Above photo: From left: Casey, Dwain & Carter Camp at the opening ceremony of the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance Action Camp, near Ponca City, Okla. (Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance/Girard Oz)
WHITE EAGLE, OKLAHOMA — American Indian Movement warrior and Wounded Knee ’73 veteran Carter Camp walked on Friday, December 27, 2013 in White Eagle, Oklahoma on the Ponca Indian tribal land. He was 72.
Carter, a tribal citizen of the Ponca Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, died of complications of cancer which he suffered from for about a year, according to his brother, Dwain, who spoke with the Native News Online on Friday night.
Camp was thirty years-old and a major participate during the siege of Wounded Knee in 1973.
Prior to the 1973 Wounded Knee, Camp headed the Oklahoma AIM chapter. He participated in the takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in Washington, DC in November 1972.
For over two decades, Camp assisted Leonard Crow Dog with his annual sundances held at Crow Dog’s Paradise on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
Carter was featured on the 2009 highly-acclaimed PBS’ “American Experience: We Shall Remain – Wounded Knee.”
Camp in “We Shall Remain – Wounded Knee”
In the Wounded Knee episode, Carter said:
GOING INTO WOUNDED KNEE THAT NIGHT WHEN IT WAS DARK AND SCARY, WE WERE CLINGING TO OUR WEAPONS TIGHTLY. THERE WAS A FULL MOON AND WE KNEW THAT A BATTLE WAS GONNA COME. I WAS SITTING THERE THINKING OF SOME OF THESE YOUNG MEN THAT ARE AROUND ME, AM I COMMITTING THEM TO-TO DIE?
Even last year, Camp was a fighter for American Indian rights. He led opening ceremony at an anti-Keystone XL pipeline workshop near Ponca City, Oklahoma.
Ceremonies were pending at press time.
