On February 27, 1973, AIM members and Oglala Lakota traditionalists occupied the hamlet of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation — site of the 1890 massacre — demanding hearings on broken treaties and an end to the corrupt, federally backed tribal administration of Dick Wilson. Federal marshals, FBI agents, and armored personnel carriers besieged the village for 71 days in the largest domestic military-style operation since the Civil War era; two Native men, Frank Clearwater and Buddy Lamont, were killed by government fire before the stand-down on May 8.
The occupation put Indigenous sovereignty on the world's front pages, and the government answered with mass prosecution: a special Justice Department operation produced more than 500 arrests and 185 federal indictments against participants, tying the movement up in court for years and defining a generation of Native political prisoners.