Native American News Roundup Jan. 15-21, 2023 

Editor’s noteThis story may be interesting to some readers.

Lakota from reservations across South Dakota gather at Wounded Knee Cemetery on the Pine Ridge Reservation to commemorate the ancestors massacred by the U.S. Cavalry in 1890.

On top of two-foot snowdrifts in the cemetery on December 29, 2022, lay a stack of cardboard boxes containing artifacts and pieces of clothing. He thinks it’s torn of the bodies of the victims. After years of negotiations, the items were returned to the Lakota by a small museum in Barrie, Massachusetts.

Museum records only show that a traveling shoe salesman from Barre acquired the items on a trip west in 1891 and donated them to the Barre Museum a few years later.

Now on a cold December day, camp spiritual leaders Richard Moves, an Oglala Lakota from Pine Ridge, and Evan Looking Horse, a Miniconjou from the Cheyenne River Reservation, have gathered in prayer and ritual feeding of spirits.

Later, dozens of Lakota gathered in the warmth of a nearby school as they shared their family histories of the massacre, viewed photos of the returned artifacts, and paid homage to the dead.

VOA spent weeks trawling through historical records and newspaper accounts to find out more.

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