Johnson Troy R. Red Power: The Native American Civil Rights Movement

Chelsea House Publications, 2007. — 112 p.The 71-day occupation of the village at Wounded Knee - February 27 to May 8, 1973 - is a watershed event in the chronology of American Indian activism because it reflects both the height of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the beginning of the end of the power of that organization. It was at Wounded Knee Village where government forces surrounded a small, poorly armed band of AIM members who were protesting the death of Raymond Yellow Thunder and Wesley Bad Heart Bull and the subsequent court trials that meted out only minimal sentences for involuntary manslaughter to the non-Indian defendants. AIM members confronted local law enforcement and violently protested against the charges. As a result, the government declared a concentrated, no-holds-barred campaign to remove AIM leadership and to bankrupt the organization. The forceful text, detailed sidebars and chronology, and powerful images presented in Red Power transport readers back to this tense moment in recent American history.Troy R. Johnson is a professor of history and American Indian studies at California State University, Long Beach. He is the author and editor of several books, including Red Power: The American Indians’ Fight for Freedom (available in a Bison Books edition) and Contemporary Native American Political Issues.