Pine Ridge Indian Reservation

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Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is an Oglala, Lakota Native American reservation located in the U.S. state of South Dakota. Pine Ridge was established in the southwest corner of South Dakota on the Nebraska border and consists of approximately 2.7 million acres (11,000 km²), roughly the size of Connecticut. Most of the land comprising the reservation lies within Shannon County and Jackson County, two of the poorest counties in the U.S.

Pine Ridge Reservation was originally part of the Great Sioux Reservation established in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 and originally encompassed approximately 60 million acres (240,000 km²) of parts of South Dakota, Nebraska, and Wyoming. In 1876, the U.S. government violated the treaty of 1868 by illegally opening up 7.7 million acres (31,000 km²) of the Black Hills to homesteaders and private interests. In 1889 the remaining area of Great Sioux Reservation was divided into seven seperate reservations; Cheyenne River Agency, Crow Creek Agency, Lower Brule Agency, Rosebud Agency, Sisseton Agency, Yankton Agency, and Pine Ridge Agency.

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During the 1970s, the reservation was the site of numerous murders of those opposed to the tribal government installed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs during the Wheeler Howard Act of 1934, many of which which were never investigated.

On June 26, 1973, the reservation was the site of an armed confrontation between American Indian Movement (AIM) activists and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation in an event which became known as the Pine Ridge Shootout. It resulted the death of two FBI agents and the controversial extradition, trial, and conviction of the AIM member Leonard Peltier. This event is chronicled in the film Incident at Oglalla, a Robert Redford production.

The reservation is also the setting for the Chris Eyre movie Skins and the book On the Rez by Ian Frazier.