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• Fritz Scholder(Luiseño, 1937–2005)
• Santa Fe, New Mexico and Scottsdale, Arizona
• 1972
• Oil paint on canvas
• Gift from Vicki and Kent Logan to the Collection of the Denver Art Museum, 2016.174

This painting symbolically represents the tragic Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota. On December 29, 1890, soldiers from the United States Seventh Cavalry Regiment massacred around three hundred indigenous men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, a Native American reservation. This massacre was sparked by a religious movement called the “Ghost Dance.” A group of Indigenous peoples had gathered to reclaim the land they had lived on for generations, but tragedy struck when the United States troops intervened to stop them. This painting, depicting snow-covered tombs, conveys feelings of profound sadness. Fritz Scholder, who created this painting, asks viewers to look at the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre with critical eyes. He once said, “The positive does not exist without the negative, and the role of the artist is not to compromise, but to express the truth with all the power of which he is capable.”