There is an old saying that goes, “Never get into a pissing contest with a skunk” or in this case “skunks” and I do not intend to do that. Of course the conclusion of that saying is “because you can’t win.”

This will be my final word on my efforts to buy Wounded Knee. There is just too much vitriol, innuendo, and outright lies flying around to even make an argument worthwhile.

Wounded Knee is now owned by a white gentleman named James Czwczynski who bought the land in 1968. He has paid taxes to the Oglala Sioux Tribe on that land since then. He also has freed up more than an acre of his land for an access road for the Tribe. Wounded Knee is “deeded land” and if you don’t know what that is look it up. The Oglala Sioux Tribe does not intend to take it by eminent domain.

A landowner has the right to ask whatever the market will bear for the sale of his land. Whether that price will be met or not is another story. This is known in the rest of America as free enterprise. As I and many others have cautioned Czwczynski since he put the land up for sale; he is asking far too much. But nonetheless, he owns the land and it is on the market.

Czwczynski has had offers for the land and could have sold it to a white-owned conglomerate from California for near his asking price last year but chose not to do so. The reason I stepped in is I am an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and I did not want to see the land go to another white owner who would exploit the land for personal profits. I believed and still do that if I can raise enough money that allows me to negotiate for a much lower price I can then put the land into trust for members of the Oglala, Hunkpapa and Minneconju tribes. The land would then be theirs and they as a group could decide what they wanted to do with it.

I have a connection to Wounded Knee because it was my home. My father, mother, brother and five sisters lived at Wounded Knee while my father worked in the Wounded Knee Trading Post for Clive and Agnes Gildersleeve. My sister Ethel was born at Wounded Knee

The only reason I have suggested, and it was only a suggestion, that the village of Wounded Knee be rebuilt is because it was my home town at one time and I think anyone would like to see their hometown rebuilt if it had been destroyed by natural or unnatural causes. It is human nature. I loved Wounded Knee when I lived there as a boy and I love it now.

But I am tired of the name calling, finger pointing and lies by people who know nothing about the families that lived, worked and loved at Wounded Knee. They know nothing about what a happy home Wounded Knee was to many families.

Whatever happens, I will continue to honor those who died there and to honor those still living. The living deserves to be honored as well as the dead. I thank the hundreds of people, Indian and white, who have continued to encourage me to stay on the path I am traveling. This is my last word on Wounded Knee.

I ask anyone with a constructive suggestion to step forward and I will step back.

And I will stay far away from the skunks.

– Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, was born, raised and educated on the Pine Ridge Reservation. He was inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame and the South Dakota and Native American Journalism Halls of Fame. His newspaper Native Sun News was voted by the South and North Dakota Newspaper Associations as the Best of the Dakotas in 2015.