Fifty years ago, a group of Native Oglala Lakota and their supporters occupied a small village called Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. Wounded Knee was the site of a notorious massacre in 1890, when US cavalry killed nearly 300 Lakota people. Local spiritual leaders and civil rights activists called in the American Indian Movement, or AIM, to support the occupation. It resulted in a siege that pitted AIM against US Marshals, the FBI, and a private militia known as the GOON squad. But the takeover also inspired a wave of international support and solidarity.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, activist and author of books including An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States and Blood on the Border, spoke with Long Reads producer Conor Gillies about the legacy of the Wounded Knee uprising.

Find Roxanne's piece, "'Indian' Wars," excerpted from An Indigenous Peoples' History, here: https://jacobin.com/2014/09/indian-wars/

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

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