This organic conservatism of traditional Native American culture has been reinforced by a continuous return to the past as means of survival and defense, which is also part of an overall attempt through successive leaders to right the historical injustices that the American Indian has suffered at the hands of the American state. Keeping alive the memory of ancient treaties and promises that were broken, is a crucial political strategy for the American Indian peoples and willy-nilly involves them in a deep sense of history that is not some nostalgia for a former golden age but a way of orienting pro-active late twentieth century political strategies. A concrete example of this phenomenon in which the past is continuously present, was the occupation in the winter of 1973 by several hundred Oglala Sioux and their supporters, of the historic Indian site of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation. They did so at the request of the Oglala traditional leaders, who gave their approval to a strategy of militant direct action after all other means of changing their conditions, had, in their view, been exhausted.

The Wounded Knee site had been the scene of the massacre by U.S. Government forces in 1890 of nearly 300 Indian people who had surrendered all but one of their weapons. To Indian people the site and the event in 1890 have epic significance , as many of the victims of the massacre were followers of the Ghost Dance religion. This spiritual movement had swept the tribes of the West and the Great Plains with its prophecy of an imminent purification in which the whites would disappear and the earth would be made new again, with the Indian dead and the slaughtered buffalo coming back to life. To the Indians who occupied the site in 1973 the event symbolized a ritual of political and cultural bonding, a revival of solidarity and spiritual purpose for all American Indians. As the basis of the discussions with the United States Government that ensued, the defense committee that ran the occupation used the provisions of the Fort Laramie treaty of 1868, which the Americans had broken soon after the signing. Article XVI of the treaty states that an area of land "shall be held and considered to be unceded Indian territory, and also stipulates and agrees that no white person or persons shall be permitted to settle upon or occupy any portion of the same." This area roughly covers the western half of modem day South Dakota and a section of North Dakota. The modern occupation lasted for 71 days and effectively brought the world's attention to the grievances that the Sioux nation maintained against the American Government.

One of the features of the occupation was the decision-making process of the occupation committee. Although the activist leadership of the occupation were supporters of the American Indian Movement, there was a continuous referral to the wishes and views of the traditional leaders of the Oglala Sioux. This ad hoc arrangement became a more important forum and center for decision-making than the tribal council, which had the support of the main instrument of federal policy, the Bureau of Indian Affairs. This debate as to who is to speak for and defend Indian interests is a crucial one for the future of the American Indian in the American system. One of the reasons for placing the issue of leadership on the agenda is that despite being continually removed onto the most barren land, Native Americans control about three per cent of all US oil and gas reserves, fifteen per cent of all coal, fifty five per cent of the US supply of uranium, and about eleven per cent of all uranium reserves in the world. This presents Native American people like the Navajo who own lands which contain these resources with the dilemma of whether to lease parts of the land to commercial companies who will pay handsomely for these rights, or keep them as natural, semi-agricultural landscapes. The profits of leasing can be used to provide sorely needed resources for the Navajo; education, health-care programs, and the wherewithal to improve conditions on the reservations. A different kind of leadership is required for leasing, one that is familiar with the capitalist commercial world, but that can also gain the support of the different factions within the Indian tribe, nation, or communal, representative unit, in order to hand over lands which some Indian group usually feels are sacred and should not be transformed by capitalist development. The experiences of Navajo chairman Peter MacDonald who has negotiated major development deals in the South West on behalf of the Navajo Nation reflects the tensions that the prospect and arrival of large sums of money that have to be shared, creates among any group. A 1989 Senate panel of Investigation into allegations of fraud and corruption in federal Indian programs identified the suspended Navajo Chairman Peter MacDonald as putting personal gain above the interests of the community. The report stated that: 'Although 46 percent of Navajos had no electricity, 54 percent lacking indoor plumbing and 79 percent lived without a telephone, MacDonald used tribal funds to pay for private luxury airplane flights for personal trips and his own remodeled executive suite with mahogany and gold-plated fixtures.' Despite this attempt to smear Native American leadership with these allegations which MacDonald denies, the major recommendation of the Senate investigation is that the government should abandon all control over the nation's Indians, tuning over billions in federal funding, buildings and land to tribes from Maine to Hawaii. The investigation also recommends that the Bureau of Indian Affairs, established in 1824, that has been the main instrument of federal policy towards the Indians, should be dismantled and the $3.3 billion it spends each year should be transferred directly to the nation's 1.4 million Indians. In order to understand this shift in policy it is crucial to have an understanding of the history of relations between the Native American peoples and the American government.

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