Lakota Quotes

When I'm born I'm black, when I grow up I'm black, when I'm in the sun I'm black, when I'm sick I'm black, when I die I'm black, and you... when you're born you're pink, when you grow up you're white, when you're cold you're blue, when you're sick you're blue, when you die you're green and you dare call me colored

The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too.

Respect is a close relative of tolerance, and both go a long way to prevent and alleviate the negative interactions between and among people. Respect was a member of each Lakota household during the free-roaming buffalo-hunting days on the northern plains.

The thing to keep in mind is that laws are framed by those who happen to be in power and for the purpose of keeping them in power.

famous quote from the Lakota chief Red Cloud states that men do that which is difficult while women do that which is impossible.

We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills and the winding streams with tangled growth, as 'wild'. Only to the white man was nature a 'wilderness' and only to him was the land 'infested' with 'wild' animals and 'savage' people. To us it was home. Earth was beautiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery." - Chief Standing River of the Lakota

The strength of a tree, the old ones say, comes not from growing thicker in the good years when there is water, but from staying alive in the bad, dry times.

Moral power is always more dangerous to an oppressor than political force.

But the old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too. So he kept his children close to nature's softening influence. — Chief Luther Standing Bear Oglala Sioux Some

There is no word for goodbye in Lakota. That's what my mother used to tell me. Sure, there are words like toksa, which meant "later," that were used by people as a modern substitute. She'd told me later that the Lakota people didn't use a term for farewell because of the idea that we are forever connected. To say goodbye would mean the circle was broken.

Humility was a virtue that the Lakota of old expected their leaders to possess. A quiet, humble person, we believed, was aware of other people and other things. An arrogant, boastful man was only aware of himself. Interestingly, our methods of selecting leaders today seem to favor the arrogant and boastful.

In the Lakota/Sioux tradition, a person who is grieving is considered most wakan, most holy. There's a sense that when someone is struck by the sudden lightning of loss, he or she stands on the threshold of the spirit world. The prayers of those who grieve are considered especially strong, and it is proper to ask them for their help. You might recall what it's like to be with someone who has grieved deeply. The person has no layer of protection, nothing left to defend. The mystery is looking out through that person's eyes. For the time being, he or she has accepted the reality of loss and has stopped clinging to the past or grasping at the future. In the groundless openness of sorrow, there is a wholeness of presence and a deep natural wisdom.

Memory is like riding a trail at night with a lighted torch. The torch casts its light only so far, and beyond that is darkness. —Ancient Lakota saying

What does kiciciyapi mitawa mean?" He kept his head on her breasts. "What?" "You called me kicicyapi mitawa. It sounded so beautiful. It wasn't Japanese. What was it?" "It's the voice of the Lakota. It would sound silly in English." He cupped her breast, his fingers moving lightly over her skin. His breath warm on her heart. "I want to know. It didn't sound silly when you said it. It sounded...beautiful. It made me feel beautiful. And loved." He kissed her breast. "I called you my heart. And you are.

In sharing the journey of life, travel with the humble person on the quiet path.

Man’s heart, away from nature, becomes hard; [the Lakota] knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too. —LUTHER STANDING BEAR (C. 1868–1939)

And as the old men warned, power does not listen with honest ears to the whispers of the powerless.

He remembers what the spiritual visionary, Wallace Black Elk, a Lakota said – man's scratching of the earth causes diseases like cancer. He meant the mining and drilling for coal, gas, oil, uranium. The scratching brings up the things deep in the earth that should have stayed down there.

As the Lakota Sioux phrase Mitakuye Oyasin—“All my relations”—implies, we’re all connected, all in this together. Recovery is reciprocal: heal yourself, heal the world; heal the world, heal yourself.

Life is a circle. The end of one journey is the beginning of the next.

It was never the poverty that deterred me, never the disease, unsanitary conditions, bugs or garbage, those things were never even a thought in my head as a reason for not staying. I kept looking for the good and always found it each day. I was happy on the reservation. It would have all worked out if Chief could have been a little nicer to me. The only thing I was missing was love and respect from my partner. Maybe he had changed.

Some day the earth will weep, she will beg for her life, she will cry with tears of blood. You will make a choice, if you will help her or let her die, and when she dies, you too will die. John Hollow Horn, Oglala Lakota, 1932

When an enemy throws the worst it can at us we must meet it with the best we have.

To live in the moment... is the only footprint one must follow..

The white man, as one Indian said, “was in the Black Hills just like maggots”;10 wasicu, or “the greedy one” (literally, “he-who-takes-the-fat”),11 was the term the Lakota used to describe the miners, and it later became their term for whites in general. “The love of possessions is a disease with them,” said Sitting Bull, who was never behindhand in his contempt.

Nixon sent some no-account underling to tell us that he had done more for the American Indian than any predecessor and that he saw no reason for our coming to Washington, that he had more important things to do than to talk with us—presumably surreptitiously taping his visitors and planning Watergate. We wondered what all these good things were that he had done for us.

Man's heart, away from nature, becomes hard; [the Lakota] knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too. —LUTHER STANDING BEAR (c. 1868–1939)

if one doesn’t find a way to do what is necessary, it’s easier the next time to find a way not to act. Furthermore, if one can do the necessary and sometimes seemingly mundane things, one has it within himself or herself to persevere when it becomes necessary.

Don’t sell your land, don’t sell Grandmother Earth to the strip-mining outfits and the uranium companies. Don’t sell your water.” That kind of advice is a threat to the system and gets you into the penitentiary.

Crazy Horse was dead. He was brave and good and wise. He never wanted anything but to save his people, and he fought the Wasichus only when they came to kill us in our own country. He was only thirty years old. They could not kill him in battle. They had to lie to him and kill him that way. I cried all night, and so did my father.

Racism breeds racism in reverse.

You got to look at things with the eye in your heart, not with the eye in your head. —Lame Deer

It was understandable, then, that the worth of a person was not measured in the things he or she owned, but in the deeds done on behalf of others.

Despite all of the time he spent in Big Heart's, Wilson had never come to understand the social lives of Indians. He did not know that, in the Indian world, there is not much social difference between a rich Indian and a poor one. Generally speaking, Indian is Indian. A few who gain wealth and power as lawyers, businessmen, artists, or doctors may marry white people and keep only white friends, but generally Indians of different classes interact freely with one another. Most unemployed or working poor, some with good jobs and steady incomes, but all mixing together. Wilson also did not realize how tribal distinctions were much more important than economic ones. The rich and poor Spokanes may hang out together, but that doesn't necessarily mean the Spokanes are friendly with the Lakota or Navajo or any other tribe. The Sioux still distrust the Crow because they served as scouts for Custer. Hardly anybody likes the Pawnee. Most important, though, Wilson did not understand that the white people who pretend to be Indian are gently teased, ignored, plainly ridiculed, or beaten, depending on their degree of whiteness.

A humble person rarely stumbles, the old ones say, because such a person walks with face toward the Earth and can see the path ahead. On the other hand, the arrogant man who walks with his head high to bask in the glory of the moment will stumble often because he is more concerned with the moment than what lays ahead.

College was an experience I'll always cherish. Now I fund a scholarship at my alma mater in my late father's name—he'd laugh to know that it's a science scholarship, when I can barely do math! I also fund a nursing scholarship at the Oglala Lakota College in Kyle, South Dakota, in the name of my mother, who was a nurse.

The Native Americans, whose wisdom Thoreau admired, regarded the Earth itself as a sacred source of energy. To stretch out on it brought repose, to sit on the ground ensured greater wisdom in councils, to walk in contact with its gravity gave strength and endurance. The Earth was an inexhaustible well of strength: because it was the original Mother, the feeder, but also because it enclosed in its bosom all the dead ancestors. It was the element in which transmission took place. Thus, instead of stretching their hands skyward to implore the mercy of celestial divinities, American Indians preferred to walk barefoot on the Earth: The Lakota was a true Naturist – a lover of Nature. He loved the earth and all things of the earth, the attachment growing with age. The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. It was good for the skin to touch the earth and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth. Their tipis were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The birds that flew in the air came to rest on the earth and it was the final abiding place of all things that lived and grew. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing. That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life-giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly; he can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him. Walking, by virtue of having the earth’s support, feeling its gravity, resting on it with every step, is very like a continuous breathing in of energy. But the earth’s force is not transmitted only in the manner of a radiation climbing through the legs. It is also through the coincidence of circulations: walking is movement, the heart beats more strongly, with a more ample beat, the blood circulates faster and more powerfully than when the body is at rest. And the earth’s rhythms draw that along, they echo and respond to each other. A last source of energy, after the heart and the Earth, is landscapes. They summon the walker and make him at home: the hills, the colours, the trees all confirm it. The charm of a twisting path among hills, the beauty of vine fields in autumn, like purple and gold scarves, the silvery glitter of olive leaves against a defining summer sky, the immensity of perfectly sliced glaciers … all these things support, transport and nourish us.

The Lakota unburdened themselves of hair, of fingers, cut into their flesh to temporarily escape the grief of a loved one’s death. I saw this on A Man Called Horse and in Dances with Wolves. But as far as I knew, no one in my immediate family had ever done this. My mother was worth far more than a hank of hair. She was worth my spine. My eyes. My womb.

Sometimes I go about pitying myself. And all the while I am being carried on great winds across the sky.

There are many different kinds of knowledge. The way of the heart and spirit can guide us in a more trustworthy way than the intellect alone.

Rarely did anyone dream of the Thunders, and anyone who did had a special calling to be a “sacred clown,” the one who did the opposite of what was expected.

Mitakuye Oyasın - ''We are all related, two-legged, four-legged, furred, finned, feathered, in the soil or growing from it.'' - Lakota, Native American Proverb

Bear), a writer, educator, and tribal leader from the Lakota Sioux tradition,

The Lakota warrior Iron Hawk later explained why he had pounded a trooper’s head into jelly. “These white men wanted it, they called for it, and I let them have it.”16

Given the Western ability to produce deadly weapons, its propensity to create cheap, plentiful goods, and its tradition of seeing war in pragmatic rather than ritual terms as a mechanism to advance political ends, it is no surprise that Mesoamericans, African tribes, and native North Americans all joined European forces to help kill off Aztecs, Zulus, and Lakotas.

If those bad words come, I let them come in one ear and go out the other. I never let them come out of my mouth. If a bad word comes in your ear and then comes out of your mouth, it will go someplace and hurt somebody. If I did that, that hurt would come back twice as hard on me.

He’d been unique, a member of a vanishing race, a vanishing tribe, an individual in an ancient society. Now he was one of thousands with mixed blood, not unique anymore, not even Lakota. He was part Moroccan, part Berber if he believed the senator. The illegitimate son of a senator, how was that for a shocker? And if it hadn’t been for a renegade gambling syndicate trying to get a casino on Sioux land that they could siphon off profits from, he’d have gone the rest of his life without ever knowing the truth. His mother had kept her secret for thirty-six years. His whole life.

The thing to keep in mind is that laws are framed by those who happen to be in power and for the purpose of keeping them in power. That goes for the U.S.A as well as for Russia or any other country in the world.

The character of the Indian's emotion left little room in his heart for antagonism toward his fellow creatures .... For the Lakota (one of the three branches of the Sioux Nation), mountains, lakes, rivers, springs, valleys, and the woods were all in finished beauty. Winds, rain, snow, sunshine, day, night, and change of seasons were endlessly fascinating. Birds, insects, and animals filled the world with knowledge that defied the comprehension of man. The Lakota was a true naturalist - a lover of Nature. He loved the earth and all things of the earth, and the attachment grew with age. The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. It was good for the skin to touch the earth, and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth. Their tipis were built upon the earth and their alters were made of earth. The birds that flew in the air came to rest upon the earth, and it was the final abiding place of all things that lived and grew. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing, and healing. This is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its live giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly; he can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him.

All of my grandparents epitomized the best qualities and characteristics of being human, among them resiliency. They faced the worst that life threw at them with the best of what they were. Just as important, they demonstrated one significant reality about resiliency: it is a quiet, persistent process. While hardship, difficulties, and disaster might befall us in a blinding moment, resiliency responds subtly. It does not bring results in one fell swoop, but moment by moment and one step at a time.

Tate practically raised you from what I hear. You love him, don’t you?” Her face closed up. “For all the good it will ever do me, yes,” she said softly. “He won’t have the excuse of pure Lakota blood much longer,” he advised. “I’m not holding out for miracles anymore,” she vowed. “I’m going to stop wanting what I can never have. From now on, I’ll take what I can get from life and be satisfied with it. Tate will have to find his own way.” “That’s sour grapes,” he observed. “You bet it is. What do you want me to do to help?” “It’s dangerous,” he pointed out, hesitating as he considered her youth. “I don’t know…” “I’m a card-carrying archeologist,” she reminded him. “Haven’t you ever watched an Indiana Jones movies? We’re all like that,” she told him with a wicked grin. “Mild-mannered on the outside and veritable world-tamers inside. I can get a whip and a fedora, too, if you like,” she added.

...I had spent hours talking with people who had trouble believing. For some, the issue was that they believed less than they thought they should about Jesus. They were not trouble by the idea that he may have had two human parents instead of one or that his real presence with his disciples after his death might have been more metaphysical than physical. The glory they beheld in him had more to do with the nature of his being than with the number of his miracles, but they had suffered enough at the hands of true believers to learn to keep their mouths shut. For others, the issue was that they believed more than Jesus. Having beheld his glory, they found themselves running into God's glory all over the place, including places where Christian doctrine said that it should not be. I knew Christians who had beheld God's glory in a Lakota sweat lodge, in a sacred Celtic grove, and at the edge of a Hawaiian volcano, as well as in dreams and visions that they were afraid to tell anyone else about at all. These people not only feared being shunned for their unorthodox narratives, they also feared sharing some of the most powerful things that had ever happened to them with people who might dismiss them. Given the history of Christians as a people who started out beholding what was beyond belief, this struck me as a lamentable state of affairs, both for those who have learned to see no more than they are supposed to see as well as for those who have excused themselves from traditional churches because they see too little or too much. If it is true that God exceeds all our efforts to contain God, then is it too big a stretch to declare that dumbfoundedness is what all Christians have most in common? Or that coming together to confess all that we do not know is at least as sacred an activity as declaring what we think we do know?

Tell me!” Cecily insisted later, shaking Colby by both arms. “Cut it out, you’ll dismember me,” Colby said, chuckling. She let go of the artificial arm and wrapped both hands around the good one. “I want to know. Listen, this is my covert operation. You’re just a stand-in!” “I promised I wouldn’t tell.” “You promised in Lakota. Tell me in English what you promised in Lakota.” He gave in. He did tell her, but not Leta, what was said, but only about the men coming to the reservation soon. “We’ll need the license plate number,” she said. “It can be traced. “Oh, of course,” he said facetiously. “They’ll certainly come here with their own license plate on the car so that everyone knows who they are!” “Damn!” He chuckled at her irritation. He was about to tell her about his alternative method when a big sport utility vehicle came flying down the dirt road and pulled up right in front of Leta’s small house. Tate Winthrop got out, wearing jeans and a buckskin jacket and sunglasses. His thick hair fell around his shoulders and down his back like a straight black silk curtain. Cecily stared at it with curious fascination. In all the years she’d known him, she’d very rarely seen his hair down. “All you need is the war paint,” Colby said in a resigned tone. He turned the uninjured cheek toward the newcomer. “Go ahead. I like matching scars.” Tate took off the dark glasses and looked from Cecily to Colby without smiling. “Holden won’t tell me a damned thing. I want answers.” “Come inside, then,” Cecily replied. “We’re attracting enough attention as it is.

Indian Problem” would inspire none other than Adolf Hitler. In a 1928 speech, he applauded the way Americans had “gunned down the millions of Redskins to a few hundred thousand, and now keep the modest remnant under observation in a cage.” Hitler “often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination—by starvation and uneven combat—of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity,” wrote John Toland in Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography.

A mounted buffalo chase was one of the most exciting things a man could do. There was always the risk of injury and death, but having once hunted buffalo from the back of a horse, no man could resist trying it over and over again. It was one thing to wait in ambush along a trail for black-tailed or white-tailed deer or at a waterhole for the white-bellied pronghorn, but chasing buffalo was the pursuit of life itself, testing one’s nerves and skills to the limit as fast as a horse could run.

Hitler’s studies of American Indian reservations influenced his creation of concentration camps. America’s westward expansion, justified by Manifest Destiny, served as Hitler’s template for what he called Lebensraum, “living space,” his justification for invading the countries east of Germany and murdering millions of Slavs living there.

In 2019, Jordan Marie Brings Three White Horses Daniel (Lakota and Diné) started running high-profile marathons with a red handprint painted across her face to raise awareness of the overlooked crisis of Native American women, girls, and LGBTQ people going missing and/or dying by homicide at higher rates than women of any other ethnicity.

All the stones that are around here, each one has a language of its own. Even the earth has a song.

Look at the real reality beneath the sham realities of things and gadgets,” Leonard always tells me. “Look through the eye in your heart. That’s the meaning of Indian religion.

Sound is important. Our sound is the sound of nature and animals, not the notes of a white man’s scale. Our

Our language comes from the water, the flowers, the wild creatures, the

The fight for our land is at the core of our existence, as it has been for the last two hundred years. Once the land is gone, then we are gone too.

The buffalo provided the fuel for fires that smoked their own meat.

This time, the rapids sent them through a dark tunnel that seemed timeless, blind, malevolent. A yawning throat of water.

The men who had brought us whiskey and the smallpox had come with the cross in one hand and the gun in the other.

George Armstrong Custer a massacré les Indiens Lakota. Sheridan a exterminé les bisons, pour faire mourir de faim le peuple des grandes plaines. Un crime organisé, froidement pensé et systématiquement mis en ouvre. Arrosé de whisky frelaté. Ensuite, et depuis, il y a eu la Corée, le Vietnam, Cuba, La Grenade, Haïti, le Guatemala, le Nicaragua, l'Irak, l'Afghanistan".

He wondered if he would ever see the inside of one of those houses whose great windows blared sheaves of light. They made huge blurred spears that reached out into the balmy spring darkness.

His eyes ran over her hungrily. “I couldn’t get it out of my mind,” he said, almost to himself, “the way it felt, back at my mother’s house. I was never so hungry for anyone, but it wasn’t completely physical, even then.” He frowned. “I want you, Cecily, and I hate myself for it.” “What else is new?” She gestured toward the door. “Go home. And I hope you don’t sleep a wink.” “I probably won’t,” he said ruefully. He moved toward the door, hesitating. “Good night,” she said firmly, not moving. He stood with his back to her, his spine very straight. “I can trace my ancestors back before the Mexican War in the early 1800s, pure Lakota blood, undiluted even by white settlement. There are so few of us left…” She could have wept for what she knew, and he didn’t know. “You don’t have to explain it to me,” she said solemnly. “I know how you feel.” “You don’t,” he bit off. He straightened again. “I’d die to have you, just once.” He turned, and the fire was in his eyes as they met hers, glittering across the room. “It’s like that for you, too.” “It’s a corruption of the senses. You don’t love me,” she said quietly. “Without love, it’s just sex.” He breathed deliberately, slowly. He didn’t want to ask. He couldn’t help it. “Something you know?” “Yes. Something I know,” she said, lying with a straight face and a smile that she hoped was worldly. She was not going to settle for crumbs from him, stolen hours in his bed. Men were devious when desire rode them, even men like Tate. She couldn’t afford for him to know that she was incapable of wanting any man except him. The words stung. They were meant to. He hesitated, only for a minute, before he jerked open the door and went out. Cecily closed her eyes and thanked providence that she’d had the good sense to deny herself what she wanted most in the world. Tate had said once that sex alone wasn’t enough. He was right. She repeated it, like a mantra, to her starving body until she finally fell asleep.

I saw him with her last week, at a coffeehouse near my apartment. They were holding hands. She’s captivated him.” “The Lakota Captive.” Leta made a line in the air with her hand. “I can see it now, the wily, brave Lakota warrior with the brazen white woman pioneer. She carries him off into the sunset over her shoulder…” Cecily whacked her with a strand of grass she’d pulled. “You write history your way, I’ll write it my way,” Leta said wickedly. “Native Americans are stoic and unemotional,” Cecily reminded her. “All the books say so.” “We never read many books in the old days, so we didn’t know that,” came the dry explanation. She shook her head. “What a sad stereotype so many make of us-a bloodthirsty ignorant people who never smile because they’re too busy torturing people over hot fires.” “Wrong tribe,” Cecily corrected. She frowned thoughtfully. “That was the northeastern native people.” “Who’s the Native American here, you or me?” Cecily shrugged. “I’m German-American.” She brightened. “But I had a grandmother who dated a Cherokee man once. Does that count?” Leta hugged her warmly. “You’re my adopted daughter. You’re Lakota, even if you haven’t got my blood.

A Lakota woman . . . once wrote that what lies at the heart of the religion of hunting peoples is the notion that a spiritual landscape exists within the physical landscape. To put it another way, occasionally one sees something fleeting in the land, a moment when line, color, and movement intensify and something sacred is revealed, leading one to believe that there is another realm of reality corresponding to the physical one but different. In the face of a rational, scientific approach to the land, which is more widely sanctioned, esoteric insights and speculations are frequently overshadow, and what is lost is profound. The land is like poetry: it is inexplicably coherent, it is transcendent in its meaning, and it has the power to elevate a consideration of human life [Barry Lopez].

All of us want to survive the Coronavirus Pandemic. Most of us will, and after we do, we will look back either with pride or regret on how we dealt with things during the crisis. Donald T. Iannone, D.Div.

Go ahead. Ask me who the father is.” He only smiled. “Do I look that stupid to you?” She pushed back her short hair with a sigh. “He doesn’t know, and you’re not to tell him. In English, Apache or Lakota,” she emphasized, covering all her bases. He nodded. “What are you going to do?” “I haven’t the slightest idea,” she confessed. “I only used the home-pregnancy test this morning, but I was pretty sure before then. I’ve got to find a place to live where Leta won’t see me for a while. I can’t risk having her tell Tate.” She glanced at him. “Where were you all this time?” she wanted to know. “Sitting calmly in a wing chair sipping coffee and trying to look invisible.” He lifted his eyebrows at her disbelieving expression. “Somebody had to keep his head.” “There’s an old saying that, if you can keep your head when everyone around you is losing theirs, you don’t have a clue what’s going on,” she misquoted. “Could be. But I’m not sporting a bruised face, like some I could name.” He leaned forward. “Want to marry me?” “Thanks, Colby,” she said softly. “I really mean it. But it wouldn’t be fair to any of us. Especially you.” He folded his arms and leaned back. “The offer doesn’t have a time limit. I really do love children.

Pain flashed through his eyes. “Dammit, Evie.” Steam huffed against my mouth. “I’m fucking drowning in my desire to be near you, to touch you”—he dropped his brow on mine and inhaled—“to be inside you.” ~ Jesse Beckett

It was raining and I had to walk on the grass. I’ve got mud all over my shoes. They’re brand-new, too.” “I’ll carry you across the grass on the return trip, if you like,” Colby offered with twinkling eyes. “It would have to be over one shoulder, of course,” he added with a wry glance at his artificial arm. She frowned at the bitterness in his tone. He was a little fuzzy because she needed glasses to see at distances. “Listen, nobody in her right mind would ever take you for a cripple,” she said gently and with a warm smile. She laid a hand on his sleeve. “Anyway,” she added with a wicked grin, “I’ve already given the news media enough to gossip about just recently. I don’t need any more complications in my life. I’ve only just gotten rid of one big one.” Colby studied her with an amused smile. She was the only woman he’d ever known that he genuinely liked. He was about to speak when he happened to glance over her shoulder at a man approaching them. “About that big complication, Cecily?” “What about it?” she asked. “I’d say it’s just reappeared with a vengeance. No, don’t turn around,” he said, suddenly jerking her close to him with the artificial arm that looked so real, a souvenir of one of his foreign assignments. “Just keep looking at me and pretend to be fascinated with my nose, and we’ll give him something to think about.” She laughed in spite of the racing pulse that always accompanied Tate’s appearances in her life. She studied Colby’s lean, scarred face. He wasn’t anybody’s idea of a pinup, but he had style and guts and if it hadn’t been for Tate, she would have found him very attractive. “Your nose has been broken twice, I see,” she told Colby. “Three times, but who’s counting?” He lifted his eyes and his eyebrows at someone behind her. “Well, hi, Tate! I didn’t expect to see you here tonight.” “Obviously,” came a deep, gruff voice that cut like a knife. Colby loosened his grip on Cecily and moved back a little. “I thought you weren’t coming,” he said. Tate moved into Cecily’s line of view, half a head taller than Colby Lane. He was wearing evening clothes, like the other men present, but he had an elegance that made him stand apart. She never tired of gazing into his large black eyes which were deep-set in a dark, handsome face with a straight nose, and a wide, narrow, sexy mouth and faintly cleft chin. He was the most beautiful man. He looked as if all he needed was a breastplate and feathers in his hair to bring back the heyday of the Lakota warrior in the nineteenth century. Cecily remembered him that way from the ceremonial gatherings at Wapiti Ridge, and the image stuck stubbornly in her mind. “Audrey likes to rub elbows with the rich and famous,” Tate returned. His dark eyes met Cecily’s fierce green ones. “I see you’re still in Holden’s good graces. Has he bought you a ring yet?” “What’s the matter with you, Tate?” Cecily asked with a cold smile. “Feeling…crabby?” His eyes smoldered as he glared at her. “What did you give Holden to get that job at the museum?” he asked with pure malice. Anger at the vicious insinuation caused her to draw back her hand holding the half-full coffee cup, and Colby caught her wrist smoothly before she could sling the contents at the man towering over her. Tate ignored Colby. “Don’t make that mistake again,” he said in a voice so quiet it was barely audible. He looked as if all his latent hostilities were waiting for an excuse to turn on her. “If you throw that cup at me, so help me, I’ll carry you over and put you down in the punch bowl!” “You and the CIA, maybe!” Cecily hissed. “Go ahead and try…!” Tate actually took a step toward her just as Colby managed to get between them. “Now, now,” he cautioned. Cecily wasn’t backing down an inch. Neither was Tate.

Back in the time before Columbus, there were only Indians here, no skyscrapers, no automobiles, no streets. Of course, we didn't use the words Indian or Native American then; we were just people. We didn't know we were supposedly drunks or lazy or savages. I wondered what it was like to live without that weight on your shoulders, the weight of the murdered ancestors, the stolen land, the abused children, the burden every Native person carries. We were told in movies and books that Indians had a sacred relationship with the land, that we worshipped and nurtured it. But staring at Nathan, I didn't feel any mystical bond with the rez. I hated our shitty unpaved roads and our falling-down houses and the snarling packs of dogs that roamed freely in the streets and alleys. But most of all, I hated that kids like Nathan - good kids, decent kids - got involved with drugs and crime and gangs, because there was nothing for them to do here. No after-school jobs, no clubs, no tennis lessons. Every month in the Lakota Times newspaper there was an obituary for another teen suicide, another family in the Burned Thigh Nation who'd had their heart taken away from them. In the old days, the eyapaha was the town crier, the person who would meet incoming warriors after a battle, ask them what happened so they wouldn't have to speak of their own glories, then tell the people the news. Now the eyapaha, our local newspaper, announced losses and harms too often, victories and triumphs too rarely.

In a private room down the hall, a tired but delighted Cecily was watching her husband with his brand-new son. Cecily had thought that the expression on Tate’s face at their wedding would never be duplicated. But when they placed the tiny little boy in his father’s gowned arms in the delivery room, and he saw his child for the first time, the look on his face was indescribable. Tears welled in his eyes. He’d taken the tiny little fist in his big, dark hand and smoothed over the perfect little fingers and then the tiny little face, seeking resemblances. “Generations of our families,” he said softly, “all there, in that face.” He’d looked down at his wife with unashamedly wet eyes. “In our son’s face.” She wiped her own tears away with a corner of the sheet and coaxed Tate’s head down so that she could do the same for him where they were, temporarily, by themselves. Now she was cleaned up, like their baby, and drowsy as she lay on clean white sheets and watched her husband get acquainted with his firstborn. “Isn’t he beautiful?” he murmured, still awed by the child. “Next time, we have to have a little girl,” he said with a tender smile, “so that she can look like you.” Her heart felt near to bursting as she stared up at that beloved face, above the equally beloved face of their firstborn. “My heart is happy when I see you,” she whispered in Lakota. He chuckled, having momentarily forgotten that he’d taught her how to say it. “Mine is equally happy when I see you,” he replied in English. She reached out and clasped his big hand with her small one. On the table beside her was a bouquet of roses, red and crisp with a delightful soft perfume. Her eyes traced them, and she remembered the first rose he’d ever given her, when she was seventeen: a beautiful red paper rose that he’d brought her from Japan. Now the roses were real, not imitation. Just as her love for him, and his for her, had become real enough to touch. He frowned slightly at her expression. “What is it?” he asked softly. “I was remembering the paper rose you brought me from Japan, just after I went to live with Leta.” She shrugged and smiled self-consciously. He smiled back. “And now you’re covered in real ones,” he discerned. She nodded, delighted to see that he understood exactly what she was talking about. But, then, they always had seemed to read each others’ thoughts-never more than now, with the baby who was a living, breathing manifestation of their love. “Yes,” she said contentedly. “The roses are real, now.” Outside the window, rain was coming down in torrents, silver droplets shattering on the bright green leaves of the bushes. In the room, no one noticed. The baby was sleeping and his parents were watching him, their eyes full of warm, soft dreams.

Colby’s resourceful, I’ll give him that.” “You used to be good friends.” “We were, until he started hanging around Cecily,” came the short reply. “I’m not as angry at him as I was. But it seems that he has to have a woman to prop him up.” “Not necessarily,” Matt replied. “Sometimes a good woman can save a bad man. It’s an old saying, but fairly true from time to time. Colby was headed straight to hell until Cecily put him on the right track. It’s gratitude, but I don’t think he can see that just yet. He’s in between mourning his ex-wife and finding someone to replace her.” He leaned back again. “I feel sorry for him. He’s basically a one-woman man, but he lost the woman.” Tate packed back to the wing chair and sat down on the edge. “He’s not getting Cecily. She’s mine, even if she doesn’t want to admit it.” Matt stared at him. “Don’t you know anything about women in love?” “Not a lot,” the younger man confessed. “I’ve spent the better part of my life avoiding them.” “Especially Cecily,” Matt agreed. “She’s been like a shadow. You didn’t miss her until you couldn’t see her behind you anymore.” “She’s grown away from me,” Tate said. “I don’t know how to close the gap. I know she still feels something for me, but she wouldn’t stay and fight for me.” He lifted his gaze to Matt’s hard face. “She’s carrying my child. I want both of them, regardless of the adjustments I have to make. Cecily’s the only woman I’ve ever truly wanted.” Matt spread his hands helplessly. “This is one mess I can’t help you sort out,” he said at last. “If Cecily loves you, she’ll give in sooner or later. If it were me, I’d go find her and tell her how I really felt. I imagine she’ll listen.” Tate stared at his shoes. He couldn’t find the right words to express what he felt. “Tate,” his father said gently, “you’ve had a lot to get used to lately. Give it time. Don’t rush things. I’ve found that life sorts itself out, given the opportunity.” Tate’s dark eyes lifted. “Maybe it does.” He searched the other man’s quiet gaze. “It’s not as bad as I thought it was, having a foot in two worlds. I’m getting used to it.” “You still have a unique heritage,” Matt pointed out. “Not many men can claim Berber revolutionaries and Lakota warriors as relatives.

There’s a debate, described in the Talmud, between two rabbis, over what should be done if it’s discovered that a house, or even a palace, was built using a stolen beam as part of its foundation. One rabbi says the entire building must be demolished so that the beam can be returned to its original owners. The other rabbi, the far more pragmatic, says the building can remain standing if the full value of the beam is repaid. Both rabbis make clear that, as soon as it is known that the beam was stolen, those living in the house must do something, they must make amends.

a drop of her moon blood fell to the earth. Rabbit saw it. He started to play with this tiny blood clot, kicking it around with his foot, and through the power of Tkuskanskan, the quickening, moving spirit, the blood clot firmed up and turned into We-Ota-Wichasha—Blood Clot Boy—the First Man.

Cecily let her cheek fall to Leta’s shoulder and hugged her back. It felt so nice to be loved by someone in the world. Since her mother’s death, she’d had no one of her own. It was a lonely life, despite the excitement and adventure her work held for her. She wasn’t openly affectionate at all, except with Leta. “For God’s sake, next you’ll be rocking her to sleep at night!” came a deep, disgusted voice at Cecily’s back, and Cecily stiffened because she recognized it immediately. “She’s my baby girl,” Leta told her tall, handsome son with a grin. “Shut up.” Cecily turned a little awkwardly. She hadn’t expected this. Tate Winthrop towered over both of them. His jet-black hair was loose as he never wore it in the city, falling thick and straight almost to his waist. He was wearing a breastplate with buckskin leggings and high-topped mocassins. There were two feathers straight up in his hair with notches that had meaning among his people, marks of bravery. Cecily tried not to stare at him. He was the most beautiful man she’d ever known. Since her seventeenth birthday, Tate had been her world. Fortunately he didn’t realize that her mad flirting hid a true emotion. In fact, he treated her exactly as he had when she came to him for comfort after her mother had died suddenly; as he had when she came to him again with bruises all over her thin, young body from her drunken stepfather’s violent attack. Although she dated, she’d never had a serious boyfriend. She had secret terrors of intimacy that had never really gone away, except when she thought of Tate that way. She loved him… “Why aren’t you dressed properly?” Tate asked, scowling at her skirt and blouse. “I bought you buckskins for your birthday, didn’t I?” “Three years ago,” she said without meeting his probing eyes. She didn’t like remembering that he’d forgotten her birthday this year. “I gained weight since then.” “Oh. Well, find something you like here…” She held up a hand. “I don’t want you to buy me anything else,” she said flatly, and didn’t back down from the sudden menace in his dark eyes. “I’m not dressing up like a Lakota woman. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m blond. I don’t want to be mistaken for some sort of overstimulated Native American groupie buying up artificial artifacts and enthusing over citified Native American flute music, trying to act like a member of the tribe.” “You belong to it,” he returned. “We adopted you years ago.” “So you did,” she said. That was how he thought of her-a sister. That wasn’t the way she wanted him to think of her. She smiled faintly. “But I won’t pass for a Lakota, whatever I wear.” “You could take your hair down,” he continued thoughtfully. She shook her head. She only let her hair loose at night, when she went to bed. Perhaps she kept it tightly coiled for pure spite, because he loved long hair and she knew it. “How old are you?” he asked, trying to remember. “Twenty, isn’t it?” “I was, give years ago,” she said, exasperated. “You used to work for the CIA. I seem to remember that you went to college, too, and got a law degree. Didn’t they teach you how to count?” He looked surprised. Where had the years gone? She hadn’t aged, not visibly.

In the Ghost Dance religion of just a hundred years ago, a desperate people tried to assimilate Christianity into their native religion. They believed that their ancestors would come back to help them in their fight against white soldiers and settlers; their warriors wore shirts they believed the soldiers’ bullets could not penetrate. Though this seems tragic to Western eyes, some Lakota credit the Ghost Dance with helping them preserve their ancient religious traditions over the last century. Others have found in it a viable blend of Christianity and the old religion. “I’m a good Catholic,” one elderly woman told me, “and I also carry the pipe.

Rides the Wind loved to tell stories and delighted in the myriad questions asked by his growing son.He shared legends that had been handed down through generations of Lakota, skillfully weaving God into them so that even Jesse and Old One listened, fascinated. A favorite became the story of a hunter who fell onto a cliff and escaped by tying himself to two grown eagles and flying off.Two Mothers' eyes would grow wide as Rides the Wind built up to the dramatic moment when the hunter stepped off the cliff with only the power of the eagles to save him. "But it was not the power of the eagles that saved him," Rides the Wind would remind his son. "It was God who gave the eagles strength.

Amid this bureaucratic confusion, Pope’s General Order No. 33 stood. This meant that by virtue of the political and social contacts that had secured him command of the 18th Infantry Regiment, the obscure Colonel Henry Beebee Carrington, with no fighting experience and an attorney’s approach to most military hurdles, remained in charge of the Army’s most ambitious undertaking on the western frontier—the defeat of Red Cloud, the mightiest warrior chief of the mightiest tribe on the Plains. A plan to endow such an officer with the authority to build and maintain outposts throughout the very wilderness that had been ceded time and again to the Lakota by government treaty appeared not only duplicitous but idiotic.

Lakota may have had to endure the omega status at the bottom of the hierarchy for many years, but he was as much a cherished member of the family as any of the others. He always ate, he howled with the group, he played with his packmates, and he helped raise the pups. We have marveled at each individual wolf’s intelligence and been fascinated by observing each unique personality, but the family bond shared among these wolves is what we have admired the most. Caring for the young ones—and for each other—was the central mission in their lives. A wolf is impelled by many individual desires—it wants to breed, hunt, perhaps explore—but its most profound desire is the one that touches us at our very core as human beings: A wolf wants to belong.

My mother the friend, benefactor, and beneficiary of white liberal women said these things about white liberals: “Your average white liberal would die before she sat down to a raccoon and squirrel dinner with some illiterate shotgun-shack Arkansas white folks who believe the Good Lord is their one and only savior. But that same white liberal will happily eat fried SPAM and white bread with a Lakota Sioux shaman who never graduated high school, and give him a highly transcendent blow job after dinner.” “White pacifist liberals in favor of gun control will race from their latest antiwar demonstration to rally for the American Indian Movement, a radical Indian organization that accomplished much of its mission through gunfire and threat of gunfire.

I walk out into the open, never dreaming of what I'd see. I sat on a tree and saw Mother Nature crying to me. When I looked around, I knew the pain She felt. All the trees lifeless on the ground. She cries and asks me, 'How?' She continued, 'It's gone. I had to say goodbye to my grass, trees, and little animals, too. This was once beautiful and I was happy, but now I feel like you.' (Larissa Ross, student)

It was the very fact of the note, stuck on my windshield on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota, hundreds of miles from where Fatback had lived and, apparently, died. That, and the small deerskin pouch of tobacco that was tied to it. Fatback was a black Lab — a good dog — who had belonged to Dan, an elderly Lakota man who lived far out on the Dakota plains. Years before, as a result of a book of elders’ memories I had done with students at Red Lake, Dan had contacted me to come out to his home to speak with him. His request was vague, and I had been both skeptical and apprehensive. But, reluctantly, I had gone, and it had changed my life. We had worked together, traveled together, and created a book together in which the old man told his stories and memories and thoughts about Indian people and our American land.

Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried." When she had finished, Rides the Wind demanded that she repeat it.Three times he asked her to repeat the passage. Then, setting the Bible aside, he took her hands in his own and said, never taking his eyes from hers, Where Walks the Fire goes,there will I go. Where Walks the Fire lodges, there will I lodge. Her people shall be my people. Her God shall be my God. Looking up,he said, "God who created all things.I thank you for sending Walks the Fire.I take her as my wife. I ask you to be pleased. You make all things.You make her heart sing for me.You make my heart answer back. You give your Son to die for us.We have no min-is-ter,but you know us.We are Lakota. We are husband and wife.We are yours.

I know he’s had his problems in the past… “He can’t keep his hands off a liquor bottle at the best of times, and he still hasn’t accepted the loss of his wife!” “I sent him to a therapist over in Baltimore,” she continued. “He’s narrowed his habit down to a six-pack of beer on Saturdays.” “What does he get for a reward?” he asked insolently. She sighed irritably. “Nobody suits you! You don’t even like poor old lonely Senator Holden.” “Like him? Holden?” he asked, aghast. “Good God, he’s the one man in Congress I’d like to burn at the stake! I’d furnish the wood and the matches!” “You and Leta,” she said, shaking her head. “Now, listen carefully. The Lakota didn’t burn people at the stake,” she said firmly. She went on to explain who did, and how, and why. He searched her enthusiastic eyes. “You really do love Native American history, don’t you?” She nodded. “The way your ancestors lived for thousands of years was so logical. They honored the man in the tribe who was the poorest, because he gave away more than the others did. They shared everything. They gave gifts, even to the point of bankrupting themselves. They never hit a little child to discipline it. They accepted even the most blatant differences in people without condemning them.” She glanced at Tate and found him watching her. She smiled self-consciously. “I like your way better.” “Most whites never come close to understanding us, no matter how hard they try.” “I had you and Leta to teach me,” she said simply. “They were wonderful lessons that I learned, here on the reservation. I feel…at peace here. At home. I belong, even though I shouldn’t.” He nodded. “You belong,” he said, and there was a note in his deep voice that she hadn’t heard before. Unexpectedly he caught her small chin and turned her face up to his. He searched her eyes until she felt as if her heart might explode from the excitement of the way he was looking at her. His thumb whispered up to the soft bow of her mouth with its light covering of pale pink lipstick. He caressed the lower lip away from her teeth and scowled as if the feel of it made some sort of confusion in him. He looked straight into her eyes. The moment was almost intimate, and she couldn’t break it. Her lips parted and his thumb pressed against them, hard. “Now, isn’t that interesting?” he said to himself in a low, deep whisper. “Wh…what?” she stammered. His eyes were on her bare throat, where her pulse was hammering wildly. His hand moved down, and he pressed his thumb to the visible throb of the artery there. He could feel himself going taut at the unexpected reaction. It was Oklahoma all over again, when he’d promised himself he wouldn’t ever touch her again. Impulses, he told himself firmly, were stupid and sometimes dangerous. And Cecily was off limits. Period. He pulled his hand back and stood up, grateful that the loose fit of his buckskins hid his physical reaction to her. “Mother’s won a prize,” he said. His voice sounded oddly strained. He forced a nonchalant smile and turned to Cecily. She was visibly shaken. He shouldn’t have looked at her. Her reactions kindled new fires in him.

Untold numbers of readers of Black Elk Speaks and When the Tree Flowered have wished to understand more fully the relationship between Neihardt and Black Elk and the role that Neihardt played as Black Elk's amanuensis. They have also been curious to learn about Black Elk's life after the Wounded Knee massacre. How was it that a nineteenth-century Lakota mystic could live a full half of the twentieth century on the Pine Ridge Reservation in harmony with the encroaching white man's world? The Sixth Grandfather is presented in order to help readers answer these questions. The title of the book is doubly appropriate. Black Elk, in his great vision, saw himself as the "sixth grandfather," the spirit of the earth, the power to nurture and make grow. Symbolically, Black Elk's teachings, transmitted through Neihardt, have had a marvelous generative power: they have grown and blossomed and become an inspiration for millions, Indians and non-Indians alike. Through Neihardt's writings, the sacred tree of Black Elk's vision has truly conic to bloom.

Time seemed to stop, and the Lakota phrase mitakuye oyasin—we are all related—came to me, and in that moment I understood what those words meant. I inhabited them, as images, thoughts, and memories arose amidst the old vehicles. I saw my mother, gone but still with me, my father, who’d died too soon, and my sister, who I’d loved like my own life. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends. They appeared before me, all of my relations, my ancestors, Native and white, who’d loved and struggled, hunted and gathered, worked and played; they’d stood on this continent, looking up at these stars and these planets. It was daylight, but I could see the stars now, all of them, surrounding me, lighting the air, their brilliance shining and radiating off the monoliths. And then it was dark, a black-hole sky. But I looked down and saw that the stars—every one of them—were now in my hands, lighting up my veins, my muscles, my bones. I stood there, alone with my ancestors, and listened to them. Finally I turned away. As I walked back to my life, the words my mother used to say finally came to me. Wakan Tanka nici un. May the Creator guide you.

It is the way of the people," he responded again and again. "I will not interferre.Howling Wolf did what he thought would keep his wife." Jesse was outraged, "And if I looked at another handsome brave,would Rides the Wind cut off my nose?" Rides the Wind stared at her solemnly. "God's book has said that you must be faithful to me.We do not live as Howling Wolf and Prairie Flower." After a moment he added, "And if you were unfaithful to me, I would cut off your beautiful red hair, not your nose.For it is your hair that makes you beautiful." Jesse refused to be distracted from the conversation. Finally,Rides the Wind became exasperated with her insistence. "Walks the Fire,it is enough," he almost shouted. "You say that Howling Wolf must be punished. He will bepunished. For all the days of his life he will have to look at the scar where he has hurt his wife.All the days of his life he will have to endure the sadness he has caused. And all the days of her life, Prairie Flower will remember when she was young and beautiful. White EAgle has left.It is over. We must pray for them, for they do not have God to help them. But I will not punish Howling Wolf for going what is his right among the Lakota. He will answer to God for what he has done. He does not have to answer to me.

He got in beside her and impatiently reached for her seat belt, snapping it in place. “You always forget,” he murmured, meeting her eyes. Her breath came uneasily through her lips as she met that level stare and responded helplessly to it. He was handsome and sexy and she loved him more than her own life. She had for years. But it was a hopeless, unreturned adoration that left her unfulfilled. He’d never touched her, not even in the most innocent way. He only looked. “I should close my door to you,” she said huskily. “Refuse to speak to you, refuse to see you, and get on with my life. You’re a constant torment.” Unexpectedly he reached out and touched her soft cheek with just his fingertips. They smoothed down to her full, soft mouth and teased the lower lip away from the upper one. “I’m Lakota,” he said quietly. “You’re white.” “There is,” she said unsteadily, “such a thing as birth control.” His face was very solemn and his eyes were narrow and intent on hers. “And sex is all you want from me, Cecily?” he asked mockingly. “No kids, ever?” It was the most serious conversation they’d ever had. She couldn’t look away from his dark eyes. She wanted him. But she wanted children, too, eventually. Her expression told him so. “No, Cecily,” he continued gently. “Sex isn’t what you want at all. And what you really want, I can’t give you. We have no future together. If I marry one day, it’s important to me that I marry a woman with the same background as my own. And I don’t want to live with a young, and all too innocent, white woman.” “I wouldn’t be innocent if you’d cooperate for an hour,” she muttered outrageously. His dark eyes twinkled. “Under different circumstances, I would,” he said, and there was suddenly something hot and dangerous in the way he looked at her as the smile faded from his chiseled lips, something that made her heart race even faster. “I’d love to strip you and throw you onto a bed and bend you like a willow twig under y body.” “Stop!” she whispered theatrically. “I’ll swoon!” And it wasn’t all acting. His hand slid behind her nape and contracted, dragging her rapt face just under his, so close that she could smell the coffee that clung to his clean breath, so close that her breasts almost touched his jacket. “You’ll tempt me once too often,” he bit off. “This teasing is more dangerous than you realize.” She didn’t reply. She couldn’t. She was throbbing, aroused, sick with desire. In all her life, there had been only this man who made her feel alive, who made her feel passion. Despite the traumatic experience of her teens, she had a fierce physical attraction to Tate that she was incapable of feeling with any other man. She touched his lean cheek with cold fingertips, slid them back, around his neck into the thick mane of long hair that he kept tightly bound-like his own passions. “You could kiss me,” she whispered unsteadily, “just to see how it feels.” He tensed. His mouth poised just above her parted lips. The silence in the car was pregnant, tense, alive with possibilities and anticipation. He looked into her wide, pale, eager green eyes and saw the heat she couldn’t disguise. His own body felt the pressure and warmth of hers and began to swell, against his will. “Tate,” she breathed, pushing upward, toward his mouth, his chiseled, beautiful mouth that promised heaven, promised satisfaction, promised paradise. His dark fingers corded in her hair. They hurt, and she didn’t care. Her whole body ached. “Cecily, you little fool,” he ground out. Her lips parted even more. He was weak. This once, he was weak. She could tempt him. It could happen. She could feel his mouth, taste it, breathe it. She felt him waver. She felt the sharp explosion of his breath against her lips as he let his control slip. His mouth parted and his head bent. She wanted it. Oh, God, she wanted it, wanted it, wanted it…

He does not care for me. He brought me to the village to feed his child." "He gave you Red Star." Jesse denied its significance. "That was only so that I would not shame him." "He brought many skins for a new tepee. He brought you elk skins for a new dress." Jesse explained. "We needed those things because of the fire.All of the people needed new tepees, new clothing." "He sits with you every evening outside the tepee." "That is so I can read from the Book." Prairie Flower grew impatient. "Walks the Fire! I tell you truth.Rides the Wind wishes you to be his wife.You know nothing of Lakota ways.I will tell you!" Jesse started to protest, but Prairie Flower interrupted. "No! You listen! When a man wishes to show he wants a woman, he dresses in his finest clothing and comes to her outside her tepee.They sit and talk.He gives gifts to her parents. Not every custom is followed, because you are not a young Lakota woman. But I tell you, Rides the Wind cares for you. After the fire, when Medicine Hawk came-when you were as one dying-you did not see him. I saw him. Rides the Wind did not eat. He did not sleep.He thought only of Walks the Fire.He hunted healing herbs.He hunted the elk for your dress.He took Two Mothers to Yellow Bird's tepee so that his cries would not disturb your rest.He trusted no one but Old One, and himself, and me to care for you.

The stormy black sky had faded to dark gray, and in the distance white, billowing clouds blew across the prairie. They began racing one another, tossed by the wind, and the sun shining on them made them appear a brilliant white against the evening sky. Memories crowded about her:a French trader with laughing eyes; a long ride into Fort Kearney; and somewhere, far back,a little mound of stones receding into the wide plain as a wagon rumbled away.Then he came, a Lakota brave, one with his snow white pony. They bounded together across the sky,and with each leap Jesse's heart fluttered.She stood on the prairie,her long red braides decorated with feathers, the part dusted with ochre. She raised a trembling hand in greeting, but he was gone. Her hand fell back against the quilt, and Jesse saw the clouds again and realized it had only been a memory. She was an old woman,too tired to help with the supper,perhaps even too tired to be of use to Lisbeth. The clouds outside came closer,and the old heart fluttered at the memory of a man who rode on the wind long ago.Now it seemed that the rode again across the sky,into the room.He raised one hand in greeting. "I will ask the Father," he had said, "and I will come for you." Jesse sat up in bed,her face alive with a new light.Rides the Wind smiled and reached out to sweep her up behind him. And the Father said, "Come home. The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yes,I have a goodly heritage. Psalm 16:6

The Dakota 38 refers to thirty-eight Dakota men who were executed by hanging, under orders from President Abraham Lincoln. To date, this is the largest “legal” mass execution in US history. The hanging took place on December 26, 1862—the day after Christmas. This was the same week that President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. --- These amended and broken treaties are often referred to as the Minnesota Treaties. The word Minnesota comes from mni, which means water; and sota, which means turbid. Synonyms for turbid include muddy, unclear, cloudy, confused, and smoky. Everything is in the language we use. -- Without money, store credit, or rights to hunt beyond their ten-mile tract of land, Dakota people began to starve. The Dakota people were starving. The Dakota people starved. In the preceding sentence, the word “starved” does not need italics for emphasis. -- Dakota warriors organized, struck out, and killed settlers and traders. This revolt is called the Sioux Uprising. Eventually, the US Cavalry came to Mnisota to confront the Uprising. More than one thousand Dakota people were sent to prison. As already mentioned,“Real” poems do not “really” require words. --- I am a citizen of the United States and an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, meaning I am a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation—and in this dual citizenship, I must work, I must eat, I must art, I must mother, I must friend, I must listen, I must observe, constantly I must live.

For many years,Rides the Wind cared only for Walks the Fire. Together they read this Book she speaks of.My daughter has told me of this.Walks the Fire would tel the words in the Book. Rides the Wind repeated them,then he would tell how the words would help him in the hunt or in the council.Walks the Fire listened as he spoke. She respected him.She did as he said." As Talks a Lot spoke,the people remembered the years since Walks the Fire had come to them.Many among them recalled kindness beyond the saving of Hears Not.Many regretted the early days, when they had laughed at the white woman.They remembered Prairie Flower and Old One teaching her,and many could recall times when some new stew was shared with their family or a deerskin brought in by Rides the Wind found its way to their tepee. Prairie Flower's voice was added to the men's. "Even when no more sons or daughters came to his tepee-even then, Rides the Wind wanted only Walks the Fire." She turned to look at Running Bear, another elder, "Even when you offered your own beautiful daugher, Rides the Wind wanted only Walks the Fire.This is true. My father told me. When he walked the earth,Rides the Wind wanted only Walks the Fire.Now that he lies upon the earth,you must know that he would say, 'Do this for her.'" Jesse had continued to dig into the earth as she listened. When Prairie Flower told of the chief's having offered his daughter,she stopped for a moment.Her hand reached out to lovingly caress the dark head that lay so still under the clear sky.Rides the Wind had never told her of this.She had been afraid that he might take another wife when it became evident they would have no children.Now she knew that he had chosen her alone-even in the face of temptation. From the women's group there was movement. Prairie Flower stepped forward, her digging tool in her hand. Defiantly she sputtered, "She is my friend..." and stalked across the short distance to the shallow grave. Dropping to her knees beside Jesse, she began attacking the earth.Ferociously she dug.Jesse followed her lead, as did Old One.They began again,three women working side by side.And then there were four women,and then five, and six, until a ring of many women dug together. The men did nothing to stop them, and Running Bear decided what was to be done. "We will camp here and wait for Walks the Fire to do what she must. Tonight we will tell the life of Rides the Wind around the fire.Tomorrow, when this is done, we will move on." And so it was.Hours later Rides the Wind, Lakota hunter, became the first of his village to be laid in a grave and mourned by a white woman. Before his body was lowered into the earth, Jesse impulsively took his hunting knife, intending to cut off the two thick, red braids that hung down her back. It seemed so long ago that Rides the Wind had braided the feathers and beads in, dusting the part.Had it really been only this morning? He had kissed her,too, grumbling about the white man's crazy ways.Jesse had laughed and returned his kiss.

She looked at him defiantly, "I know I am not beautiful.I laughed at myself for thinking such impossible things." Rides the Wind was quiet for so long that she wondered if her rush of words had overreached his abilities in English. But just when she started to question him,he turned his own face to the horizon so that she could view only his profile. "When Rides the Wind was young, he danced about the fire like no other brave.It was then that Dancing Waters came to be his woman.She would watch, and her eyes danced with the flames. But one day Rides the Wind went to hunt.His pony fell and crushed his leg. Marcus Whitman fixed the leg, but it would not grow straight.Rides the Wind could dance no more. The fire died in the eyes of Dancing Waters." He encircled her with his arms before continuing. "Walks the Fire sees Rides the Wind when he walks like the wounded buffalo.She sees, but the fire does not die in her eyes.Beautiful is in here," he placed his hand over her heart. "So do not laugh when you think you are beautiful.Rides the Wind sees the fire in your eyes.And to him,you are beautiful." Jesse reached for his hand,and, holding it palm up,she kissed it. He growled, "...and so you give me more of the white man's ways." In a moment of uncharacteristic abandon, Jesse stood on tip-toe and placed a less-than-chaste kiss upon the mouth of her husband.She smiled in spite of the resulting blush on her cheek, reaching up to tug childishly on his flowing hair. Then,to his delight and amazement she spoke the Lakota words: "Mihigna-my husband-Walks the Fire is an obedient wife.If he wishes her to stop this strange touch,he must tell her.Walks the Fire will obey." Rides the Wind took her hand, and they started back to the tepee.As they climbed the hill together he replied, "Many of the white man's ways must be forgotten to live among my people...but not all.

Footsteps behind her in the dark startled her out of her misery. She automtically reached for her knife, but a familiar voice broke the stillness. "The stars say it is not safe for women to be out alone." He did not sit down beside her, but waited for her to get up. Jesse straightened her back, wiped away tears,and stayed seated. "I needed to be alone....away from...I needed to pray." "Then I will leave you to your prayers." Something was gone from the well-known voice. Gentle concern had always been there for her.Where was it,now, when she needed it so much? He had already turned to go.She knew he would not go far.He would wait out of sight, watching to see that she was safe.But she did not want him out of sight. "No,I am finished.I..." her voice wavered. "There is no answer to my prayers." "There is always an answer.But the answer is not always what we want to hear." The truth of the simple reply cut deep.The answer to her plea for children was no. She couldn't understand it.She didn't want to accept it.But for years, now,the answer had been there.She knew it,but she couldn't bear it.Tears welled fresh in her eyes.He couldn't see them.The dark offered protection and enabled Rides the WInd to speak his fears. "I have had prayers too. I have prayed that you would learn to be happy among the Lakota.But you tell me of the white man's count of years.You talk of all the time that you have been here.I have not wanted to hear the answer to my prayers.The answer is no. I have prayed to know how to make the smile return to your face." The voice grew so quiet that she could barely hear the words, "Now I see that I cannot.You must tell me what you wish.Two Mothers is grown,now.You have done well among the people.You do not need to fear telling me that it is time for you to go.I am not like the others...I will not make you stay." He cleared his throat and forced the words out calmly. "The line of your people crossing the prairie never stops. We are a small band.We have tried to stay away from them.Now, I will take you to them.

You are my friend, Prairie Flower. If I tell you what is in my heart, will you promise never to tell?" Prairie Flower laid a hand on Jesse's shoulder, pulling it away quickly when her friend flinched in pain. "I will not betray my friend." Taking a deep breath, Jesse lifted her head. "When Rides the Wing comes near to me, my heart sings.But I do not believe that he cares for me.I am clumsy in all of the things a Lakota woman must know.I cannot speak his language without many childish mistakes. And..." Jesse reached up to lay her hand on her short hair, "I am nothing to look at.I am not..." Prairie Flower grew angry. "I have told you he cares for you.Can you not see it?" Jesse shook her head. Prairie Flower spoke the unspeakable. "Then,if you cannot see that he cares for you in what he does,you must see it in what he has not done. You have been in his tepee. Dancing Waters has been gone many moons." "Stop!" Jesse demanded. "Stop it! I..just don't say any more!" She leaped up and ran out of the tepee-and into Rides the Wind, who was returning from the river where he had gone to draw water. Jesse knocked the water skins from both of his hands. Water spilled out and she fumbled an apology then bent stiffly to pick up the skins, wincing with the effort. "I will do it, Walks the Fire." His voice was tender as he bent and took the skins from her. Jesse protested, "It is the wife's job." She blushed, realizing that she had used a wrong word-the word for wife, instead of the word for woman. Rides the Wind interrupted before she could correct herself. "Walks the Fire is not the wife of Rides the Wind." Jesse blushed and remained quiet. A hand reached for hers and Rides the Wind said, "Come, sit." He helped her sit down just outside the door of the tepee. The village women took note as he went inside and brought out a buffalo robe. Sitting by Jesse,he placed the robe on the ground and began to talk. "I will tell you how it is with the Lakota. When a man wishes to take a wife..." he described Lakota courtship. As he talked, Jesse realiced that all that Prairie Flower had said seemed to be true.He had,indeed, done nearly everything involved in the courtship ritual. Still, she told herself, there is a perfectly good explanation for everything he has done. Rides the Wind continued describing the wedding feast. Jesse continued to reason with herself as he spoke. Then she realized the voice had stopped and he had repeated a question. "How is it among the whites?How does a man gain a wife?" Embarrassed,Jesse described the sparsest of courtships, the simplest wedding.Rides the Wind listened attentively. When she had finished, he said, "There is one thing the Lakota brave who wishes a wife does that I have not described." Pulling Jesse to her feet, he continued, "One evening, as he walks with his woman..." He reached out to pick up the buffalo robe.He was aware that the village women were watching carefully. "He spreads out his arms..." Rides the Wind spread his arms,opening the buffalo robe to its full length, "and wraps it about his woman," Rides the Wind turned toward Jesse and reached around her, "so that they are both inside the buffalo robe." He looked down at Jesse, trying to read her expression.When he saw nothing in the gray eyes, he abruptly dropped his arms. "But it is hot today and your wounds have not healed.I have said enough.You see how it is with the Lakota." When Jesse still said nothing, he continued, "You spoke of a celebration with a min-is-ter.It is a word I do not know.What is this min-is-ter?" "A man who belives in the Bible and teaches his people about God from the Bible." "What if there is no minister and a man and a woman wish to be married?" Jesse grew more uncomfortable. "I suppose they would wait until a minister came.