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January 2002 Interview with Robert Livingston
(member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe and employee of the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) from 197?-XXXX(?))
Dylan Moeller: Thank you for letting me interview you today. I would like to know what you had to do with what happened at Wounded Knee.Mr. Livingston: all right. I was working back in W DC in BIA running a national program called Indian Action Team. A lot of publicity over Wounded Knee in the office there. I had just taken a new job not more than six months before in BIA in office called programs, management and budget office. Secretary very concerned - his name was Roger CB Morton. He wanted to put together a task force to …. So he could make a report back to the president - that was Richard Nixon.
He set me up to chair a committee of 12 people. We were sent up there to do a study and follow-up … aftermath of Wounded Knee … help people there figure out a way to get things squared away, back to having a life. I had followed what was happening in the news media and was very upset because of all the weapons carriers and different kinds of tank-looking machines aimed at some of the country's own people. I also knew the story behind Wounded Knee and why it was probably picked by people of AIM.
AIM was made up mostly of people from off the reservation. They came to PR and started working with the people they called traditionalists… people they thought would be left out in the new way of having an elected government headed by a tribal chairman. IN case of Wounded Knee area, chairman was a guy named Dick Wilson. He and people from AIM and some of the traditional people on the reservation started getting at odds with each other. AIM people came and set up encampment at church at place called Wounded Knee. Federal people came and surrounded them with tanks and guns. There were some shots exchanged … a lot of people arrested. Finally cooled down some by the time I got there.
Big confrontation with the FBI, marshal services other federal agents there. I was sent to meet with people in what they called districts. We had rep from BIA. We were there to relieve him, find him a new job. Usually the people working there when something like that happens get blamed for things - sometimes it's their fault, sometimes it's not. Anyhow, he left and we found a new guy to take over for him. Then we started our district meetings. We put up notifications of what districts we'd be in. After the third meeting in these districts with the native people who lived there, I was the only commissioner left who stayed. There was a lot of hostility against federal employees there - the rest of the commission ran off. There were people riding around in pickups shooting toward houses, kids, and killing people's dogs. The roads were and still are very rough up there. In some of the districts we visited, there hadn't been a person there from the federal government for about twelve years. That's how isolated they are.
To give you an idea of how rough the roads are - I rented a brand new Chrysler from Rapid City, South Dakota when I first arrived for the job. When I went to return it two months later, it was considered totaled - totally beat up underneath, and I'd worn out five sets of snow chains.
At the meetings, I gathered up a lot of information and took my reports back to Washington. Back in Washington, we got approval on some of the projects people back on the reservation wanted to begin. We also got the money for them to start their projects. Got the money sent back out through BIA to take care of people.
Probably most interesting part to me was that being a Cheyenne, I didn't realize that the Cheyenne at one time, when they were being chased out of the south, had broken into bands … one of them are called the Northern Cheyenne now - the Dull Knife Band -- they had hidden out with the same Sioux people I was meeting with. Every place I'd go, the first thing the old people there would do was introduce me to my cousins, uncles, aunts … all these people I had no idea I was related to.
There was a preacher up there, a Mennonite preacher or maybe a Baptist. He was about 80 years old. He and his wife lived in an old cabin that was built about 60 years before. One of the big federal guns about four or five inches around had blown right through a corner of their cabin and left a big hole. It must have been about 40 below zero and no one had ever come to help these old people - not even to plug up that giant hole in their house. And they had nothing to do with either side of the Wounded Knee conflict. That's the kind of aftermath you found.
Lasted about two months that I was up there. One of the most heartbreaking things that happened …
There's no motels, no restaurants or anything up there. You had to go clear back down into Nebraska to find a place to stay. I had gone down there to stay in a motel when a big snowstorm came in. It filled the parking lot of this motel clear to the roofs of the building with snow. The owner had to dig from door to door and take whoever was in each cabin over to his house to feed them. That's how you got taken care of for about four or five days.
During that period I met a couple of young FBI guys from CA. They were talking about what they were going to be doing up there. They had run into a real - what happened up there had made them real hostile to most of the Indian people … they didn't understand them at all. They got into a confrontation and it ended up in their deaths. That was the saddest part of what happened up there to me. And then when they started looking for who killed them, they got hold of a guy who I think is a fall guy for us. I don't know the truth of it, but from what I do know about the case of Leonard Peltier, I think that if he got a new trial anywhere but South Dakota, he would be set free. And he's been in prison ever since that.
Is there anything else you'd like to know about?
D: What do you think is the cultural significance of Wounded Knee to Native Americans?
G: I think it shows that if there is something wrong in any community, a small group of guerilla-type people can organize the disenfranchised and they can actually raise a ruckus enough to cause a lot of trouble. That's why the government needs to make sure that everyone is fairly treated and taken care of. Indian people always have the worst statistics in whatever statistics you're looking at. They have the highest unemployment, the highest death rates, the lowest life expectancy … it goes on and on. Unemployment up in that area right now is about 50%.D: What was the end result in the government and the rest of the US after Wounded Knee?
R: Well, you kind of have two stories going on. Depending on who you talk to, you understand the policing side of it … if you talk to other people, you get an entirely different story. There were a lot of promises made to the people there after Wounded Knee. I haven't been back since then, but I would wager not 5% of what was promised did they get done.D: Is there anything else you'd like to share with us?
R: The real Wounded Knee is one of the saddest most shameful affairs of our country. It goes to show how a bunch of normally good people got drunk and used any excuse to go and start massacring people - even old people and women and children. The government has never come out and apologized for what happened or really acknowledged it or finalized it in any way. It would be nice if they built a nice park or any kind of memorial to remember the people who were killed there. But instead there's still just a little old ditch where all those people died. The area looks just like it did then, except for now there are a few graves marked there.
A lot of people think that Indian people get federal money given to them. But the money they get is their own money. It's called individual Indian money accounts and also tribal money accounts. Right now there is a big investigation into missing Indian money - best accounts are that there is over five billion dollars they can't account for that should have gone to Indians.
People in the government offices actually shredded documents related to the case, which is still going on today. It's a case against the government
It just goes to show how we as regular American citizens don't really know the whole picture about how Indians have been and still are being treated. Nothing has really changed.
You should check into the money deal. That's money that should have been held in trust for you, just like putting it into a bank. And now no one can find it. And it was money that belonged to the poorest people in our nation.
D: Thanks for your time and information.
R:You're very welcome.