For the first time in his reign, the Tribal Council president was taken into court, mostly because - as the Indians noticed - the victims were white.  "When AIM complains, the government comes running; we have been ignored while the AIMers get response!"  Dick Wilson cried, even while the U.S. government was then pouring $24 million a year into his administration.  The outraged Wilson immediately created his own twenty-one member Presidential Commission on Law and Order.  Having fined himself $10 in his tribal court for the same actions, Wilson now pleaded double jeopardy on the federal charge of simple assault.  Although he didn't escape federal trial, he was promptly acquitted.  Then at that point, he boasted about the "justifiable stomping" of these "agitators."  Later on, he arduously worked to depose the new BIA Superintendent Al Trimble.  A mixed-blood Oglala from Wanblee and a longtime BIA bureaucrat, he was one of the rare BIA Superintendents who took seriously their sworn duty to protect the best interests of the Indian people.  Trimble had sought to cancel land leases with ranchers who failed to deal with diseased or to pay the absurdly small land-lease fees on Pine Ridge.  Wilson ceased to support him when he offered help to the traditional people "out in the districts."  "The real victims of law and order out on this reservation," Trimble said "are the full-blooded Indians who are cycled and recycled through this damned jail for the most trivial violation.  If you're a mixed-blood and aggressive enough to tell a policeman to go to hell, you can do anything you want.  If you're a friend of Wilson's you can do anything."

Trimble recalls: "Things started to come apart in the fall of 1974, when Wilson tried. . . to sell beer and liquor at a rodeo on the reservation.  We confiscated three hundred cases of beer, but the feds refused to prosecute anybody, and we think they gave him back his beer, as well.  Then there was the murder of Jess Trueblood, when Manny Wilson and Duane Brewer concealed the evidence and the FBI cooperated, even though Brewer later hinted that Manny was involved in the killing.  Hell, those goons were in complete charge, with their car caravans, squealing their tires around, intimidating people.  Dick Wilson is not the most courageous person in the world; despite all the smoke he was blowing, he never moved without a big gang of his goons.  And half our BIA cops were Wilson people, and they had our tribal judge in their pocket too."  Al Trimble's son was pistol-whipped by goons, and the Superintendent himself was warned to "get a bodyguard because we're going to get you."  But the Bureau of Indian Affairs got to him first: Al Trimble was removed from office on March 20, 1975.  Al Trimble really thought they were turning the corner at Pine Ridge, just when Wilson got the BIA to remove him.  Instead of "turning the corner," Washington backed up a guy who had spent his whole life exploiting the Indian people.

Therefore, "Wounded Knee II," which had given traditionals such hope, had only yielded more hatred and violence, destroying communities as well as families even as economic conditions on Pine Ridge grew worse.  -  At least so said a spokesman for the Justice department's Office of Indian Rights.  Russell Means disagreed, saying "The children are wearing their hair long, wearing sacred eagle feathers.  I count that an immeasurable plus.  First one has to have self-pride, then you have to have political change, then follows economic change.  I don't see a really immediate change in the lifestyle on Pine Ridge, but neither do the Indian people on Pine Ridge expect it.  Our concept of time, which is part of our reason for being Indian, is that we have no concept of time."

In the dark month of March 1975, at least seven people, two of them young children, perished in AIM-goon warfare on Pine Ridge.  One was Pedro Bisonette's sister-in-law Jeanette.  She was the mother of six children, killed by a sniper on her way home from the wake of another AIM supporter.  Her blue car had a flat tire and a friend stopped to help.  At that point an unknown sniper shot her down.  While attending Jeanette's funeral, Gladys Bisonette lost her eleven year-old grandson, Richard Eagle.  The child destroyed himself while playing with the loaded rifle she kept in her house for protection.  Meanwhile, harassment of traditionals continued.  Bullets were fired through the house of Matthew King, an Oglala elder and interpreter for Chief Frank Fools Crow.  Fools Crow's own small house in Kyle, with a lifetime's belongings, was burned to the ground.  Both old men were threatened with death by marauding goons.