The Lakota

On December 29, 1890, the United States 7th Cavalry under the command of Col. James Forsyth surrounded a band of about 350 Miniconjou Lakota near the banks of Wounded Knee Creek in what is now South Dakota. The Indians, led by Big Foot, believed they were being given passage to the Pine Ridge Reservation not far away. According to Black Elk, an Oglala holy man, a young warrior named Yellow Bird refused to give up his weapon to a soldier and during the scuffle, the gun discharged, killing the soldier (Neihardt, 1932). What ensued was the massacre of about 300 Indian men, women, and children. Thirty-one soldiers were killed, almost all by friendly fire, and 18 soldiers were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for their part in the killings. In one afternoon armed Indian resistance on the Plains came to a halt. The great leaders, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, were dead and with no place else to go, the once mighty Lakota retreated to Standing Rock and Pine Ridge, and all the other reservations in the Dakota Territory to live at the mercy of the corrupt policies of the United States government.

Some would say that the winter of 1890-91 was the end of the Indians, as they had traditionally been known – fearless, cunning, and, wrongly of course, bloodthirsty savages. Indeed, to this day there are people, young and old alike, who believe there is no longer any such thing as real Indians. The Lakota, once feared and admired as the most valiant warriors and buffalo hunters to ever roam the West, have, it seems, been relegated to the dusty shelves of mythology and fable.

That fateful day in 1890 was not, however, the end of the Indians; it only seemed like it. For the next several decades all the Indian nations of North America suffered mightily at the hands of the white man. Corrupt reservation agents; rotten and spoiled rations; land theft; children kidnapped to “Indian” schools; and an indifferent Bureau of Indian Affairs were all attempts to demoralize and destroy the American Indians. The Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Comanche, Apache, Kiowa, Nez Perce, and scores of other nations struggled mightily to survive – and somehow did. The Lakota (the subject of this essay), however, deserve a closer look. More than any other tribe, the Lakota and the seven “sub-tribes” that comprise them – the Sihasapa or Blackfoot, Hunkpapa, Miniconjou, Oohenupa or Two Kettle, Oglala, Itazipacola or Sans Arc, and Sicangu or Brulé – have, over the years, come to symbolize, or rather stereotype, what an Indian is. When people today think about Indians, they think of muscular, face-painted, feathered, warriors riding on a magnificent painted horse with an idyllic scene of the Great Plains in the background. In so many movies, past and present, the cavalry is fighting the “Sioux.” When people want to imitate Indians, they tap their hands to their mouths and call out, “Woo-woo” as they imagine the “Sioux” still do.

The importance of mentioning all this history is to illustrate the point that the Lakota, as well as many other tribes, have faced innumerable adversities, setbacks, and stereotyping since 1890 and before, and they still deal with many of the same problems today. “The Indian had no racial immunity, and when yellow fever, smallpox, measles, or scarlet fever were introduced by a passing white, the Indian community was decimated by the disease.” (Hirschfelder & Montaño, 1993, p. 69) The wholesale slaughter of the Lakota’s primary food source, the buffalo, had an even greater impact. White hunters did the government’s bidding by killing the animals, skinning them for their hide, and leaving the carcasses to rot on the prairie. “By 1885, the government estimated that only 200 buffalo were alive in the wild.” (“History Learning Site: Buffalo,” 2006)

The legalized theft of Indian lands through the establishment of the Reservation system in the 1860s, the Dawes Act of 1887, and House Concurrent Resolution 108 (Indian Termination Policy) of 1953 left the Indians with only a fraction of their ancestral lands (Hirschfelder & Montaño, 1993). Finally, and worst of all, the establishment of federal assimilation policies that created the Indian school system provided for the mandatory removal of Indian children to schools hundreds of miles away from their homes. Once there, their hair was cut off, their traditional clothes were taken and burned, and they were forbidden to speak their own language. It was the job of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, the Riverside Indian Boarding School in Oklahoma, and scores of other day schools and boarding schools, on and off the reservations, to teach Indian children how to be white. If successful, as conventional wisdom went, the Indian “problem” would be eradicated by turning “red savages” into productive white people. Luther Standing Bear, a Lakota warrior, recalled riding a train to a boarding school in the East. Some of his friends were so frightened “they began to sing the death songs of Sioux warriors approaching battle” (“Through Indian Eyes,” 1995). Because of their people’s prolonged and stubborn fight against the white man, Lakota children were hit the hardest. Faced with gross overcrowding, substandard student care, and the daily threat of beatings for the most minor offense – including speaking their own language – hundreds of Lakota children either ran away in hopes of returning home, but were caught and returned to school, or chose suicide as the only way out. 

The blow to the Lakota culture, lifestyle, and psyche cannot be overstated. Today, on the Pine Ridge, Standing Rock, and Cheyenne River Reservations, the Lakota suffer from rampant alcoholism; substandard living conditions; a suicide rate that is twice the national average; an almost 80% unemployment rate; widespread poverty; and a dropout rate that hovers around 62% (“UNPO,” 2005). On the Pine Ridge Reservation alone the median income is $2,600 per year, infant mortality is 300% higher than the national average, 60% of all housing is substandard without water, electricity, phones, insulation, or sewage systems, and the average life expectancy is 45 years (“Hidden Away in the Land of Plenty,” 2002). Violence, drunkenness, despair and apathy are facts of life and many young people easily turn to drugs or alcohol just to dull the pain of being an Indian. But then there are those who don’t, and they are keeping the Lakota traditions, arts, and culture alive.

For years, since the Lakota finally retreated to the Reservations, there has been a battle, or at least quiet animosity, between those who hung on to the traditional ways and those who sought to work and live in the white man’s world. The “Traditionals” remembered the stories of the people and passed them on to the younger generations in the oral tradition; they remembered and followed the ceremonies that had been handed down from their ancestors; they continued to practice the crafts that had been taught to their grandparents by their grandparents; and they followed the tradition of Tiospaye, the extended family, which meant that the children were taught by their uncles and aunts and practically anyone might be considered an uncle or aunt. It is the way the Lakota have lived for centuries. The non-Traditionals do not believe in these things and they often find themselves very much at odds with the Traditionals. This situation came to a head in the 1970s when Dick Wilson, the head of the Oglala Tribal Council, employed GOONs (Guardians Of the Oglala Nation) to terrorize, abuse, and murder members of his own tribe – notably Traditionals (“Who Should We Believe,” n.d.).

One of the strongest traditions among the Lakota is the oral handing down of the people’s common wisdom through folktales and myths from one generation to the next. There are a wealth of creation stories; trickster tales; stories of love and war; and animal tales meant to teach and amuse. Many of these stories attempt to explain natural phenomenon, how the Lakota gained certain skills, or exemplified bravery in battle as a virtue to strive for. In almost all of these stories, animals can talk, as can rocks, trees, water, and even the sun, moon, and earth. The stories of the Lakota relate to the natural world the originators of the stories experienced thousands of years ago. One human creation story tells of a rabbit who finds a clot of blood on the ground and after kicking it around for a while, the blood clot is eventually formed into a human being (Rabbit Boy). When Rabbit Boy grows up, he is sent to live with the other humans. Iktome (the trickster) kills Rabbit Boy out of jealousy, cuts him into small pieces, and throws him into a soup pot. Miraculously, Rabbit Boy escapes the pot, his pieces fit back together, and he ascends to the heavens to gain more power. Finally, Iktome sings his “mock” death song wrong and he is cut into little pieces – a victim of his own trickery (Erdoes & Ortiz, 1984, p. 5-8). This story explains how there are magical powers that simply exist without explanation, how people can misinterpret someone else’s good intentions, and how we can fall victim to our own treachery if we are not careful. It was, and is, through stories like this and The Woman Among the Wolves (Swann, 1994, p.428-9) and Iktome Sleeps With His Wife By Mistake (Erdoes & Ortiz, 1984, p. 372-4) that the Lakota taught their children bravery, self-control, compassion, an understanding of the world as they knew it, and all the values that we try to impress on our own children today.

Indian education today has taken a much different turn since the days of the Carlisle School, but there are still large gaps in learning due in large part to social conditions and children’s unease at learning in the “white” way. It is not the case that Indians teach Indians; more often than not, reservation teachers are white. This is due, in part, to the high dropout rate among students in primary and secondary school, the low numbers of Indians who attend college, and the even lower number that actually graduate. It is a vicious cycle, but conditions on the Lakota reservations do not foster, or encourage, student participation in school. In their 1991 report, The Indian Nations at Risk Task Force found that “many primary and secondary schools have not adequately prepared students to take advantage of postsecondary opportunities” (U.S. Department of Education, 1991, p. 6). The same report, however, does outline strategies for improved Indian education through tribal and parental participation and responsibility, making the native language a core component of the curriculum, and creating an Indian Student Bill of Rights.

Lakota children are at a distinct disadvantage when their white teachers do not understand how Indians learn best. All the “best practices” mean nothing when teachers do not know how to teach Indians. Indians have, for centuries, learned by listening to and observing their elders pass on the oral history and culture of their people as well as teaching by demonstration social, hunting, and domestic skills. It is also very important to know that Indian children will not perform an activity publicly until they are certain they have mastered it. This is a foreign concept to whites that believe in the Nike ad – Just Do It. Another aspect of Lakota culture that affects education is the fact that their strong sense of community and co-operation is completely at odds with a system that encourages individualism and competition (Hirschfelder & Montaño, 1993, p. 99). Lakota social culture is based on the community – not on the individual. It’s no wonder students feel alienated and disaffected by a system set up to help them, but that confounds and frustrates them.

The Lakota have always been steeped in tradition and ceremony. These things permeated the everyday lives of the people. There was a right way and a wrong way to enter another man’s tipi; there were, and still are, giveaways by families who hosted a celebration (the host family gives their belongings to their guests), and boys were taught to hunt and fight, girls to bead, cook, and prepare hides. In addition, there are many ceremonies such as the Inipi or Sweat Lodge, Taku Wakan or Sundance, and Chanupa or Pipe Ceremony. All of these play a part in the collective culture of the Lakota and they are passed down to each generation just as they have been for thousands of years. Even today the Lakota keep these traditions despite every adversity they face.

But some adversity cannot be escaped or ignored. Because of the inhuman conditions that the Lakota were forced to live with for almost a hundred years and because of the treatment they received from the FBI, local police, and Dick Wilson and his GOONs, on February 28, 1973, members of The American Indian Movement (AIM) led by Dennis Banks (Anishnabe/Lakota) and Russell Means (Lakota) took over and occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. For two months the Indians held the town during which time two Indians were killed by sniper fire from the FBI. By the time the town was finally relinquished, Indians and whites alike knew the plight of the American Indian. The injustices and inequalities of being treated as second-class citizens had finally come to a head and a new era of Indian pride began to appear.

Although it had been brewing for years, Indians began to assert this newfound pride by challenging the American government on long-broken treaties, calling for tribal sovereignty, and demanding the return of ancestral lands (“Through Indian Eyes, 1995). Lakota musicians, writers, actors, and artists began to be more visible in the mainstream: the band Indigenous, Indian flutist Calvin Standing Bear, singer Nellie Two Bulls, singer and actor John Trudell, actor and author Russell Means, artist Alan Yellowhawk, painter Merle Locke, among many others. It is through this new sense of identity and pride that Lakota children are beginning to see the world. It is a world of stories by and about the people, and those stories are affirmations of the Lakota as a nation. Children and adults are connecting and reconnecting to their heritage through books like Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions, Prison Writings, Black Elk Speaks, The Flight of Red Bird, On the Rez, American Indian Myths and Legends, Coyote, The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses, Iktomi and the Ducks, and scores more.

So it is that the Lakota traditions, lifestyles, culture, values, families, and most important, education have endured across the thousands of years since the time when, as legend has it, the Lakota first stepped out from the Paha Sapa, the Black Hills. All of these things – adversities and victories – impact the lives of the people, especially the lives of the children. They are the future of the Lakota, and what they learn from their elders will be what they carry proudly, as a badge of honor, into the world.

Bibliography

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Frazier, I. (2000). On the Rez. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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Hirschfelder, A., & Montaño, M.K. (1993). The Native American Almanac: A Portrait of Native America Today. New York: Prentice Hall

Lame Deer, J., & Erdoes, R. (1972). Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions. New York: Washington Square

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Schwartz, S. (2002). Hidden Away, In the Land of Plenty: 2002 Current Statistics Concerning the Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota (Sioux) Reservation. Retrieved August 17, 2006, from http://www.nativevillage.org/Messages%20from%20the%20People/Hidden%20Away%20in%20the%20Land%20of%20Plenty.htm

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