31+ paper examples, study guides & outlines
Wounded Knee refers to both the 1890 massacre of Lakota Sioux by U.S. federal troops and the 1973 occupation led by American Indian Movement activists, two events that together represent a defining arc of Native American history and resistance. Students encounter this topic across literature, history, and cultural studies courses, often through foundational texts such as Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Heather Cox Richardson's Wounded Knee, and Black Elk Speaks. These works make the topic academically compelling because they force readers to weigh Indigenous testimony, political violence, and the long consequences of federal land policy, including the Treaty of Fort Laramie and its repeated violations, against dominant national narratives.
Student papers on this topic approach Wounded Knee from several directions. Some offer close readings or book reports on Brown's or Richardson's texts, while others take a historical and political angle, examining U.S. government actions as oppressive and ethnocentric toward the Sioux and other tribes. Papers also engage documentary evidence, including newspaper coverage from the late 1960s through 1980, and analyze media such as the film Incident at Oglala about Leonard Peltier. Comparative and reaction-paper formats appear as well, including responses to A Different Mirror and explorations of Black Elk's religious thought.
A strong essay on Wounded Knee grounds its thesis in a specific event, text, or policy rather than trying to cover all of Native American history at once. Primary sources and eyewitness accounts carry significant weight, as does careful attention to whose perspective shapes the narrative. The most common pitfall is treating Wounded Knee as an isolated incident rather than connecting it to the broader, ongoing structure of federal-tribal relations and land dispossession.