Reinventing the Warrior

"On February 27, 1973, a group of roughly 300 armed Indigenous men, women, and children seized the tiny hamlet of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, at gunpoint, took hostages, barricaded themselves in the hilltop church, and visibly displayed an upside-down American flag. Taking place at the site of the infamous massacre in 1890, the highly symbolic confrontation spearheaded by the American Indian Movement (AIM) ultimately evolved into a prolonged, 71-day armed standoff between law enforcement officers and modern-day Indigenous warriors-some of whom were Vietnam War veterans who were using Vietnam-era equipment and weaponry. By organizing in defense of the newly proclaimed Independent Oglala Nation, the AIM activists at Wounded Knee linked the nationalist quest for sovereignty and self-determination with a warrior masculinity that was constructed from a mix of Indigenous cultures and contemporary cultural elements, including the Black civil rights movement, the counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s, and the antiwar movement. In Reinventing the Warrior, Matthias Andrâe Voigt examines the way gender construction was integral to the Red Power movement. Indigenous activists sought to become "more manly" in order to challenge hegemonic masculinities-and, by implication, colonialism. Indigenous remasculinization challenged the emasculating nature of white supremacy. Voigt traces the story of the reinvention of Indigenous warriorhood from 1968 to the takeover of Wounded Knee in 1973 and beyond"--