MikeDunnAuthorToday in Labor History December 29, 1890: U.S. Army troops slaughtered 300 Sioux men, women and children in the Wounded Knee Massacre on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota. Two weeks earlier, they had killed Sitting Bull for failing to stop the Ghost Dance. The people living in Sitting Bull’s camp fled to the Pine Ridge Reservation, where the U.S. Army caught up to them on December 29. They began disarming the Lakota warriors. However, Black Coyote didn’t want to give up his rifle, because he had paid a lot for it. When his rifle went off in the struggle, the U.S. Army began shooting indiscriminately at the mostly unarmed Lakota. In addition to the 300 Lakota who died, 25 U.S. soldiers also died. And 20 soldiers were given the Medal of Honor.
L. Frank Baum, author of “Wizard of Oz,” was a newspaper editor at the time. He wrote, “Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands.” Sound similar to some of the current quotes coming from Israeli and U.S. politicians with regards to Palestine? Or MAGA fascists with regards to immigrants and trans folk? And then there was General Martinez, who launched the 1932 genocide against El Salvador’s indigenous people, and against it’s communists and union activists, who said that the U.S. was great because it had wiped out its indigenous population, and for El Salvador to become great, it must do so, too.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #WoundedKnee #indigenous #genocide #lakota #treaty #nativeamerican #sioux #ghostdance #indigenousrights #palestine #israel #FreePalestine #EndTheOccupation #EndThesiege #israel #communism #elsalvador
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