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IM: You also went to Wounded Knee around a similar time, 1973? Can you talk about what that experience was like?

KM: It was... did I talk about this before?

IM: Not in our session.

KM: Well, many people were involved. So we became aware of Wounded Knee when people were demonstrating at the federal building and we were in Little Tokyo. So we were kind of aware of stuff, and went down there to find out. And we met some of the American Indian Movement leaders and talked with them. And I don't exactly know how it all evolved, but we just to know them, got to know some other people, indigenous folks in a group called Redwind that were located in Malibu, and had some exchanges. But the issue became a little bit broader, and we met at the Storefront, because the Storefront was, some of the folks there were supportive. And so we were working on flyers and things like that, and I don't exactly know how this happened, but Mo and another person, Ellyn Wong Braga, we decided that they would go out to Wounded Knee and find out they wanted people to go. There's going to be a big march, a people's march. And Mo and Ellyn went as sort of a, to go ahead, ahead of this group that might go to check out the situation and let us know. So they went ahead of time, and then some of us decided that we were going to go to Wounded Knee. There were about eight or nine of us, I think, not all out of the JACS office, but a lot of us, which left like two people in the JACS office to take care of the office. People weren't very happy about that, so we made this decision. And maybe a lot of us were out of the collective, actually, and East L.A.'s work. Yeah, actually, it was like Tamiko Hirano, Richard Hisamoto, East L.A. Outreach Team, Dennis Kobata, myself, my sister Judy, Betty Chen, Craig Shimabukuro, I can't remember who else now, Mo and Ellyn were already there, and I think Gilbert Hom might have been there, also Tatsuo Hirano. So there was a big meeting at the Storefront and we were working on flyers and stuff like that, but we told them, "Some of us are going to Wounded Knee." And then I remember their reaction was very angry, because it was sort of like, "You're making this decision to go, and you know that if anything happens to the people, it's going to fall on everybody else who mobilized support." And so I remember Warren being really angry with people making "unilateral decisions," seeing it as a JACS office kind of thing, different kind of grouping, right, politics.

IM: If something happens, like someone gets arrested or caught or killed.

KM: Yeah. I mean, it was a dangerous situation, right? So they said, okay, whoever goes, we don't want to know, because that would jeopardize everybody else, because it has to be done quietly. So they said, "Okay, we'll support the effort, but we're not happy about it." So people planned the leaving in different cars, and different times, and people met in Rapid City. So I went with Dennis and Craig Shimabukuro, and we drove nonstop to Rapid City.

IM: So what kind of support did you lend when you...

KM: What kind of support did we give?

IM: Yeah.

KM: Mainly what they wanted was publicity, because no news was getting out. It was a blackout, a media blackout of what was going on at Wounded Knee, so nobody knew. So they wanted, one is they wanted people to take the news back, and they also wanted presence of people from the outside to sort of forestall or prevent the FBI and the U.S. government from coming in, which they eventually did. So we were there for, I don't remember how many days we were there, we were part of a people's march. And I think it helped at least stop, delay anyway. So most of us left, and then there were like three or four people stayed behind, like Dennis and Craig and a couple of other people, and they were caught in the last part of having to get out of there fast, because the FBI was coming in. I wasn't there at the very end, we left earlier. So we met people like Leonard Crow Dog and some of the other people that were there, and tried to continue the support. We had a press conference here in L.A. after we came back about Wounded Knee, and then Nobuko Miyamoto, who was pregnant at the time, was asked to drive Russell Means, who was American Indian Movement leader, somewhere, and then they were stopped by the FBI. And so she's pregnant, she's on her knees with her hands behind her. We weren't there, but this is what happened. I won't say we put her in, but it wasn't a good situation. It turned out okay, I mean, she was okay.

IM: So can you try to describe to me... I mean, this is a big mobilization to go out there, abandoned, all your responsibility, I mean, I don't want to put it like that, but kind of put things aside here in Boyle Heights, Little Tokyo, for several days to go out and support people at Wounded Knee. Can you just take me through, like what were the kind of motivations and what was the general feeling about why you needed to do this? I mean you could just say, "Oh, we just felt it was right thing to do," but I'm really curious, it seemed like there was a lot of excitement for this among your cohort, but I'm very curious how you would describe it yourself.

KM: Well, I think it was, in the progressive groups, like I said, Storefront, everybody was behind it, so everybody felt moved by what was going on in Wounded Knee. I think there was some identification with the fact that the reservations, the camps, the land, I think we saw some connection, and again, the Third World solidarity that many of us already felt and believed in from the early movement. So it wasn't even a question that we would not support. It was more a question of the leadership, who were these people? We weren't always sure about the American Indian Movement leadership and the different people. So that was sort of like trying to figure all that out.

IM: Did you say you weren't always...

KM: We didn't know who was who, we were just meeting these people for the first time. So that's why when Mo and Ellyn went out, they met some of the leaders at the Pine Ridge reservation at Rosebud. We had to trust their judgment that this was a good thing to do, that we could trust this effort.

IM: So do you remember your particular interactions with some of...

KM: I don't know. I don't think there was a lot, because we got there, we met and we heard them speak, but then we went on this march. Don't even ask me if we slept on the side of... I don't remember. I remember marching, I remember some people doing morning exercises, and I just remember that people, some people stayed behind when we left.

IM: Do you think it had an impact on what you did once you got back?

KM: I think it did. I think they wrote about it, on the American Indian Movement, I think they remember it. I think so.

IM: But on you personally, do you think this... I don't know...

KM: Yeah, yeah. Because now when I think about the reparations movement, it's very clear to me that we have to, I just believe that the indigenous people have a lot to say and are already saying it, and that we have to figure out a way to connect better. I've always felt that about the struggle of First People.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.