A defiant AIM (American Indian Movement) member holds aloft his AK-47 during the infamous Siege at Wounded Knee in 1973. Shortly after taking this photo, two Air Force F-4 jets swept over the camp at treetop level, breaking the sound barrier. That was the end of the bloody 71-day standoff.

When I joined the contract staff of Time, I was told by the picture editor, John Durniak, that I and my new colleagues, Eddie Adams, David Hume Kennerly and Bill Pierce, were going to be given total freedom to cover stories on a worldwide basis. We were not to wait to get an assignment; we were to call from the scene and simply announce we were there. This became an awesome responsibility.

When members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) seized the historic monument at Wounded Knee on the Sioux reservation in South Dakota, I managed to drive to the encampment through a zero-visibility snowstorm. There were abandoned cars along the roadside that had belonged to FBI agents who had been killed by the Indians. For the next two days, I worked inside the Lakota camp.