Dwain Camp, along with his brothers Carter and Craig, were among hundreds of people behind the lines during the occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973. Here’s his story about the 71 days that captivated the world. Note: Some portions of this were published previously.
Dwain Camp
Special to ICT
A Lakota man once said, “We can see far from the high hill of old age.” So today, as an ancient Ponca elder and 50 years after the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, my belief in the historical importance of the takeover and occupation of Wounded Knee has never wavered.
That 71-day occupation stands out as a singular, life-changing experience for me, and, I believe, for us all.
While I’ve been planning for years to write of my part in the Wounded Knee occupation, it has never happened, other than brief and lesser accounts. So now, a half-century later, with the time for telling becoming increasingly precious, I will begin my story this winter day as I sit in my warm house in Ponca Country in Oklahoma.
Read more:
—Wounded Knee legacy lives on 50 years later
—Wounded Knee anniversary events
—Wounded Knee land comes home at last
My journey began with a phone call in southern California. I had been watching the news about the “renegade Indians” and the takeover of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, when the phone rang.
It was my brother, Carter, on the line.
“Hey brother, we are in a hell of a fight,” he said, and it sounded like it.
Brother Carter had been given a special honor by the Lakota people and the American Indian Movement, to lead the first contingent of warriors on Feb. 27, 1973, into the small town where hundreds of Lakota people had been slaughtered in 1890 by U.S. soldiers.
Within days, I was behind the lines at Wounded Knee. I went to help my brother but I stayed because of the larger fight against the perpetrators of centuries of oppression and injustice to Native people.
Joining the warriors
I managed to get into Wounded Knee a few days after the occupation began. It was my second attempt.
The day of the phone call from Carter, I left southern California on a commercial flight to Denver. The AIM chapter there exchanged my California clothes for a winter coat, jeans and boots. Then it was just me and a pilot in a small, light plane on a low-altitude flight to South Dakota. We flew in under 1,000 feet to avoid detection.
We landed in Rapid City, and I hitchhiked to Pine Ridge. The sandbag emplacements at Pine Ridge were already noticeable at strategic points, and I was turned away by law enforcement when I tried to get into Wounded Knee.
I retreated to spend the night in Rapid City, where all the talk was of the confrontation taking place at Wounded Knee. The next day, I hitched a ride part-way with a small group of young men and women from the San Francisco Bay area, and was able to walk into Wounded Knee by avoiding the roadways.
Success! I was jubilant. Soon I was part of the chaotic scene inside Wounded Knee, and I spent the next day walking the busy downtown streets in search of Carter.
Many locals as well as numerous Natives from across the country were bustling about on their various errands, but Carter was well-known and we were soon united. A similar reunion was to be repeated shortly afterward, as we spotted younger brother Craig.
Remarkably, Craig and I, with no prior communication, had arrived within hours of each other in Wounded Knee from different points in California. At that moment, we were three excited and happy brothers.
A diverse group
Life within Wounded Knee for the next couple of months had a hard-to-define quality, a certain vitality, an entirely new feeling of freedom that we all shared. “The free-est feeling” is a phrase I would use countless times in the coming years, as I would attempt to explain the experience to others.
We each established living quarters, made new friends and found productive ways to spend the time when not on duty in the perimeter bunkers. From the beginning, unless we were actively engaged in a firefight, we had general meetings each evening in the large trading post building.
There were four leaders established by that time. They were Russell Means, a known local Lakota activist; two Anishnaabe founders of AIM, Dennis Banks and Clyde Bellecourt; and my brother Carter, a Ponca from Oklahoma who had brought the largest contingent on the Trail of Broken Treaties.
These four leaders were the primary speakers at the evening meetings, telling all of us of any pertinent news from the outside or new developments inside Wounded Knee. In retrospect, these evening meetings no doubt contributed to the cohesiveness of the diverse group of warriors.
My brothers and I – while living and “working” separately – would, on most days, meet privately for a few minutes and discuss the day’s events and generally catch up on any other news.
Brother Carter, in a leadership position, spent his days overseeing the many facets and problems of the hundreds of Natives in Wounded Knee, as well as working on negotiations for a cease-fire and an end to the occupation.
SUPPORT INDIGENOUS JOURNALISM. CONTRIBUTE TODAY.
Brother Craig soon gravitated to the inner security force, made up mainly of his fellow Vietnam combat veterans. He seemed to be constantly busy, often in an advisory capacity for those with no military background.
There was never a shortage of volunteers, so early on, when the time came that there weren’t sufficient sleeping quarters, I got six to eight people together and we converted a section of the biggest structure, the erstwhile Trading Post, into compartments we laughingly called apartments.
The walls were made of cardboard nailed onto 2x4s, but they afforded couples with little ones, of which there were very few, a more private place to sleep.
The only vehicle inside Wounded Knee – a mud-covered van known as “the Tank” – was kept quite busy. Later, as the mud wore thin, “U-HAUL” could be discerned on each side of the van. We joked that it originally had spelled out “YOU-HAUL.”
The majority of the guys shared sentry duty on the perimeter. The women, while fewer in number, were kept busy in a multitude of jobs, including feeding and caring for hundreds of warriors.
‘I was willing to die’
We had come to understand that AIM’s basic tenet was religious and not violent, so many of us felt it was incumbent upon us to attend the sweat lodge when it was available. Those sweats were most often held by Uncle Wallace Black Elk, a Lakota medicine man behind the lines. His wife, Aunt Grace Black Elk, seemed always in the background directing us on where and when to eat, etc.
One day, as I was leaving a sweat, sans clothes as usual, I made a “snow angel” on the ground. That’s how high the skin’s temperature gets in a good sweat.
Later on in the occupation, we were advised by leaders that the negotiations had broken down and the federal forces had threatened to overrun our positions momentarily. This time when we left the sweat lodge, Uncle Wallace and the only other medicine man inside Wounded Knee, Leonard Crow Dog, painted our faces traditionally for war.
When my face was painted in a short but powerful ceremony, I felt imbued with the feeling of ancient tradition. It was a defining experience, one to be remembered. It was also soon to be repeated two days later when, once again, the peace talks broke down. We painted up after that sweat, too, and expected the enemy.
Today, as I look back, I understand how deeply the warrior mindset was in all of us. It was, in fact, many months after I left Wounded Knee and became ”normalized,” that I realized I’d had a warrior’s mindset that considered the U.S. as the enemy, and that I was willing to die, if necessary.
Today, I find it somewhat remarkable that approximately 300 young Natives (well over a thousand if you count those who only visited for a short time) coming from dozens of different tribal nations across the country, lived and worked together, sharing meals and any and all resources, without a single fight. There were disagreements, arguments even, but not a single physical altercation.
That was very unusual, considering the militant make-up of most of the armed, young warriors. Another notable and, no doubt related factor, is that there was never any alcohol or drug use of any kind. That is to say zero, absolutely none.
An intense firefight
One day we were playing poker in the huge basement of the Trading Post when someone stuck their head in to tell us an intense firefight was going on. We all hurried to our respective posts.
In that battle, on April 17, 1973, we suffered several badly wounded warriors, including one who sustained wounds that proved fatal.
It had been a late, cold and snowy winter, and I remember that night when the snow started again. It completely covered the blackness of the surrounding half-mile of flare-burned area, known as the DMZ, or demilitarized zone, a familiar term in the Vietnam era. I didn’t know when I ran out of the Trading Post basement into an intense 24-hour firefight that I would soon be crawling through that newly fallen snow.
It was the next morning that Carter asked Craig and me to meet privately, and that night, I made my exit from Wounded Knee, from the Independent Oglala Nation, with an armed escort of 10 handpicked young Lakota warriors.
The 10 men had been chosen for different reasons. Some were needed at home, others had undisclosed missions, but all knew the terrain. I left the compound proudly carrying my new ION citizenship papers, a huge backpack with all of our most valuable possessions and most importantly, my own mission, which was primarily to unravel the problems impeding the aid to our warriors inside and our supporters outside.
We nearly made it.
After crawling for what seemed like 20 miles with a 500-pound backpack (it was actually two miles with a 50-pound backpack) on hands and knees to avoid the invisible electronic sensors three feet above the ground, and within a mile of freedom, we were stumbled upon by a column of soldiers who were trying to find their commander. Pinned down in a ravine, all 11 of us were captured by the U.S. Army.
The cross-country trip to the Pine Ridge jail was memorable, primarily for the stoic bravery of my Lakota companions. Hands cuffed behind us, made to stay face down on the steel bed of the Army truck, we were banged and bumped bloody by the rough terrain, much to the mirth of the accompanying soldiers. But there was not a complaint; not even a word was uttered. It became to me, and I am sure to all of the others, a test of will.
By the time we finally hit a blacktop road, the soldiers had stopped laughing. Forgotten was my chagrin at having been captured; I couldn’t have been prouder of my brothers. Finally arriving at the Pine Ridge jail, before having the plastic handcuffs cut off of our immensely swollen hands, I was isolated and laying face down on a steel bunk when Dick Wilson, the controversial Oglala tribal chairman himself, entered my cell and picked my head up by the hair and peered into my face intently.
He said only one word, ”Name.” When I replied, “Dwain Camp,” he must have believed me, because after a long moment he slammed my face down and stalked out, saying, “That’s not Carter.”
We were stripped of all belongings and held with no pretense of due process. A treasured pipestone bestowed by our brother, Leonard Crow Dog, and my ION citizenship papers were two of my great losses, along with Carter and Craig’s cherished belongings. They were never recovered.
We were all detained and eventually booked on a variety of charges that were, after numerous court appearances, dropped for good.
‘We are home’
Months after leaving Wounded Knee, I was walking down a quiet, residential street in Los Angeles and I realized that I was not looked upon as an enemy. I was considered the same as other residents. At that time, it was a revelation, and I realized I considered them the same way. They were no longer the enemy.
These are my words for future generations and all my relations. I’d like to end this with words from my brother Carter, from a letter he wrote to me before we lost him to cancer in 2013.
“The honor of being chosen to go first still lives strong in my heart,” he wrote.
“That night we had no idea what fate awaited us. It was a cold night with not much moonlight and I clearly remember the nervous anticipation I felt as we drove the back-way from Oglala into Wounded Knee. The Chiefs had tasked me with a mission and we were sworn to succeed, of that I was sure, but I couldn’t help wondering if we were prepared.
“The FBI, BIA and Marshals had fortified Pine Ridge with machine gun bunkers and A.P.C.s with M-60s. They had unleashed the goon squad on the people and a reign of terror had begun. We knew we had to fight but we could not fight on wasicu terms. We were lightly armed and dependent on the weapons and ammo inside the Wounded Knee trading post. I worried that we would not get to them before the shooting started. As we stared silently into the darkness driving into the hamlet I tried to foresee what opposition we would encounter and how to neutralize it…
“We were approaching a sacred place and each of us knew it. We could feel it deep inside. As a warrior leading warriors I humbly prayed to Wakonda for the lives of all and the wisdom to do things right. Never before or since have I offered my tobacco with such a plea or put on my feathers with such purpose. It was the birth of the Independent Oglala Nation. Things went well for us that night; we accomplished our task without loss of life.
“Then, in the cold darkness as we waited for Dennis and Russ to bring in the caravan (or for the fight to start), I stood on the bank of the shallow ravine where our people had been murdered by Custer’s 7th Cavalry. There I prayed for the defenseless ones, torn apart by Hotchkiss cannon and trampled under hooves of steel by drunken wasicu. I could feel the touch of their spirits as I eased quietly into the gully and stood silently… waiting for my future, touching my past.
“Finally, I bent over and picked a sprig of sage – whose ancestors in 1890 had been nourished by the blood of Red babies, ripped from their mothers’ dying grasp and bayonetted by the evil ones. As I washed myself with that sacred herb I became cold in my determination and cleansed of fear. I looked for Big Foot and YellowBird in the darkness and I said aloud,
“We are back my relations, we are home. Hoka-Hey.”
