Anyway, the place is strangely little developed for an important historic place in the US, and I think I am going to blame this on the fact that it is still on injun land. If this was on regular US land, I think there would be a visitor's center, with bathrooms and wi-fi and coke vending machines. There would almost certainly be a McDonalds nearby. I had read that there was supposed to be a museum on site, but I couldn't find one when I went down there on Thursday.
As it is, a few dusty old injuns keep an "information office" under an awning, while some younger 'uns sell trinkets up by the graveyard. There's a huge placard the size of a small billboard, with the story of the massacre written out on both sides. It is all very dusty, low-key and may I say third-world countryish.
As with most "native land" in America, the Sioux reservation around Wounded Knee is generally piss-poor and with the highest concentration of religious loonies anywhere outside the darkest bible belt of the south. This is what happens when a people and their culture is defeated utterly by a superior one and can't seem to fathom what has happened and deal with it in a rational manner.
The injuns on the American reservations remain stuck in a horrible mixture of stupid old customs and new religion (from which they tend to take the most idiotic elements) and seek the intoxication of either the liquor bottle or Christianity instead of getting a proper education and a good job and fuckin' get ON with things like the injuns outside the reservations have done, and with good results.
All pics here.
Wounded Knee. "Information office" to the left.
Overview pic.
Graveyard monument. I have NO idea what the Menorah, nor the Swedish flag are doing there.
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