From Wounded Knee to Standing Rock: A Reporter's Journey

In the winter of 1973, a young photographer named Kevin McKiernan, at the time a resident of Minneapolis, was contacted by National Public radio and asked to report from the occupation by armed American Indian Movement members of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The site had historical significance as the scene of federal troops massacring 300 Lakota men, women, and children in 1890. Even though he had no experience in print or broadcast journalism, McKiernan made his way there and, despite efforts by officials to block access, managed to become the only reporter embedded with AIM. Over an extraordinary 71 days, a couple hundred AIM members from disparate indigenous nations hunkered down with their weapons, exchanging gunfire with militarized feds. This was indeed a war, with people killed on both sides. McKiernan, more than 40 years after those events, returned to Wounded Knee, this time as an independent filmmaker, to interview survivors and take a fresh look at key locations. He makes an excellent effort to convey a fraught, bloody story in this documentary of protest and resistance. With a breathless, you-are-there approach, he compiles news footage, amateur film, contemporary testimony (from former FBI leaders as well as AIM organizers) and, above all, superb still images he shot on the scene in '73. What emerges is not just an improbable David and Goliath tale but a surprising dimension of duplicity, extortion and betrayal, including Indian-on-Indian treachery and murder. No one comes away with a clean conscience. Strongly recommended. (T. Keogh)