Juneau teacher Paul Kristian Berg has faced choices so difficult most people never have to make them. During the Vietnam War, he set bomb targets for the Navy and then, when he returned home, he was at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the 1970s, during the siege of Wounded Knee and the two and a half chaotic years after.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the choices he made in those times, and the post-traumatic stress and guilt he feels about them, that prompted Berg to write \u201cSandra\u2019s Hands: A Reflective Journey from the Vietnam War to the Siege of Wounded Knee.\u201d A counselor recommended he write the book.<\/p>\n
\u201cI found myself later in life troubled by the death of people I had known, particularly children. \u2026 I was told to confront the death that bothered me the most, and it was here in the United States. It was Sandra,\u201d he told the Capital City Weekly.<\/p>\n
For those who may not be familiar with it, Pine Ridge is a reservation of Oglala Lakota people. It\u2019s also the location of the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee, where U.S. troops killed at least 150 Sioux (the Lakota are one of several Sioux tribes, as are the Dakota and Nakota), half of them women and children, many of them unarmed. Twenty-five U.S. soldiers were also killed. Today, Pine Ridge is the poorest place in the entire United States, with unemployment between 70 and 80 percent.<\/p>\n
In 1973, it was the location of a 71-day occupation, besieged by the FBI, federal marshals and others, when 200 Oglala and members of the militant American Indian Movement (AIM) occupied the town in an effort to depose tribal chairman Dick Wilson and to protest the U.S. government\u2019s treatment of American Indians. In the initial years after the occupiers surrendered, the murder rate on the reservation was the highest per capita in the country; some allege AIM supporters were murdered by the Guardians of Our Oglala Nation, which supported Wilson\u2019s chairmanship, or by authority figures like tribal police.<\/p>\n
It was during this \u201creign of terror\u201d after the siege that Berg\u2019s former student, 15-year-old Sandra Woundedfoot, was murdered by a Bureau of Indian Affairs special investigator.<\/p>\n
Berg and his wife, Virginia, left Pine Ridge in 1976. But in 2010, Berg returned, in part to grapple with Sandra\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy did I fail to save her?\u201d he asked. \u201cShe was my student. I knew she was at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n
The trip helped him realize that though short, her life had deep meaning, and had affected many at Pine Ridge \u2014 including him.<\/p>\n
\u201cSandra\u2019s death was so brutal that it shocked everybody,\u201d he said. \u201cIt brought people together. They mourned her loss\u2026 there were still several more killings, but it was Sandra\u2019s death that brought about healing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Berg sees a clear parallel between his experience in the Vietnam War and at Pine Ridge. When the U.S. government failed its people \u00ad\u2014 whether it was when his superiors in the military told him to lie about whether or not bombing targets were hit during Vietnam, or when the FBI investigators besieging Wounded Knee terrorized a pair of Oglala grandparents and their two grandchildren \u2014 the problems are systemic, not the act of any one person, he said.<\/p>\n
Berg isn\u2019t hesitant to point out moral and other failings in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the FBI, the tribal police, the military, or himself.<\/p>\n
His experience setting air targets in Vietnam convinced him, he said, that \u201cmilitary tactics were wrong\u2026 the approach was \u2018kill as many as we can,\u2019 (but) this battle was in the hearts and minds of the Vietnam people. It was an ideological battle. But the American command structure did not see it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Disparity of sentencing is also something that greatly upsets him. Sandra\u2019s murderer, special investigator with the BIA Paul Duane Herman, Jr., was sentenced to ten years, according to the FBI. In contrast, Leonard Peltier, an activist and member of the American Indian Movement who killed two FBI agents, was sentenced to two life sentences. Amnesty International has called for Peltier\u2019s release, saying his case was influenced by political factors.<\/p>\n
\u201cSandra\u2019s Hands\u201d is also about Berg\u2019s calling to become a teacher, and his growth along the way.<\/p>\n
Berg has taught at the University of Alaska Southeast, the Juneau School District and for seven years taught at Thunder Mountain Academy, a private school he founded in Juneau; he also taught in other Alaskan locations. Now he teaches at the Johnson Youth Center and is a cross-cultural specialist with Goldbelt, Inc.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile it (the book) may have started as an endeavor in personal healing, it became a historical document,\u201d said Berg, whose tendency, stemming from his training during the war, is to analyze. \u201cBut also to draw lessons from this. How can we apply what we\u2019ve learned from these historical events to today?\u201d<\/p>\n
As he writes at the end of the book, mandating mainstream American curriculum, in English, for rural Alaskan villages \u201cis destroying the Native cultures and interrupting the transition of knowledge necessary for survival in the Alaskan wilderness…. We acknowledge the injustices and bigotry of the past, but the excesses of our own day are invisible to us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSandra\u2019s Hands\u201d is coming out on Audible. It\u2019s also available at Hearthside Books in Juneau, and on Amazon.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact Capital City Weekly editor Mary Catharine Martin at maryc.martin@capweek.com. <\/p>\n
Read more about Southeast Alaskans in Vietnam:<\/strong><\/p>\n ‘Hunting in Wartime’: Vietnam veterans from Hoonah tell their stories<\/a><\/p>\n