It's been exactly 50 years since hundreds of Native American activists seized the South Dakota town of Wounded Knee, kicking off a monthslong occupation that helped galvanize the movement for indigenous rights across the U.S.
On Feb. 27, 1973, some 200 members of the Oglala Lakota tribe, led by members of American Indian Movement (AIM), occupied the Pine Ridge Reservation village — which was also the site of the 1890 massacre in which federal troops killed as many as 300 Lakota men, women and children.
