a siege led by Native Americans 50 years ago laid the groundwork for the Standing Rock protests. In 1973 200 Native American activists seized the town of Wounded Knee. Their demands: the removal of a tribal president whom they accused of corruption, and for the US government to fulfill treaties with Native Americans. The Wounded Knee protest galvanized the movement for Indigenous rights across the country, drawing public attention to the government’s history of injustice against Native Americans and their sovereignty. Decades later, many see echoes in the Dakota Access Pipeline Protests at Standing Rock in April 2016. “I didn’t come up here to die. I came up here to live with this water,” Vonda Long, from the Cheyenne River tribe in South Dakota, told Minnesota Public Radio at the Standing Rock protest in 2016. “I’m a Wounded Knee descendant, I done survived and I want my people to continue to survive.”
Two Shoshone-Bannock Tribal members, one a journalist, have joined four other inductees as part of the 2023 National Native American Hall of Fame, according to a press release from the organization. All six Native Americans come from various backgrounds, including law, journalism, advocacy, writing and entertainment. The induction ceremony for the new members will take place this fall. From the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, Mark Trahant is the editor-at-large at Indian Country Today. A Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist and former president of the Native American Journalists Association, the hall of fame is honoring Trahant for his work reporting in Native American communities.
Those are your headlines at this hour. I’m Colette Keith in the KIPI News center.
