As I reflect on this video, I believe it was at this moment when some contemporary day Native Americans were pressed past their boiling point and decided to take an ultimate stand against all the injustices done onto them. On February 27, 1973, a large assembly of armed Native Americans reclaimed Wounded Knee and declared Independence in the name of the Lakota Nation located on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The siege lasted seventy-one days as American Indians protested the United States Government, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), and local council president Dick Wilson. Wilson and his Guardians of the Oglala Nation “Goon Squad” were likened to gangster Al Capone who ran the reservation with total disregard to Native American…show more content… It was only determined after numerous interviews and press releases that the people held were not hostages, but supporters of the Indian Nation and did not want to leave. In an interview, one white woman stated, that she is staying because she feared the United States military would kill the protestors once she left. Although busy with the Watergate scandal in the White House, President Nixon commissioned the FBI and various other Government agencies to try to come up with an agreement to stop the standoff. In attempt to show his powerfulness, Dick Wilson tried to terminate negotiations with the protestors by declaring Sovereignty and even went as far starting gunfire fights against both sides to insight bloodshed. As tensions escalated with the negotiations, utilities to the town were shut off and food supply chains stopped. However, gaining positive public popularity across the nation in their plight, private pilots dropped in food at night to help the protestors with there sustainability. Unfortunately, after countless failed negotiations and the death of AIM members, Frank Clearwater and Buddy Lamont the seventy-one day siege was over. This marked the end of Armed Indian Resistance and began a period known as a “Reign of Terror” prompted by the FBI and the BIA. Over the next three years, there were sixty-four unsolved murders on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Hundreds of Wilson oppositionists were also, harassed, beaten, and arrested until elected out of office in