On one of our visits the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota my husband Bob and I were invited to a Sun Dance. The reservation is home to the Sicangu Lakota Oyate (1) We accompanied Edna Little Elk, known to all as Unci (grandmother), Alice Four Bears and Tate (Unci's young granddaughter). The Sun Dance was to be held for several days in Kyle, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, home to the Oglala Lakota Oyate. The Sun Dance would be held in honor of tribal members, Joe Eagle Elk and Stanley Red Bird (2). Unci and Alice, as Lakota elders, were the honored guests.
We drove for two hours on some crude, winding hills and dirt roads. It was a cold and windy day with low, heavy clouds in the sky, even though it was summer.
When we arrived, we were shown to a tipi with a central fire. The tipi was for the women Sun Dancers who would arrive later. Shortly after, medicine man Sam Wounded Head came to welcome us. He handed Unci the Sacred Pipe and spoke to the elders in Lakota. Sitting facing west, they held out their arms to him for a ceremonial sacrificial offering of Lakota tribal blood in which a small bit of flesh was taken and wrapped in a cloth to be placed at the Sacred Tree at the center of the Sun Dance circle. We were then all offered the pipe.
Bob and I were asked to gather women's sage out on prairie, which we did and returned to the tipi to wait for the dancers. As they arrived, they first went into a sweat lodge for purification and then returned to prepare themsleves for the Sun Dance. They wore shawls around their shoulders; some adorned themselves with wreaths of the sage worn around their wrists or ankles. We all then went to the Sun Dance circle and watched the men and women dancers entered at the east the circle. Togethter they turned toward each of the four directions. The drums and singing began, seeming to me like the heartbeat of the community, as all danced around the Sacred Tree, holding up their hands to it at the mention of Wakan Tanka, the Creator of all that is. It was very moving--this ritual of prayer and celebrtion --its reverence and meaning.
At the end of this day's Sun Dance, Unci again received the Sacred Pipe, lit it and passed it around to all who had watched and prayed for the dancers. I will never forget the gift of that day--the honor it was to be there and to have meet many Lakota people on both Rosebud and Pine Ridge Reservations during our visit.
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| The Badlands - Pine Ridge |
- I could not stop thinking then and, from time to time, even now how Native Americans all over the country had once lived in harmony with nature and had so many ways in there culture to express it, as we had witnessed at that Sun Dance. When the Europeans came that way of life was doomed, as there was a violation and fragmenting of their lives: decimation their means of survival--the buffalo; kidnapping of children to be sent far away to schools to "civilize" them, There was a censoring of abolishment of everything held sacred, including the Lakota language (3). Though many treaties were made, most were to gain more land and to marginaize Native Americans to reservations and many treaties were broken to accomplish the goal of "Manifest Destiny," claiming all the land from the East to the West Coasts.
During our visits to South Dakota, we met both White and Native people involved in initiatives to revive and preserve the language and culture of the Lakota people, as is the case across the country for other tribes. We met Ron Goodman (2), a poet and teacher from Virginia, who worked with others in this effort, then teaching at Sinte Gleska, a public tribal land-grant university in Mission on Rosebud, Goodman authored, with Stanley Red Bird, Lakota Star Knowledge, which describes how the heavens were looked to as a source and guide for seasonal, practical and cultural aspects of life for the Lakota.
Sadly, we also saw lasting the effects for many Lakota--tormented faces in the towns, rife with illness, addiction, crime and poverty. It was heartbreaking! Fortunately, history has left us books, photos and the words of Native Americans from the period during and after contact with the Europeans about their way of life, beliefs and wisdom. The faces seem noble and strong, as their culture once was--aware of their ancestors and the spiritual nature of life with connection to all of creation, represented in daily rituals and in ceremonies such as the Sun Dance.
The Lakota have a saying: Mitakuye Oyasin (All My Relations), "relations" meaning everything and everyone in creation.
- Chief Seattle, of the Squamish tribe, gave a speech before the Medicine Creek Treaty was to be signed 1854. By then, Native American lives and ways had already changed and they knew what was still to come.
His entire speech at: https://suquamish.nsn.us/home/about-us/chief-seattle-speech
Here is an excerpt:
"....There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory.... And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children’s children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone...."
Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds...."
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| Chief Seattle of the Squamish people |
1. The Lakota have seven bands or sub-tribes. The Sicungu of Rosebud and the Oglala of Pine Ridge (where Wounded Knee took place) are two of them. "Oyate" means "people."
2. Stanley Red Bird, a founder of Sinte Gleska University and main source for Ron Goodman's book Star Knowledge (availalbe on Amazon). See Sandra's blog on Ron Goodman at: https://cosmicseanotes.blogspot.com/2009/08/my-friend-poet-ron-goodman.html
3. It is worthwhile to note the documented current attempts to erase Native American history and events that have taken place as if they never happened, includng individual contributions of Native Americans, Blacks, women and others. These historic happenings are sometimes interpreted as blame and accusation of White people, which make people "uncomfortable." However, truth and history have to be more valued than pretending or denying these things never happened events (and there are many across the world, then and now) are reminders of what can happen when there is intent to wield power over others by any means. We, who live in this age, are not responsible for what happened back then, but, as part of humanity, for truth's sake, we must accept that atrocities have occurred, and can happen again if we are not aware, vigilant and active in attempting to ensure they never do.
