Representing the Massacre of American Indians at Wounded Knee, 1890-2000

At Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota in 1890, the majority of Big Foot's band of Miniconjou was massacred by the 7th Cavalry of the United States Army. Wounded Knee has gained great symbolic significance over the years. It is often linked with the end of the frontier and the Lakota nation, and as symbolic of broken treaties, US military aggression and subsequent injustice towards Native Americans. This study examines 110 years of representations including conflicting newspaper and journal reports, survivors' testimonies, official reports, compensation hearing claims, history texts, autobiographies, fiction, Oscar Howe's painting Wounded Knee Massacre, the film Thunderheart, and displays is museums of artifacts. ease with which stereotypes are adopted and accepted, the assumption of objectivity in historical texts, the complexities involved in collecting Lakota stories, the tensions between the freedom encountered and limits imposed on writing historical fiction, and the ethical issues confronted in the memorialization and display of the Wounded Knee site and artifacts.