Elders from the Lakota tribes picked this location in the Black Hills for Crazy Horse. Crazy Horse is pointing toward his land, but this monument represents all Native peoples. A lot has still to be constructed, and at the rate the monument is getting completed, I won’t live to see it completed. But I left this place much enlightened.
Artists still live on this property owned by the sculptor’s family. A Native American heritage center is also on the grounds, as well as vendors from the Sioux nation. I got to meet the designer of the t-shirt I bought yesterday in Chamberlain, and his wife Misty is the great-great-great granddaughter of Sitting Bull. I could easily have dropped more money at the Native American vendors.
Talking to the Lakota made me now want to drive down to Pine Ridge, a place I wanted to see anyway (I just hadn’t planned exactly when) Since I was already in the southern half of the Black Hills anyway, the 100--mile trip there on US Highways 218 and 18 were a no-brainer.
The drive was quite pleasant. The road is a divided four-laner over rolling hills and several old mining towns. I gassed up in Hot Springs for $2.55 a gallon of super-unleaded. Once I passed the Wind Cave National Monument were wild buffalo roam, the terrain became more flat and soon the Black Hills were in the rear-view mirror. Smaller alkaline hills popped up but soon the land resembled more of the wavy grasslands I drove through yesterday, only less yellow and more bland.
A small casino outside the western boundary of the Pine Ridge Indian reservation welcomed people to this place. Standard BIA housing dotted the landscape: weather-worn trailers and stray dogs along the road let passers-by know this wasn’t the rich Black Hills anymore. Why doesn’t more money from the Black Hills make it back to this reservation? Why don’t more Lakota work in the Black Hills? More and more such questions raced through my head as I looked at either side of the road directly into abject poverty. The Pine Ridge Indian reservation is the poorest reservation in the US and the US government is partially to blame for the continued suppression of the people living here.
I didn’t stop in Pine Ridge. I now wanted to see Wounded Knee where we massacred Sioux Indians to get back at Little Big Horn. A lone Indian walked along the side of the road heading into Wounded Knee. I gave him a ride to Porcupine, a town five miles north from Wounded Knee. He introduced himself as Two Eagles. Sadie growled at him but then quickly warmed up to him and laid her head on his lap as we talked. She acted as if she were tranced by Two Eagles.
Two Eagles is all Lakota. He works as a horse breaker although the money isn’t steady work. He lives in an abandoned home with neither electricity nor running water overlooking Porcupine. He had spent the day at Pine Ridge to try to get the electric company to turn on the power at his home.
He pointed at trailers in the distance that were the homes of descendants of Big Foot and Red Cloud, Sioux Chiefs of the Wounded Knee massacre. He also talked about the seven directions Lakota pray to twice a day: east, north, west and south, the skyward, then downward and then to oneself.
Two Eagles was hard to understand because he was missing half his teeth. He was telling me stories without me asking him too. I quickly learned to listen and let him speak.
It was as if he wanted to tell me the truth. And when he kindly asked me for $10 I gave him $20. I felt good to be able to help him out.
I drove back to Wounded Knee as that was the purpose of my drive here: to walk the hallowed grounds of the massacre. I wanted to see and feel the land as that is how one best learns the history of the land. Two Eagles said there was a sign telling visitors about the battle. I saw it when I returned to town.
It was a large and detailed sign. A young Lakota came up to me from the visitor's center nearby, a pine-pole stand covered in pine branches. He was there to give out any more information to vistors with questions. His entire family was selling bracelets and dreamcatchers.
"Come on over if you have any more questions, my uncle has plenty of photographs from the battle!" I finally bit and approached the Lakota family who were selling hand-made dream catchers and buffalo hide purses and some jewelry.
Gerald Elk, a grandmother with grey hair pulled back in a ponytail and wearing a Lakota turtle on her maroon t-shirt, brought out photocopied newspaper articles describing the massacre in great detail, and then added a hand-drawn map of the area. The ditch that was in the massacre and the treeline and hills were all still there. I was reliving the battle. Or better, I was reliving their massacre.
Gerald talked for a long time, mentioning names I was unfamiliar with (I found out today how little I know about Lakota history). I would have had to have read the entire photocopied article there which would easily have taken several hours.
I walked across the street to visit the cemetery in which survivors of the massacre are now buried. It was humbling to visit this little plot that has seen better days.
"The National Park Service wanted to erect a monument here but we refused" Gerald explained, "because you would have had to pay a fee to see this" And, I'm sure, very little money would go to the tribe and all to the NPS. The vendors were all on the spot where the Lakota chiefs had been rounded up for transport to Pine Ridge. The massacre was a quarter mile to the east from where we were standing.
Gerald talked about other struggles of reservation life: most people live way below poverty and can't afford car insurance. State and federal troopers know this and pull people over with Shannon County license prefixes on their plates: 65.
"Many people have to make a choice between feeding their family or buying insurance, so they go without insurance" she went on. "That is why you don't see any new cars on this rez, they can't afford them! The drive to Rapid City or Shannon, NE is 90 minutes and we have to go there to buy foods as there isn't anything around here."
"Cops will pull you over in town just to check to see if you have insurance"added Todd, her son.
"Most people here don't even own cars." That explains why Two Eagles had to hitch a ride.
Other woes she mentioned where the high prices for fresh fruits, meats, gasoline, or the three-year wait most rezidents endure to get their trailers fixed or proper medical care taken care of. Why didn't the tribe grow their own vegetables? I asked. Because the winters here are long and cold and few things can grow. Indeed it got cold fast soon after the sun dropped low.
"Last winter it was so cold here we had no electricity for three days. The snow was over our heads in some places" said one of Gerald's nephews.
"The power company built these electric lines without asking us" said Emerson, and yet charges us a lot to get power. We do without most of the time." I can't imagine living here in the winter. Living like this would be intolerable anywhere else.
"We have unemployment here at 95 percent" she went on. "I am grateful that all my kids have jobs."
Gerald also talked about "the dominant society" on the rez who are the Whites who lived here when the rez was created or who married into the tribe. By creed any Indian woman who marries a White loses all tribal support, a law that was created in 1934 when the Indian Reorganization Act was passed. This law is seldom enforced.
Gerald was like Two Eagles in that she was telling me stories and all I had to do was provide feedback or listen. Like Two Eagles, she spoke as if she had been wanting to tell somebody these things from her heart.
"We don't have elders here because most die when they are in their 40s" she went on. "Most of us get fat from the food the government gives us: salty, greasy meats. We suffer from diabetes, heart disease and many of the kids take drugs." But at least she agreed that there were no gangs in Wounded Knee although Pine Ridge had a few.
"All the crime happens in Pine Ridge." Her solution was better education for the children so that they have a better future.
Another man, who had been resting on his vehicle and watching us from a distance finally approached me to show me his wood-burned etchings that he sells. HE also teaches this craft at the Oglala Lakota College. He doesn't make much, he admitted, but he wanted to make sure that his children would have a better life than he did on the rez.
"I don't want my children to remember the suffering we did" he told me as he pointed out across the horizon. There wasn't much here, but people stayed because their ancestors were buried here and their ancestors are a connection to their past.
The sun was dropping low and I knew that we were going to spend the night at Wounded Knee.
"You can camp right here, no one will bother you" said Emerson, Geralds' husband. A little tan and white stray dog befriended me and stayed near the vendor stand the entire time. Even Sadie took a liking to her.
We talked about other issues, all issues that convinced me that these tribes are grossly discriminated against by the US government. And they can't get jobs in the Black Hills because "They don't want to hire us, they think we are thieves!" The long drive on narrow roads would also make the commute long, especially in the cold winters here.
Emerson pointed out the long line of cars coming from the East. "They are returning from a sundance" he explained.
And shortly after the convoy passed by, everyone I had been talking to got in their cars and drove home. It was 9:17pm.
The little dog stayed by my van, though. She followed me even as I drove off. I didn't want her running down the road after me, and gave her one of Sadie's chewbones filled with flavored stuff. She grabbed that with delight and sat down by the historical marker to eat in peace. This is when I took the opportunity to drive back to Pine Ridge for a late meal at Taco John's before this place closed at 10pm. My other options where Subway and Pizza Hut.
The Shell station at Pine Ridge is where the nightlife is. Open 24 hours a day, I went in to buy a large soda and to sit and write about today's experiences. People were coming and going, from tribal cops checking in to cops pulling people over. Homeless people sat in the corner; one even begged me for money. Teens loitered at other tables and a few even looked like what Gerald described as the "dominant society."
I was tired but kept on writing. One of the store workers asked me to leave as he was wiping down the smaller tables along the window. He wasn't rude, and he let me finish my sentence before I logged off, so I simply went into my van to write more. No one harassed me there.
Stray dogs walked around the gas pumps. No one bothered the pups as they carelessly wandered around. One black dog even sat near the store entrance and curled up to sleep.
I finally drove back to Wounded Knee after midnight. I was a little apprehensive about sleeping out here alone, under the clear sky where every star was visible. There were no noises and the only lights were from street lights. The dog that had followed me around earlier was also gone.
I crawled into the back of the van with Sadie. I was expecting a cool night and kept the windows up. It didn't take me long to fall asleep.
http://www.yankton.net/articles/2009/06/19/news/doc4a3b137c48eb3770970608.txt
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