US 7th Cavalry troopers, attempting to disarm a band of Lakota Ghost Dancers led by Spotted Elk (Big Foot), opened fire on a camp of approximately 350 men, women, and children. Between 250 and 300 Lakota were killed, many shot while fleeing. Twenty soldiers received the Medal of Honor for the action — awards that have been formally protested by Lakota tribes and reviewed by Congress as recently as 2024. Wounded Knee is conventionally treated as the end of the Plains Wars and was the site of a 71-day occupation by the American Indian Movement in 1973.

Why it’s been targeted

South Dakota’s 2022 anti-CRT executive order and subsequent legislative proposals would prohibit K-12 and college instruction on a list of racial topics that explicitly included the Wounded Knee Massacre per The Nation’s reporting. The state DOE’s review found the Oceti Sakowin Essential Understandings — which cover Wounded Knee — potentially noncompliant. Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee appears on PEN America’s tracked-removals list in multiple Texas and Missouri districts.