BRAVE BIRD AT WOUNDED KNEE

The American Indian Movement’s 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee lends impetus to a biracial child’s contact with her historical and cultural heritage.

Eleven-year-old Patricia Brave Bird Antoine’s mom is White, while her dad is Lakota, with family living on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation not far from the site of the 1890 massacre. So it is that news of the tense armed standoff between AIM and the federal government kindles not only interest in the history of that tragedy, but enough anxiety about her relatives’ safety to join her father on a drive up from Denver for a brief visit. Following an introductory note on terminology, debut author Bithell uses this scenario both to sit Patsy down beside her grandmother for instruction in traditional customs and crafts and, in a mix of overheard conversations, news clippings, letters, and reproduced school reports, to explore the roots of the conflict and how local politics caused the violence to escalate. Though for the most part that violence, as well as the major events and personalities of the occupation, remains offstage, a hail of gunfire that leaves Patsy’s father wounded by unknown assailants provides a dramatic climax…and his refusal to be treated by a White doctor for fear of being reported to the FBI shines a light on the (justified) distrust that poisons, probably permanently, relations between the federal government and Native American nations. Freeberg’s pencil drawings add cultural and period details (if not action), and a lengthy afterword with photos expands on the occupation’s causes, course, and aftermath.

A respectful, evenhanded view of a pivotal historical event.