Using only documented political deaths, the yearly murder rate on Pine Ridge Reservation between 1, 1973 and March 1, 1976, was 170 per 100,000. By comparison, Detroit, the reputed murder capital of the United States, had a rate of 20.2 per 100,000...An estimated 20,000 persons were murdered in the United States during 1974. In a nation of 200 million persons, a murder rate comparable with that of Pine Ridge between 1973 and 1976 would have left 340,000 persons dead for political reasons alone in one year; 1.32 million in three...The political murder rate at Pine Ridge between March 1, 1973, and March 1, 1976, was almost equivalent to that in Chile during the three years after a military coup supported by the United States deposed and killed President Salvador Allende...Based on Chile's population of 10 million, the estimated fifty thousand persons killed in three years of political repression in Chile (1973-1976) roughly paralleled the murder rate at Pine Ridge
"We are here [Wounded Knee] because in 1973, a lot of beautiful people sacrificed themselves. They put their lives on the line for you people. Thirty years from now, we may come here again, and there will be no BIA, no FBI, no IRS. We'll all be free." Black Crow
"As your children want to become doctors and lawyers, they may find it difficult. They may hear 'well, your parents were in a terrorist group/ We tell you that now, so you understand it. Tell your children to tell their children this [Wounded Knee 1973] was a very proud moment. Wear that history like a badge of honor. We will never, ever say we were sorry we did it." Dennis Banks, AIM
"I do not see a delegation for the Four Footed. I see no seat for the Eagles. We forget and we consider ourselves superior. But we are after all a mere part of Creation. And we must consider to understand where we are. And we stand somewhere between the mountain and the Ant. Somewhere and only there as part and parcel of the Creation." Chief Oren Lyons, Onondaga, From an address to the Non-Governmental Organizations of the United Nations, Geneva, Switzerland, 1977
"Martin Luther King said, ' I have a dream.' But we Indians didn't have a dream. We had a reality." Ben Black Elk
