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

Plains Histories

by Clara Kidwell (Foreword), Akim D. Reinhardt

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.

288 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2007

Reviews

[Brenda Petersen]

Akim Reinhardt is a dear friend so it's impossible to be objective. Nonetheless, he has spent a great deal of time examining this issue and I'm finding his book extremely helpful in understanding the context of the 1973 Pine Ridge occupation/seige.