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American Indian Memoirist Dies
The author, Mary Ellen Moore-Richard, died on Febuary 14th at the age of 58. She wrote the memoir Lakota Woman, which was published in 1990. Her life began on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. The reservation was, and still is, where the Sicangu Sioux, one of the seven tribes of the Lakota nation, live. When Mary Ellen was young, in the 1950s and 60s, life on the reservation was not easy. There was much poverty. Even today the same dire living conditions she had to endure remain unchanged, as reported in a CNN article: “Nearly half of the people in Todd County live under the federal poverty line, making it the…
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American Indian Movement
One of the leaders, Russell C. Means, of the AIM (American Indian Movement) died on Monday, October 22. At the time of his death, being an Oglala Sioux, he was living on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation at his ranch in the town of Porcupine, S.D.. He was 72 years old. The nation first came to know of Mr. Means on February 27, 1973 as he helped lead 200 Oglala Lakota (Sioux) activists and members of AIM in the occupation of Wounded Knee. Wounded Knee, South Dakota, a very small town where it is told that the Sioux chief Crazy Horse’s heart and bones were buried along the Wounded Knee Creek, was taken hostage by the…