Lavetta Yeahquo

Lavetta Yeahquo (1954 – ) is Kiowa and was born in Lawton, Oklahoma. She spent her childhood in Carnegie, Oklahoma, and later joined AIM in 1972 after meeting a group of AIM activists who were traveling through Lawrence, Kansas.

Yeahquo was in Minneapolis when she heard about the call AIM received from OSCRO to come to Pine Ridge. She caught a ride from Minneapolis to Rapid City, and was part of the caravan of cars that first drove into Wounded Knee. Yeahquo spent most of the occupation housed in a small Lutherian church, a 10-minute walk from the trading post. Yeahquo spent most nights standing guard outside a bunker named Hawkeye. From there, she and others communicated by walkie talkie to those inside the trading post.

• “We were there to help the people, and myself, when I took that stand inside Wounded Knee I was there not only to help the people there in Pine Ridge. I told myself that when I left I was going to go wherever I would be needed to help the people.”
• “AIM taught me to be outspoken, and to say what I wanted to say. Wounded Knee taught me a lot about survival skills. If you learn how to have survival skills, you can make it anywhere. And that’s what I lived on…survival skills.”

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