Community-based archiving as a practice of honoring: The Warrior Women Project and the Honoring the Women of Wounded Knee Exhibit
By Morwenna Gwenan Haf Osmond, WWP’s Research and Educational Programs Coordinator
“This history of warrior women in the American Indian Movement, the Red Power movement, where is this history? And where is it being stored? And who’s sharing it? And who’s telling it? Through the Warrior Women Project [Archive], we can share it so that people learn our history, from us.”
- Marcella Gilbert, Dakota AIM
Opening remarks at WWP’s exhibit, Feb 25, 2023
The Warrior Women Project (WWP) is a collective of historians, community organizers and multimedia storytellers who work to highlight the radical impact of Indigenous women throughout recent history. The project grew out of the doctoral research of WWP’s director, Dr. Beth Castle, which examined women’s activism in the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement. As part of this work, Beth interviewed dozens of women who were at the forefront of the Red Power movement. These interviews, together with many others conducted by Beth and others over the past two decades, form WWP’s oral history archive. Over the past year, WWP has been working to process and make available the content of our archive, so that it can be mobilized by activists and educators. We have been supported in this work by the Mellon Foundation, as inaugural recipients of their Community Based Archive grant initiative.
This article describes an exhibit WWP created to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Wounded Knee Occupation. It provides an example of how community-based oral history archives can be activated to serve their home communities and inform contemporary struggles.
Background
On the 27th of February 1973, 300 Native activists — led by Oglala Lakota leaders, traditional chiefs, and members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) — entered the village of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. They issued a clear demand to the US government: that it honor and uphold the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. Within hours, hundreds of US government agents arrived, equipped with armored tanks, M-16 machine guns and phantom air jets. They dug trenches, built bunkers, and barricaded the four roads into Wounded Knee, arresting anyone entering or leaving the village. Over the next 10 weeks inside liberated Wounded Knee, Native activists forged a self-governing community and brought sovereignty and self-determination into being. In the words of one of WWP’s narrators, Madonna Thunder Hawk, “For the first time in many years, the Oglala people could organize themselves according to their ancient spiritual values and ways of life. We were free! For 71 days there was power in the hands of Indian people.”
The occupation has become a world-wide emblem for Indigenous resurgence, and is recognized by American Indian communities as a defining moment in their centuries-long struggle for self-determination and tribal sovereignty. On Pine Ridge, a “Liberation Day” walk is held annually on February 27th, which sees residents and AIM supporters set out from four points — north, south, east, and west — to converge on Wounded Knee. This year, Pine Ridge community members and AIM representatives formed a Council to organize a larger series of events commemorating the occupation’s 50th anniversary. The Warrior Women Project was invited by the Council to honor the women of Wounded Knee with a special event on Pine Ridge.
As a team, we had long discussions about how we could best contribute. The WWP archive is a particularly significant resource since it contains the only interviews ever conducted with several of Wounded Knee’s key leaders. Many of them talked about the political, economic, and cultural conditions which led to the occupation. But they also described day-to-day life inside Wounded Knee, from the setting up of communal kitchens and medic stations to the sustenance of spiritual life — a side of the occupation which remains largely unknown.
In the 1970s, the mainstream media (overwhelmingly white, male and middle-class) overlooked Native women in the Red Power movement, focusing exclusively on the so-called “male leadership.” This was despite the fact that Oglala women initiated the occupation, comprised two-thirds of the occupiers, and led negotiations with the US government. Subsequent histories of the occupation (and of the Red Power movement more generally) have also tended to disregard the crucial roles and leadership of women. In doing so, they have provided only a partial account of this trail-blazing history. We felt a deep responsibility to share the hidden histories of Wounded Knee.
After much thought, we decided to create an exhibit that would honor the twelve women in our oral history collection who had been involved in Wounded Knee 1973 directly. Dr. Beth Castle, WWP’s director, took this idea back to the organizing council, which welcomed the proposal unanimously. We were very fortunate to receive a grant from NDN collective — an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power through organizing, activism, and grant-making — which made the exhibit possible.
Developing the “Honoring the Women of Wounded Knee” Exhibit
In designing the exhibit, we purposefully avoided providing a historical narrative of the occupation. As the opening panel states, “This exhibit is not intended to give a comprehensive or complete history of the occupation.” Instead, we set out to circulate and pass on the stories of the narrators.
Intended to travel, the exhibit was made up of 16 (3x7 ft) retractable panels. A dozen were dedicated to individual women narrators, conveying their biography and experience of the occupation, while tablets showcased clips from their oral history interviews.
In writing the women’s biographies, we drew as much as possible from their interview transcripts, introducing them as they introduced and described themselves. In the instances where the narrators were living, we co-wrote their biographies with them. For those who had passed on, we shared the biographies with their families and kinship networks, inviting their input and feedback. This collaboration represented one form of co-creation.
We also see the exhibit as having been co-created in so far as it embodied the relationality which so clearly emanates from the Wounded Knee interviews, especially when viewed together. Relationality can be thought of as a worldview which recognizes the multiplicity of relationships that exist between humans, the land, and other-than-human relatives, and acknowledges the inherent responsibility we all have to maintain relations that are reciprocal, consensual, and sustainable. The exhibit simultaneously elevated individual women’s stories and experiences and emphasized the connections between them. Our hope was that participants moving among the women’s banners would trace a web of relationships that both connected these women and sustained their communities.
Launching the exhibit on Pine Ridge
To launch the exhibit, we held a day-long event at Pahin Sinte Owayawa school, less than 10 miles from Wounded Knee. The line-up included a screening of WWP’s short film, Warrior Women of Wounded Knee (14 minutes), and a roundtable discussion between four women who had been involved in the occupation and its aftermath.
Before opening the exhibit space, the 200 or so present gathered, in spite of Winter Storm Olive, in the school cafeteria to share a meal. Over lunch an open-mic began, with veterans of the occupation coming forward to share their memories and reflections of life inside Wounded Knee. Younger generations of Water Protectors described how the history and legacy of Wounded Knee had sustained them in their battle against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016. Prayer songs were sung, and drum circles were held. It was important for us to begin the day in this way, honoring both the women of Wounded Knee and the community who continue to carry their legacy. While the occupation is remembered as a milestone of the Red Power movement, it began first and foremost as a struggle of the Pine Ridge community.
Many of those who participated in the exhibit commented on the size of the panels, and how they worked powerfully to summon the women into the room. Indeed, several participants who had known the women told us that they were deeply moved by seeing the panels, and that the exhibit had evoked long-forgotten memories. The exhibition room buzzed with the exchange of stories: “Do you remember when she…?”; “Remember when she used to say…?”; “She told me once that…”; “Remember her joke about…?” These exchanges were as much a part of the exhibit as the panels themselves, and brought to life a history that has lacked a public presence. Indeed, in this way, the exhibit enacted what Diana Taylor has termed the politics of presence,
“a war cry in the face of nullification; an act of solidarity as in responding, showing up and standing with; a commitment to witnessing; a joyous accompaniment… a militant attitude, gesture, or declaration of presence.” (Taylor, 4)
Furthermore, many of the narrators’ relatives were able to participate in the launch. Lisa Bellanger, pictured below, stood next to her mother’s panel and shared stories of her activism, describing how as a child, her house was under constant surveillance by the FBI. The participation of relatives highlighted the intergenerational legacy of Wounded Knee.
Reflection
Unlike traditional exhibits, which often take the form of an authoritative presentation, WWP’s Honoring the Women of Wounded Knee was configured as an invitation. Firstly, and most importantly, it was an invitation to honor the women of Wounded Knee, their families, and their communities. It created space to remember, to reflect, to be in dialogue with, and to imagine.
Secondly, it was an invitation to add to the stories shared in the exhibit. Several interview rooms (with cameras and lav-mics) were prepared off the main exhibit hall, so that participants could record their own stories of Wounded Knee. Indeed, having met the team, and experienced our work, many participants came to us and expressed an interest in telling their own stories. We conducted thirteen oral history interviews on the day of the exhibit’s launch, expanding the community archive significantly. Engagement was also encouraged through a feedback form, which asked: “Was there anything missing from the exhibit? Is there anything you would add?”
Thirdly, it was an invitation to get to know the Warrior Women Project: our history, our purpose, our guiding principles and our vision. The exhibit provided us with an opportunity to share our work as it is forming, and to demonstrate how we use oral histories to create educational experiences that speak to and inform present-day struggles.
As Beth Castle — WWP director and 2022–23 National Endowment for the Humanities & Oral History Association Fellow — reflected,
“What I have learned during 25 years of being in collaboration with the narrators of the Red Power Movement is that the practice of ‘honoring’ is one way in which [Indigenous] communities archive their history on their own terms. When we ‘honor’ we are creating and holding space for the past, present, and future to happen all together. We are recognizing and honoring how one person’s story is both vital and inherently intertwined in a larger ecosystem that also holds everyones’ story.”
For more information about the Warrior Women Project and how to access the traveling exhibit, please visit www.warriorwomen.org/wk50 — you can donate here www.warriorwomen.org/donate to help the exhibit reach Indigenous communities. To view the Peabody-nominated documentary Warrior Women, go to https://vimeo.com/ondemand/warriorwomen.
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This article can be cited as follows: Morwenna Osmond — Warrior Women Project, “Community-based archiving as a practice of honoring: The Warrior Women Project and the Honoring the Women of Wounded Knee Exhibit (2023)”, Architecting Sustainable Futures, September 25, 2023.
Works Cited:
Smith, Linda Tuhiwai, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed Books Ltd, 1999).
Taylor, Diana, ¡Presente! The Politics of Presence (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020).
