BACKGROUND

Pine Ridge Indian Reservation was a scene of desolation in 1973. Most people lived in tarpaper shacks without running water, electricity, or indoor plumbing. Shannon County, which the reservation is part of, was then— and is to this day —the poorest county in America. The life expectancy was 45 years old. Unemployment: 87%. Tuberculosis and Diabetes were 8 times the national average. There were no malls, no public transportation, no libraries, no movie theaters., no nothing except rampant suicide, widespread alcoholism and third-world poverty.

But not everybody on Pine Ridge was poor. Among them was a pudgy, short-haired mixed-blood named “Dicky” Wilson, Pine Ridge’s tribal president, who maintained a private army of about eighty heavily armed thugs, paid by government money. Under his rule, Pine Ridge was a killing field. Opponents firebombed houses, riddled their cars and homes with bullets. They were beaten and shot. Things got so out of hand that even the long-suffering back-country full-bloods, known for their capacity to endure in silence, began to grumble. The old treaty chiefs, medicine men, tribal interpreters, and traditionalists petitioned for Wilson’s removal, but corruption in the impeachment process thwarted their attempt— leading to even more repression and violence. Things finally came to a boil a few months later in Custer. The most racist town in America.

The name Custer itself was a provocation. Custer, a town built on a spot which native legends said the home of the sacred thunderbirds, desecrated by tourist traps such as a phony Indian village with a big sign with read: SEE HOW THEY LIVE!

(STILL FINISHING THIS)