On February 27, 1973, a group of Indians, led by the American Indian
Movement (AIM), congregated at the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre. 
They were demonstrating against the elected council head of the Pine Ridge
reservation, Richard Wilson, whom they charged with corrupt practices. 
Tensions between the protestors and the local authorities grew until the
situation became a siege of the town, which drew in two thousand Indians
from around the area and lasted for seventy days.  They were surrounded by
three hundred federal marshes and FBI agents, equipped with guns and
armored vehicles.  On March 12, the Indians declared Wounded Knee a
sovereign territory of the Oglala Sioux Nation, according to the Laramie
Treaty of 1868 which recognized the Sioux as an independent nation.  The
siege finally ended when the two sides began firing on each other and two
Indians, Frank Clearwater and Buddy Lamont, were shot and killed, an act
that called national attention to the Native American civil rights
movement.