Surviving Wounded Knee: The Lakotas and the Politics of Memory

by David W. Grua

Overview

On December 29, 1890, the U.S. Seventh Cavalry killed more than two hundred Lakota Ghost Dancers- including men, women, and children-at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota. After the work of death ceased at Wounded Knee, the work of memory commenced. For the US Army and some whites, Wounded Knee was the site where a heroic victory was achieved against the fanatical Chief Big Foot and his treacherous Ghost Dancers and where the struggle between civilization and savagery for North America came to an end. For other whites, it was a stain on the national conscience, a leading example of America's dishonorable dealings with Native peoples. For Lakota survivors it was the site of a horrific massacre of a peacemaking chief and his people, and where the United States violated its treaty promises and slaughtered innocents.

Historian David Grua argues that Wounded Knee serves as a window into larger debates over how the United States' conquest of the indigenous peoples should be remembered. During the five decades after Wounded Knee, the survivors pursued historical justice in the form of compensation, in accordance with traditional Lakota conflict resolution practices and treaty provisions that required compensation for past wrongs. The survivors engaged in the politics of memory by preparing compensation claims, erecting a monument "in memory of the Chief Big Foot massacre" at the mass grave on the Pine Ridge Reservation, by dictating accounts to sympathetic whites, and by testifying before the U.S. Congress in the 1930s in support of a bill intended to "liquidate the liability" of the United States for Wounded Knee. Despite the bill's failure, the survivors' prolonged pursuit of justice laid the foundation for later activists who would draw upon the memorial significance of Wounded Knee to promote indigenous sovereignty.

Published on the 125th anniversary of this controversial event, Surviving Wounded Knee examines the Lakota survivors' half-century pursuit of justice and points to lingering questions about the United States' willingness to address the liabilities of Indian conquest.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190249038
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	01/06/2016
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.50(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

David W. Grua is a historian and documentary editor with the Joseph Smith Papers in the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Table of Contents

Preface
Chapter 1: The Road to Wounded Knee
Chapter 2: Exonerating the Seventh Cavalry
Chapter 3: The Last Battle
Chapter 4: In Memory of the Big Foot Massacre
Chapter 5: No Thought of Hostility
Chapter 6: Irreconcilable Memories
Chapter 7: Liquidating the Liability of the United States for Wounded Knee
Chapter 8: The Survivors' Legacies
Appendix: Survivor Lists
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

10/12/2015
Wounded Knee, S.Dak., emerged as a symbol of Native American resistance to white American dominance in the early 1970s, via Native scholar Dee Brown’s history, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and Lakota activists who occupied the site demanding greater sovereignty over tribal affairs. But as historian Grua emphasizes, the 1973 occupation “relied heavily on the endeavors of an earlier group of activists”: the survivors of the band of the Lakota Sioux leader Big Foot, who strove to obtain justice for kinsmen killed at Wounded Knee by U.S. cavalry in 1890. Following anthropologist Maurice Halbwachs’s conception of memory as a social construction, Grua stresses how Lakota memory of the massacre differed greatly from that of white Americans, encouraging Lakota survivors to dedicate their lives to gaining compensation for their people’s suffering. By tracing the patterns of recollection and interpretation of past events that informed respective responses to the Wounded Knee massacre, Grua lucidly reveals that “the Indian Wars had not ended in 1890; rather, the venue of struggle had changed from the battle field to the landscape of memory.” Grua encourages readers to reflect on the ways historical knowledge is constructed and why it can be so difficult for opponents to agree on the facts underlying a particular conflict. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"Surviving Wounded Knee offers insight into an aspect of the massacre at Wounded Knee that has received little attention: how the authoritative memory of the event developed and ultimately informed congressional action. Grua aptly demonstrates how the national memory of Wounded Knee was shaped in a colonial context, persisted in the face of contradictory evidence, and served to work against the interests of the survivors of Wounded Knee. His is not a one-sided story but one that works to provide a more balanced analysis of the memory of Lakota survivors of Wounded Knee with that of the authoritative national memory."—Michelene Pesantubbee, The Public Historian

"...Grua has provided a careful analysis of the early twentieth-century politics of memory of the most iconic and paradigmatic massacre in American history. And in the process, he has contributed to our ongoing reevaluation of the history of Indians wars through historical memory."—Boyd Cothran, NAIS

"Surviving Wounded Knee depicts the fight for meaning that followed the physical confrontation as the US Army, Buffalo Bill, and, above all, the Lakota struggled to explain the traumatic violence that took place that winter morning in 1890. With its close attention to Lakota efforts to remember and memorialize Wounded Knee, Grua's work foregrounds not only indigenous perspectives on a horrific event but offers a guide of sorts to what a more humane and ethical Western history might be."—from citation for the Robert M. Utley Award of the Western History Association

"With its detailed discussion of this important moment in the American past and straightforward style, this book is ideal for use in undergraduate and graduate courses in a range of social science disciplines."-Debra Buchholtz, Historical Dialogues

"David Grua's excellent examination of a contested public memory compellingly argues that the Wounded Knee Massacre was heavily influenced by the politics of memory and race-war philosophy...An excellent conversation about the contested memory of the 1890 massacre, and is a fantastic addition to memory studies and American ethnic history. Grua's writing is very accessible and I would highly recommend this book for use in a graduate reading seminar or an upper-division undergraduate course."—Nicholas A. Timmerman, American Ethnic History

"By implicating archives in the erasure of indigenous testimony, Grua's work invites scholars to ask additional questions about the construction of military archives and how the manufacture, exchange, and cataloguing of records silenced indigenous voices. By following Lakota history into the early twentieth century, Grua documents a new period of Lakota intervention in the politics of memory."—American Indian Culture and Research Journal

"Grua tells a gripping story: persistent survivors, callous bureaucrats...white allies, and maneuvering politicians. He also shows the strains within the survivor group and identifies points where the government's and the Lakotas' versions of events diverged. Surviving Wounded Knee offers the most detailed narrative of the 'politics of memory' I have ever read...Books of this quality remind us that Native American history does more than add brown faces to famous events."—Journal of American History

"Eloquent and persuasive...Grua's book is meticulously researched and well written...Surviving Wounded Knee is a powerful and provocative lens for anyone interested in questions of violence and memory, conquest and resistance."—Great Plains Quarterly

"[A]n important contribution that pushes our understanding of how and why Wounded Knee was remembered during and after the turn of the nineteenth century, and how and why the dominant memory was asserted and then challenged immediately after the violence ended in 1890...Grua not only looks at a troubling topic in American and world history but also pushes the scholarship in new and needed directions. His monograph is a welcome addition to the canon of American and North American history."—H-War

"Surviving Wounded Knee's most important contribution is showing the process by which a small group of dispossessed people memorialized their loved ones and documented their losses despite almost fifty years of official denial by most military sources Grua's work stands as both a finely written history and as a tribute to the Lakota men and women who spent their lives demanding justice from an unjust system."—Leila Monaghan, Montana

"The power that words can hold over human destiny forms the heart of this book...Gives an important story the attention that it has long deserved."—Western Historical Quarterly

"Painful, powerful, and impossible to put down, Surviving Wounded Knee is a thoughtful meditation about the collision of history and memory in a settler-colonial society. This book transformed my understanding of one of the darkest chapters in the nation's history."—Ari Kelman, author of A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek

"The 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee casts a long shadow in American history. Grua's fascinating study tracks the protracted contest, which began immediately after the last shot was fired, to tell the story of what really happened on that wintry day. Whose version would prevail: the army's or the Indians'? Military men disagreed among themselves while the Lakota survivors' rendition, emphasizing army perfidy, was ignored for many years. Now, Grua brings it into full light. In doing so, he reveals the survivors' indomitable spirit and determination to prevail-if not on the killing fields-at least in the battle over memory and meaning."—Sherry L. Smith, author of Hippies, Indians and the Fight for Red Power

"David Grua's Surviving Wounded Knee takes a completely original approach to one of the most famous and contested events in western American history. By showing how Lakota survivors of Wounded Knee fought a long battle to overturn a dominant narrative that blamed Lakotas for the massacre, Grua's careful and sensitive analysis of the politics of memory both explains and exemplifies a more humane western history."—Jeffrey Ostler, author of The Lakotas and the Black Hills: The Struggle for Sacred Ground

"Grua's work stands as both a finely written history and as a tribute to the Lakota men and women who spent their lives demanding justice from an unjust system."—Montana: The Magazine of Western History

From the Publisher

11/15/2015
On December 29, 1890, the U.S. Seventh Cavalry attacked Chief Big Foot's Lakota near Wounded Knee Creek, ostensibly because they adopted the Ghost Dance religion. Approximately 200 Lakota were slaughtered, including women and children, and the cavalry suffered 35 casualties. In this debut, historian Grua explores how and why that event was remembered by different groups. The cavalrymen claimed they were attacked by warriors and defended themselves; their gallantry was rewarded with 20 Congressional Medals of Honor. Other Americans saw a senseless massacre and endeavored unsuccessfully to convince their countrymen of that fact. Most poignant were the ongoing efforts of the native survivors to testify as to the events of the day in hopes of receiving reparations that never came. Their accounts made Wounded Knee a symbol in the 1970s when Dee Brown used them to shape his book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and the American Indian Movement utilized the site as the backdrop for some of their political endeavors. VERDICT This excellent work provides much food for thought. For context, readers should also consider Jerome Greene's American Carnage: Wounded Knee, 1890.—John R. Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY

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