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SPEAKER: Rapid City is a town of 45,000 residents, located in the scenic Black Hills of Western South Dakota. 10% of the town's population is Indian. It is the largest and really the only city near the Pine Ridge Reservation. The American Indian Movement and the Wounded Knee Legal Defense headquarters currently are located in the heart of the Downtown district of Rapid City. I spoke recently with Mayor Don Barnett about the presence of AIM and other Indian people in the town of Rapid City.

DON BARNETT: Many of our Indian citizens are in the low income category, but many Indian citizens have broken out of the poverty cycle. We have Indian citizens in Rapid City, no matter what you call them, that have gotten on the city council, the planning commission. They've blended in with our society here, because we are in the majority. We're a town of 45,000 and have about 4,000 Indians.

Most of the Indian citizens in Rapid City are not revolutionary. They don't break the law. The highest percentage never have gotten arrested in their entire life. The situation that we do have in Rapid City is with some of our Indian citizens that don't seem to have roots in the community. They drift between Rapid City as the largest city in Western South Dakota and the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Some percentage of those individuals have a problem with alcohol. They have the problem of unemployment. And some have not accomplished a great deal for themselves over the last few years. Now, AIM has chosen South Dakota probably because of the terrible incident that happened in 1890, because of the Wounded Knee Massacre.

I think the entire nation should be ashamed of that circumstance that happened 80 years ago. It was a terrible thing to happen, and I don't believe that any of us can point with pride to that part of our history. But as far as AIM selecting South Dakota and the reason why they're here, I don't have any idea.

Most of the AIM leaders are not South Dakota Indians, I don't think the people across the country should be led to believe that Russell Means and Dennis Banks, and all of these self-appointed AIM leaders, are South Dakota Indians. Most of them are from Minnesota. Russell Means happens to be from South Dakota. But he's the only one of a national prominence in this organization that is a South Dakota Indian. And so I don't believe it is a group that are from South Dakota whatsoever. And I believe they have very little credibility with the Indian or the white population in our state.

SPEAKER: You mentioned several local Indians who have successfully blended in, as you mentioned, into white society. Do you believe in the assimilation of Indian people?

DON BARNETT: I think that's the only answer. I think that we have to respect the quality of the Indian culture. I think as a part of the things that we do recognize in America today, that there are many rich portions of the culture of the ancient American Indian, which makes us richer, to be knowledgeable about those things.

But it is just exactly like I told Mr. Bellecourt and like I told Mr. Banks in this office, I said, the thing we have to understand, if we are to be realistic is simply this, that when the Indians and the white men had a war, the white men won. It's a white society. It's not an Indian society. Many, many American Indians have chosen the way of life of the white man. They've chosen to ride an automobiles and they don't ride in horses anymore.

They've chosen the conveyances, the transportation, the mode of living, and it's going to be a white society. I think that the concept of the reservation is a bad concept. The reservation is somewhat like a cage. It has a fence around it. We didn't choose the best land in the country for Indian reservations.

Eventually, we found out in some of the states, it was good land because there was oil underneath it. But that was by accident, not by intention of the occupying American or white forces that took over the West or any of the 50 states. And my analysis is simply that the reservation concept is not viable for modern 20th century. That the Indian community and the Indian citizens will have to blend in with the white community because of the preponderance in population numbers of the white community.

So many Indian citizens have chosen that route of success for themselves and their families. I think we have to condemn the deplorable circumstance that is a fact of life on many Indian reservations. This simply means that the concept of the reservation has failed. We're going to have to make some adjustment and blend those people into our society. I welcome them as neighbors and friends, and I believe that's a strong feeling in this community.

SPEAKER: During the summer, Mayor, here in Rapid City, one of the greatest industries really is the tourist industry, is it not? And the Black Hills are very closely-- are very close to Rapid City. These are the hills which belong to Indian people, did they not, under the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty?

I ask you that because one of the strategies, as I understand it, of the AIM defense attorneys is a treaty strategy. It's a strategy aimed at using as a defense the 1868 treaty, which gave those Black Hills and actually the very city of Rapid City to the Sioux people. How do you evaluate that strategy?

DON BARNETT: Well, as a strategy, it'll be good for a lot of legal entanglements, but it's not going to solve a lot of things as far as the average Indian citizen is concerned. Rightly or wrongly, the white people occupied the Black Hills. The area where I've grown up here all of my life was considered such a rich area that the Indians in ancient centuries didn't even live here. This was reserved as an area for the burial of the dead and where the gods lived, because it's such a beautiful area.

Well, the white man with his ingenuity and his skill have capitalized on the beauty of that area. We live here ranching and agriculture, tourism, Mount Rushmore and everything are very rich, very successful. Now, the attorneys, when we look at the tragedies of these treaties, and it's just the white man arbitrarily lying to the Indian citizen, that's a fact of life. But as you look at that, we're not going to be able to roll back history.

The Native original American Indian citizen, we shouldn't even call them Indians, by the way, everybody knows that. But we do from 400 years of history. The original American Indian was shoved around by the white man. Now, he's not the first Aboriginal tribe that was shoved around by an invading force of people. I just a little bit about ancient world history. People have been shoved around this globe for as long as we've had mankind. There's never been a time when history can back up.

I can't just arbitrarily all of a sudden say, OK, Mr. Banks, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll get all the white people together and we'll load up our Allied Van Lines and we'll be out of the Black Hills in 30 days. Now, I can't do that. He came in my office one day and he said, I've got a real good idea, all you Americans, or he said, all you white people, get your ass out of the Black Hills. I just said, I ain't going. I said, we won the war.

Now, that's a ridiculous supposition on his part to think that all of the white people are going to leave Western South Dakota. So we can play the game-- and it's not really a game and I shouldn't say it is a game, but we can take the legal tactic of going to the treaties and find everything wrong and everything violated. But still, we're not going to be able to back up for 80 years and erase all of those wrongs.

It's an impossibility. The government of the United States is run by a majority. The elected representatives would never vote to do that. And so consequently, we have to look to other solutions to help our Indian friends.

SPEAKER: Mayor Barnett, would you then reject the notion of restitution for Indian tribal lands which have been taken by the government?

DON BARNETT: I think there has to be a thorough exploration of those concepts. When there has been gross violations, I believe the Congress should respond to specific cases like that. I would be on the side of that issue. Yes, I would.

SPEAKER: As mayor of Rapid City, has the presence of the American Indian Movement here hurt tourism, hurt that industry in your city?

DON BARNETT: No, I don't believe that the Indian circumstance that happened around Wounded Knee and that happened in Custer in February and March, I don't believe that has been a factor in our tourist trade at all this year. We have not experienced a gas shortage in the Black Hills, but the fear of the gas shortage has made people believe that, well, maybe we shouldn't go to Rapid City, or maybe we shouldn't go into the area around Denver and those states surrounding because of the alleged gas shortage.

We've fallen off a few percentage points in tourism, but not very much. Our economy is in a very healthy circumstance and the tourist industry is very healthy in the Black Hills. And it fell off a little, but it didn't fall off because of AIM or the Wounded Knee situation.

SPEAKER: Mayor, I think it's well known that on Indian reservations, in this state and probably in all states where Indian reservations lie, that the life expectancy rate of the American Indian is something like 43 years. His annual income about $1,500. The suicide rate about 20 times the national average. I wonder if these are traceable to a climate of prejudice, prejudice against Indian people.

DON BARNETT: I think it's traced, first of all, to a climate of hopelessness on the reservation. If you visited a reservation and walked around them sometimes, just because there's a new federal schoolhouse there that was built with a $1 million, that doesn't mean the way of life on an Indian reservation is pleasant. And it doesn't mean that the children are reared in an environment where ambition and hard work is stressed.

It means there's a lot of social problems there that are ingrained because of generation of generation of poverty and hopelessness. The white man has not been very kind to the American Indian, and I don't care if we've poured $1 trillion into reservations. That does not mean that we've had the human compassion to do what is right in every case. I think really that there is prejudice. There certainly is a great deal of prejudice toward minorities in this country, and it's one of the wrongs that have to be righted.

SPEAKER: With respect to the upcoming trials for Wounded Knee, and especially with regard to the seven AIM leaders who are indicted for actions and around Wounded Knee, I believe that number is seven, and I believe the indictments are 11. Do you think they will be convicted for their actions at Wounded Knee?

DON BARNETT: I don't have any idea. I'm not going to pull a statement like President Nixon said one day about the Manson trial out there, that they're obviously guilty. I don't know that they're obviously guilty under our Constitution. Under our way of life, no matter what they might be accused of doing, in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of the courts at this moment, they are innocent.

Anything I might say might show some passion and it might clearly show that some of us do have some very firm convictions about the conduct of these AIM leaders in the various insurrections that they have led. I think if they're taken on an isolated case, if there's trial by jury, and if the trials are fair and they follow the procedures as established by the constitution, I say then these people have every right to prove their innocence.

And the court has-- and the prosecution has every right to attempt to prove guilt. And it will be a real measure of whether or not they are sincere civil rights workers. If they are willing to-- if they are found guilty-- and that's a supposition on my part-- I'm not saying they are. I don't know. I'm not on the jury.

But if they are found guilty, they must take their lumps the way Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy, and a lot of other people took their lumps to help the Black community, and it'll be a real test of their leadership to see if they can accept the punishment for the laws that they have allegedly broken.