PART FOUR: Escape From Wounded Knee - AIMs Dennis Banks Escapes From Feds
- From: "菩薩" <psychedelictourist@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 23 Mar 2007 03:27:23 -0700
This is a pretty remarkable story -
ESCAPE FROM WOUNDED KNEE – 4th of 4 Articles
’On Native American Rights’
By Kathy Helms – khelms@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dine Bureau – March 8th, 2007
http://nativeunity.blogspot.com/2007/03/escape-from-wounded-knee-4th-of-4.html
WINDOW ROCK -- As winter turned to spring, still surrounded by FBI
agents, Bureau of Indian Affairs Police and Guardians of Oglala
Nation, members of the American Indian Movement began to leave Wounded
Knee.
The stand-down to end the 73-day seige was set for May 7, 1973. Inside
the Little Big Horn Bunker only Lenny Foster from the Navajo Nation
and Percy Casper, a Suswap from British Columbia, remained.
Foster, now program supervisor for the Navajo Nation Corrections
Project, joined AIM, formed by prison inmates, in 1970. His
experiences at Wounded Knee led him to a career in which he now visits
state and federal prisons to offer inmates spritual counseling.
Inside the makeshift bunker Foster and Casper were debating what to do
next. AIM had helped bring to light corruption and graft within the
tribal government while at the same time making a stand for treaty
rights, sovereignty, and human rights. Their job was done. Now, as
Foster and Casper saw it, there were two options: escape or surrender.
"Then Henry Wauwasuck, a Potawatomie, comes over from the command
post,"Foster said. "It was probably about half a mile away. He said,
'D.J. wants to talk to you.' I said, 'About what? What does he want to
talk to me for? 'So I went over there."
He stepped inside a tiny log cabin and there was AIM co-founder Den
Banks. "He told me sit down and he gave me some coffee. I'm 24 years
old and he's already a man, like in his 40s," Foster recalled.
"He tells me, 'I'm not going to surrender. I don't know how many of yo
are not going to surrender, but I would like you to take me out of
here, because I've been watching all of the warriors, and I want to
pick four of you guys. You're one of them. Would you be willing to do
it?'"
"Yeah," Foster said. "Percy and I were trying to figure out how we
were going to get out of there. I'm not going to surrender because I
don't want the feds finger-printing me because then they'll know who
you are. They'll haunt you the rest of your life."
Banks told him they were going to have a sweat the next day and asked
who else he would recommend. Percy Casper, Frank Blackhorse, and
HenryWauwasuck, Banks' bodyguard inside the command post, were the
chosen warriors.
Protection Of Crazy Horse
"We got together with Leonard Crow Dog and Black Elk and D. J. There
were seven of us in the sweat lodge. Crow Dog said, 'We're going to
use this pipe. We're going to use Crazy Horse's songs. We're going to
pray all together. We're going to even smoke his pipe and use his
song.'
"He told us, 'This is going to make you invisible, but you have to
believe in this,'" Foster recalled. "So we smoked the pipe that night
and the next day we got ready. We sweated that afternoon, and as soon
as the sun went down, we said,'Let's go'."
Of course, sunset also signaled the feds to light up the area with
flares, then follow up with automatic gunfire, according to Foster.
"We went north, over the creek. I was walking up front. I was walking
point. I knew we had to pick an area where we could get away. They
didn't use horses, they were using Jeeps and their dogs, and I knew
they set up trip flares, too. I looked for places where it would be
obvious," he said.
They crossed the creek and found an area where they could get in
between the ravines and make their way out. They could hear the feds
as they reached a flat area about a mile beyond the perimeter. Across
the open area, a goo distance away, was the safe haven of a tree line.
"I told them to wait, let me run down there," Foster said. "So I we
down there and I ran back without making any noise. I said, 'It's
clear, let's go.'
"We got out maybe 30-40 yards and this Jeep came over the hill, with
the lights on and the German shepherd dog. But it didn't smell us.
They didn't see us. We just laid there and the Jeep went on by," he
said.
They had 11 miles of up-and-down terrain to cover. "We're talking
about alot of hills," Foster said.
Bad Omen
One thing a Navajo doesn't want to see when he's out there alone in
the dark is an owl. "See, to Navajos an owl is a messenger of death,"
Foster said. "And there was a big white owl sitting in a tree,
hooting. It scared the shit out of me!
"At first, I just looked at it and right away, I thought, he's telling
me something's up ahead, he's warning me. So I ran back and I told D.
J. and the rest of the guys who were waiting. I said, 'Come on, let's
go, it's clear.' So we took off -- and the owl appeared again."
They traveled two to three miles with the owl still ahead of them. "It
would disappear, then we would leave it behind, then it would pop up
again,"Foster said.
They headed toward a paved road that leads out of Wounded Knee.
Already, it was close to 2 or 3 a.m. "We walked to the highway,
climbed the fence and started walking. "By then, the owl disappeared,
but it was still dark,"Foster said.
A couple hours later they reached the top of a hill overlooking the
community of Porcupine, about 2 miles away. Daylight was approaching
and they had to hustle.
But up ahead, on the road to Porcupine there was a car, just sitting.
Foster went to check it out. "Feds. There were two guys sitting
there," he said.
He ran back to tell Banks and the others. Then Casper made a
mistake."The feds turned on the lights because they saw Casper running
across theroad. Right away, they called for reinforcements. We just
took off back across the road to the tree line," Foster said.
"They brought their dogs out and they were barking. They didn't see us
because there was a little hill blocking the view. We told D.J., 'Just
takeoff for that tree line. We'll stay right here. If they come over
the hill, we'll just have to shoot it out with them. But you, you need
to take off. So he took off," Foster recalled.
They proceeded toward Porcupine with the hill as their cover and the
feds headed right toward them.
Saving Grace!
"Out of nowhere these dogs came, reservation dogs," Foster said.
"These skinny dogs got into a fight with their big, well-fed German
shepherds. That allowed us a split moment to get away. We took off to
that tree line and disappeared.
"They were yelling, 'All right, we know you're in there'," Foster
said."But they didn't know it was Dennis Banks. We didn't say
anything, we just kept going.
"Then pretty soon they had that commotion with these dogs and they had
to separate them because their dogs were on a leash," he said.
Afterward, they just drove off.
By then, the sun was coming up. Casper knew a man who lived in
Porcupine, John Attacks-Him. They headed toward his house, with Banks
sandwiched safely between them.
John Attacks-Him welcomed them into his home and gave them coffee. "We
were telling him D.J. was with us. All of the community, they
supported what was going on. They took us in and hid us," Foster said.
"They fed us and said, 'We'll take you out of here tonight. We'll take
you over to Crow Dog's paradise, Rosebud', " about an hour and a half
away.
Around 1 p.m., when they finally were getting some sleep, John Attacks-
Him woke them up. "Here comes a car. You guys get up, the feds are
coming!" he told them. While they watched, John Attacks-Him went
outside to see what they wanted.
"I don't know what they were saying," Foster said. "But they didn't
say, 'We're going to check your house,' because we figured if they did
that, we were going to have to shoot it out again. But then they just
got in their car and drove off. "See, that pipe was working. That
prayer was working. That medicine was working," he said.
They waited around till dark when John Attacks-Him and his wife loaded
them into two cars and they hit the backroads to Porcupine. "This was
maybe after 9 p.m. We hit the highway and drove all the way to
Rosebud. We got away," Foster said.
In addition to using Crazy Horse's songs to make them invisible, two
things stand out about that night, Foster said. "One was this owl,
warning me. The other was the reservation dogs. They saved us.
"Those things right there toward the end made me realize the power of
the medicine, the spiritual. I went in there as a boy, I came out as a
man.That's what Wounded Knee did for me," Foster said.
Doo'da Desert Rock Supporters Win!
Submitted by Alysssa Macy,
Confederated Tribes Of Warm Springs, Oregon
Indigenous Media – http://www.indigenousmedia.com
SANTA FE – In the final hours of the 2007 Legislative Session, two
infamous tax credit bills died in committee. The bills HB178 & SB431
would have given and $85 million tax credit to the Navajo Nation to
begin construction of a coal powered plant. A group of families from
the Burnham area that came to be known as the Doo'da Desert Rock
Coalition were successful in holding the bill up in their committees.
“We've had a great victory here today. The door has been opened and
now the Navajo people can work as a unified nation to find common
ground on sustainable economic development. This was a healthy debate
that brought some important issues to the forefront for all native
peoples, and this is just the beginning.” said Vangee Nez, a member of
the Doo'da group. “We cannot deny our sovereign duty to protect the
land for short term gains, instead we must take our place as stewards
of Dine-tah.”
SB431 & HB178 died in committee during the 2007 60-Day Session. The
bills would have given a tax credit for the proposed powerplant in the
4 corners area of the state.
The controversy started in late 2006 when construction of the site
began without any apparent community input. While the plant would give
several hundred jobs to the community the people living in the area
feared another major polluter was being put in their neighborhood.
In an area with two other existing plants and thousands of cases of
cancer and asthma the health links associated with another polluting
plant are undeniable. Doo'da supporters have reasoned that this form
of job creation is against the people's best interest and the values
of the Navajo people.
“We have been led to believe that we have to choose between economic
development and our cultural identity.” said Alfred Bennett, member of
the Coalition. “But in this challenge we have the opportunity to
provide solutions to a changing world that honors our people and
traditions.”
For more information, contact Hank Dixon with the Desert Rock
Coalition at (505) 215-2124
Carol Oldham at (505) 316-6517, email: carol.oldham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx or
or Sandy Buffett at (505) 992-8683, email: sandy@xxxxxxxxx
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