"Forty years ago today began the occupation of Wounded Knee, a modest community in a valley on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

For a reporter, the event was a oncein-a-lifetime assignment. That sounds callous, I’m sure, because huge issues were involved, people’s rights and lives and futures were being affected, and in a few instances, people were dying or being seriously wounded in exchanges of gunfire. But history was being made each day. That’s something a reporter doesn’t like to miss.

The reporters flocked in during the early hours and days of the occupation. The New York Times was there, CBS, NBC, ABC, Reuters, Chicago Tribune, Time, Newsweek and all manner of other major national and international publications with big-heat reporters.

As the stalemate went on and on, the number of news outlets willing to invest major resources in the story dwindled. For much of the last several weeks of the story, the regular reporters on scene represented The Associated Press, United Press International and The New York Times."

Get the Story:
Terry Woster: Wounded Knee can still teach us (The Mitchell Daily Republic 2/27)

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