In 1973, Kevin McKiernan was a young white photographer from Minneapolis looking for a job. When AIM took over Wounded Knee, he headed to South Dakota and managed to get a press pass. When the US military excluded all media from the area, he gained the trust of the Oglala, snuck past the military, and spent weeks with the occupation. During lulls in the fighting, he filmed and photographed and interviewed the Lakota and others within Wounded Knee. He filmed Anna Mae Aquash’s wedding during the standoff. Later, in June 1975, he was at the Jumping Bull property in Oglala. He spent the night of June 25 there with Leonard Peltier. He only missed the shootout with the FBI because he left an hour earlier to go report on a court case.

Now, over 40 years later, McKiernan put this unique footage together in a documentary, From Wounded Knee to Standing Rock: A reporter’s journey. The promotional slogan is “How a 10-week shooting war with the FBI sparked four decades of change in Indian Country.”

McKiernan journeys back to Wounded Knee with occupation veteran Willard Carlson (Yurok) and includes modern interviews with Dennis Banks and others, as well as two former FBI operatives. It’s a compelling and gritty 90-minutes, hard but important to watch. Don’t expect much about Standing Rock. This documentary is about Wounded Knee, its aftermath, and the effect it had on the Native civil rights movement, on the Lakota, on AIM, and on subsequent Native legislation in the 1970s.

View the trailer.