Conflict between "BIA progressives" and the traditionals grew even more bitter in 1946 with the creation of the Indian Claims Commission, a "compassionate" rectification of irreparable past wrongs in matters of potential and existing Indian land claims through monetary settlement by a Commission that had NO authority to return land.  This "settlement" was rushed through before the tenuous or outrightly illegal basis of many of the white man's land titles could be challenged.  The actual beneficiaries of this Commission turned out to be the Washington Law firms who represented Indians before the U.S. Court of Claims.  Oh - what a surprise!  This work was a necessary prelude to so-called termination legislation, passed in the 1930s but not enforced until until the 1950s.  Termination legislation was designed to remove federal supervision over trust property.  Whereas the Collier administration [of the BIA] strengthened tribes as social and legal entities, the new policy initiatives of President Dwight Eisenhower's administration were directed to end the Indian's status as wards of the United States and assimilate the tribes into the larger society.  With land claims extinguished and Federal responsibility withdrawn the Indians could be scattered in "relocation programs" into the cities, thus conferring "independence" on a people trained to total dependency for almost a century.

The "terminated" Indians thus became independent citizens and taxpayers.  Without good education or experience, most were reduced within a few years to widespread illness and utter poverty.  Bitterness grew between those who tried to live like whites, and those who clung to "our way of life."  Among the Lakota a grievous split grew between these fractions.  THAT was the source of the earlier discussed conflict between the "Bloods" and the "Skins."  Even today there remains a strong belief that "the government takes care of the Indian."  But in truth, the government only takes care of "progressive" Indians who don't resist the BIA's assimilating policies.

On Pine Ridge, most Tribal Council families were mixed-blood Christians.  Some did their best to live like whites.  Others wandered between two very different societies, never at home or welcome in either.  Mixed-blood peoples have always acted as BROKERS between the two societies but often failed to consider the best interests of the tribe as a whole.  There, the Tribal Council administrations were regularly accused of acting only in their own best interests by cow-towing to BIA policy, which in turn ignores nepotism, incompetence and corruption.  In recent history, Indian activists have labeled the Tribal Council system "neocolonialism," where a favored group implements the wishes of the colonial administration.  In 1952 Uranium was discovered near Edgemont in the southern Hills.  Simultaneously vast deposits of surface coal accessible to strip-mining were found on on reservation lands in Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas. Somehow, pressure for "termination" grew, and plans were laid for a great energy empire in the western states.  Tribal Council claims for money compensation were ignored until the late 1960s, when the American Indian Movement (AIM) dramatized the efforts of earlier Indian activist groups and demanded revalidation of Indian treaty claims around the country.  AIM drew particular attention to the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 and the subsequent lawless seizure of the Black Hills.  By insisting upon land, and not payoff money, AIM placed itself almost directly into the path of huge energy consortiums already moving into the Hills.

The 1970s marked the height of the cold war.  Children graduating from college (even many just entering it) had been drilled to crouch under their grade school desks in anticipation of Russian nuclear attack during the Cuban missile crisis.  Many in Washington got their panties tightly wound up into a knot, worrying about the "red menace."  This especially included one J. Edgar Hoover, who built a lifetime career by exterminating "menaces."  The FBI was deep within its later discredited COINTELPRO operation, set up to "neutralize enemies" such as Martin Luther King, and the Black Panthers.  God knows, anybody who wanted to disturb the "accepted" order of life (for whatever reason) back then MUST have been an "enemy," right?  Well, anyway - moving right along, that's when AIM started getting their butts directly into the fire.