Chief Leonard Crow Dog, spiritual leader at Wounded Knee, dies at 78

Chief Leonard Crow Dog, a Native American spiritual leader who played a key role in the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee in South Dakota and who fought to preserve the ancient traditions of his tribe, the Sicangu Lakota, died June 5 in Rapid City, South Dakota. He was 78.

The cause was liver cancer, a family friend, Barbara Dills, said.

The first clash between Native Americans and the U.S. government at Wounded Knee was in 1890, when federal forces killed hundreds of unarmed Lakota people. In February 1973, hundreds of Native American activists returned to the site, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, bearing a list of grievances and demanding that broken treaties be honored.

Crow Dog was among them. He tended to injured protesters and negotiated with federal forces throughout the occupation, which lasted 71 days. He also staged a traditional ghost dance ceremony at Wounded Knee to honor those who died in the massacre a century before.

Though the Native American occupiers eventually surrendered, the confrontation brought about a new understanding of the mistreatment of tribes by the federal government.

“I think that this was the greatest moment in my life,” Crow Dog said of Wounded Knee, “and that our 71-day stand was the greatest deed done by Native Americans in this century.”

Leonard Crow Dog was born Aug. 18, 1942, to Henry and Mary Gertrude Crow Dog on the Rosebud Sioux reservation in South Dakota, home to the people also known as the Sicangu Lakota.

His mother was one of the first female singers in the Native American Church, Crow Dog said in his autobiography, “Crow Dog, Four Generations of Sioux Medicine Men” (1995, with Richard Erdoes). His father was an eagle dancer who educated his son in rituals, prayers and songs.

Crow Dog’s parents kept him out of American schools to ensure that he learned tribal traditions, he wrote. “When the truant officers came to get me, my father chased them off with a shotgun,” he recalled.

He was drawn to activism as an adult, joining the American Indian Movement, an activist group founded in 1968.