass them to the next generation.

"If you read the book `Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,' it's all these stories of all these men. They're not the stories of Crazy Horse's wife. Who was she? What did she do?"

Thunder Hawk, too, has stories to tell. Her role models were her grandmothers, one who had a soft lap, one whom she called Twinkle Star, an outspoken woman unafraid to express her views.

"She told us about the stars, about the sacred Black Hills. She was the one who told me about treaty rights. There were no strong, stoic Indian grandfathers in our lives. There were strong grandmothers."

And now it is Thunder Hawk and DeCora who are grandmothers. They don't see each other as often as they would like. Both are divorced, both living with daughters.

"It's a hard life," DeCora says, "It's easy to just think of yourself and drive a nice car and have nice things, but the reward is that when the day comes that I have to die or Madonna has to die, and our ancestors are there in the spirit world, we can stand in front of them and say, `I didn't just look the other way. I did what I could.' "