On this day, 27 February 1973, armed Native American activists occupied Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in protest against tribal corruption and the continuing failure of the US government to fulfil treaties they signed with Indigenous people. Choosing the site of the 1890 massacre of Native Americans by US troops, they held out for 71 days, frequently exchanging fire with government forces and suffering casualties, some fatal.
Though eventually broken, the occupation galvanised huge support for the American Indian Movement, famously including Marlon Brando’s boycott of that year’s Oscars, instead sending an Apache actor in his place to collect his best actor award, who delivered a speech about Wounded Knee to reporters backstage after she was threatened with arrest for speaking on the podium.
This book gives a good overview of 500 years of Indigenous resistance in the Americas: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/books/products/500-years-of-indigenous-resistance-gord-hill https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1360815057436974/?type=3