It appears that the occupation of Wounded Knee, which is located in the Pine Ridge Reservation, by a militant group known as the American Indian Movement (AIM) in 1973 has come back to haunt the reservation’s current residents.

The occupation by AIM was the second major conflict to occur at Wounded Knee. The first involved the massacre of about 300 members of the Lakota tribe (including 200 women and children) by the United States Army on Dec. 29, 1890. I wasn’t around to write about that one (really, I wasn’t), but because of this mass bloodletting the ground is sacred to the Oglala Lakota tribe.

The current Wounded Knee flap was started by a white man named James Czywczynski, whose surname is easier to pronounce than type. He wants to sell two 40-acre tracts he owns within the reservation, and he has offered them to the Lakotas for a mere $4.9 million.

The problem is that the Pine Ridge Reservation has the lowest per capita income in the country, with unemployment estimated at 70 percent. The Lakotas have a better chance of relocating to a reservation on Mars than they have of meeting Czywczynski’s asking price.