How did the Wounded Knee Massacre affect organized Plains resistance?

The Wounded Knee Massacre on December 29, 1890, served as the definitive climax of the U.S. Army’s efforts to repress Plains peoples, effectively ending organized military resistance to reservation life and assimilation.123

Following the massacre, the Ghost Dance movement, which had provided a spiritual framework for resistance, sputtered out as its followers faced the reality of overwhelming military force. While the massacre marked the conclusion of major armed conflict between the United States and the Plains tribes, it is important to recognize that Indigenous individuals and nations continued to resist conquest and assert their sovereignty through various other means in the decades that followed.123

The site of the massacre later became a powerful symbol of historical injustice, notably serving as the location for a 1973 occupation by the American Indian Movement to protest persistent civil rights violations and the infringement of Native American rights.12