Redbone
We Were All Wounded At Wounded Knee

Sioux, Cheyenne, Shoshoni, Apache. Most of them no longer want to be called Indians but simply Native Americans. "Indians" is a derogatory name, a colonial name, an imperialist name and a symbol of one of the (many, too many) dark eras in human history.

Native Americans have had to endure massive invasions of their lands by unscrupulous and desperate settlers of all kinds from around the world in search of fortune and a better life. Not even sacred places were spared, such as the Black Hills. Mount Rushmore is located right nearby, an enormous and mocking sculpture in the mountain representing the heads of presidents, fortunately accompanied by the mountainous sculpture desired by Native Americans, a huge reproduction of Crazy Horse on his steed. Rightly so, I would say, since he was one of the great heroes alongside Sitting Bull, Black Kettle, Chief Joseph, and of course Red Cloud.

The story of the so-called Frontier, the West, the North and South, the cowboys and the Indians, has often been mythologized, even stylized by Hollywood. A bloody history, made up of merciless wars and unmatched arms, massacres of all sorts not sparing women and children, breached treaties, broken promises, injustices, and betrayals of all kinds. We speak of famous battles like the one on the Washita River, or the Indian victory at Little Bighorn, a swan song before ending in definitive slavery after the Wounded Knee Massacre.

This is a band of Native Americans, Redbone, jokingly referring to the Cajun term for a mixed ethnicity, to which they also belong. Formed in the late '60s in Los Angeles, California, they quickly achieved widespread success throughout the United States. In 1973, they released this single, We Were All Wounded At Wounded Knee, a protest song, recalling the shameful massacre that took place on December 29, 1890, at the hands of the Seventh Cavalry, thus marking the end of the Indian Wars. From that cursed day, when the last embers of revolt were quelled in blood, the fate of Native Americans has remained shrouded in a perpetual shadow, the shadow of reservation slavery.

But We Were All Wounded At Wounded Knee also raises a cry of protest for events that were still somewhat recent at the time, such as the uprising in the Pine Ridge reservation during the early '70s, where a group of AIM (American Indian Movement) activists clashed with sordid and shady FBI figures. The retribution, once the bloody confrontations ended, was ruthless: former FBI agents hired as true torturers beat to death, rammed cars, stabbed treacherously, and shot unarmed activists. The most glaring case was the murder of activist Anne Mae Aquash. The scapegoat was Leonard Peltier, unjustly imprisoned and still in jail: he was given a life sentence.

The Redbone were also affected in a way because the single We Were All Wounded At Wounded Knee was banned and boycotted by all American radios. A great notion of democracy, don't you think? Fortunately, the single was very successful in Europe, where the public became aware of the issue. The single reached number 1 in many European countries.

Even today, Native Americans are ignored or ridiculed, when not mistreated by the rest of American society. Their land is no longer their land. Life outside the reservation offers them no prospects. The doors are still all barred to the "redskins." Within the reservations, things aren’t much better: poverty is absolute, alcoholism is rampant, and the average age doesn’t exceed 41 years. The luckiest have made fortunes with casinos, others have found oil in their reservations, like the Navajos, and still others own large chains of bars or fast-food restaurants, like the Seminoles, who own the Hard Rock Café brand. But most are still in desperate conditions.

They still dream of returning to the wild lands of their fathers, they still dream of boundless spaces where they can hunt the bison and smoke the peace pipe. But these are just dreams: the white metropolitan nightmare has destroyed all of this.

But the true Americans are and will always be them.