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victims as a selling pitch is, for lack of a better word, it's grotesque," said Nathan Blindman, 56, whose grandfather was 10 when he survived the massacre. "To use the murdered children, the murdered teenagers, the unborn, women screaming and running for their lives, using that as a selling pitch ... that has got to be the most barbaric thing ever to use as a selling pitch."
• Czywczynski acknowledges the historical significance adds value to each parcel of land, which have each been at less than $7,000 apiece, according to records reviewed by the AP.
• Besides its proximity to the burial grounds, the land includes the site of a former trading post burned down during the 1973 Wounded Knee uprising, in which hundreds of American Indian Movement protesters occupied the town built at the massacre site. The 71-day standoff that left two tribal members dead and a federal agent seriously wounded is credited with raising awareness about Native American struggles and giving rise to a wider protest movement that lasted the rest of the decade.
• The land sits on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home to the Oglala Sioux Tribe, but many of the descendants of the massacre victims and survivors are members of several different Lakota tribes, said Joseph Brings Plenty, a former chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and a traditional chief.
• Brings Plenty said the tribes are not in a position to pay millions of dollars for the land. Although tribal members are not opposed to development that would preserve, beautify or better educate the public about the land and its history, they are opposed to commercialization, he said.
• "You don't go and dance on grandma and grandpa's grave to turn a hefty dollar sign," he said.
• Tribal members and descendants have reached out to President Barack Obama to make the site a National Monument, which would better guard the site against development and commercialization, Brings Plenty said.
• But even if an outside investor buys the land with intent to develop, there will be obstacles, said Craig Dillon, an Oglala Sioux Tribal Council member. The tribe could pass new laws preventing the buyer from actually building at the site.
• "Whoever buys that is still going to have to deal with the tribe," Dillon said. "Access is going to be an issue. Development is going to be an issue. I'm not threatening anybody, but my tone is be aware you have to deal with the tribe if you purchase it."
• There are nearly 2,500 national historic landmarks across the country, with the vast majority of them owned by private landowners, said Don Stevens, chief

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