Warrior Women: Indigenous Women, Gender Relations, and Sexual Politics within the American Indian Movement and at Wounded Knee

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is to describe and analyze Indigenous women’sparticipation in the prolonged takeover of Wounded Knee in 1973. Indigenouswomen’s grassroots activism was fundamental for sustaining and keeping the occu-pation alive, yet their contributions were largely eclipsed by the actions of theirmedia-savvy, male comrades-in-arms. What is more important, Indigenous women inthe American Indian Movement (AIM) frequently claimed that they were in a state of“double oppression” or “double colonization”—first, through colonial domination andracial inequality, and second, through male privilege and female subordination—itself,part of the legacy of colonization and the imposition of dominant white patriarchalmasculinity.2 Nationalist struggles such as that of the anticolonial AIM tend to repli-cate the very structures of male dominance that they struggle against. While womenhave been included in public discourse, they have been largely left out of politicaldecision-making.3

At Wounded Knee, Indigenous women took on a series of interrelated roles andresponsibilities that kept the occupation alive. Indigenous women skillfully renegoti-ated their gendered position of power within the masculinist organization, constructingfemininities that shifted between domesticated motherhood and female comrades-in-arms. In so doing, they both reaffirmed and challenged sexist and chauvinist attitudes within AIM. They were well known as long-standing community organizers, andtheir active participation at the Wounded Knee takeover was an indication of female empowerment.