The Sacred Black Hills
There are 2 separate pieces here, both from actions on The Lakota Reservation in The Sacred Black Hills. In 1983 I attended The Wounded Knee ten-year anniversary action. In 1984, I attended The International Non-Violence Conference, also on the Lakota Reservation of Rosebud.
The Wounded Knee Memorial
The first massacre at Wounded Knee was in 1890. In 1973, AIM—The American Indian Movement— militant protector of Native people’s rights and lands, declared a siege for 71 days, in an armed occupation with the FBI. Their demand was to restore Native rights and sovereignty to one of the most destitute places in the nation.
1983
Rolling north to South Dakota, headed to the Papa Sapa, Lakota name for The Sacred Black Hills. Clouds shaped like wings, dappled and huge as the underside of a velvet-grey feather. Smooth silver cloud nipples hang heavy with skymilk, rushing away like a huge whale-fin deepening, a mermaid Picasso painted, miles long. Plowed fields roll out as pastry dough, become the horizon. Stiff grasses quiver under almost-full moon. Wind-stripped old farmhouses, bleached and ghostlike, while this cloud is so palpable, you could stroke it, firm-soft as a cat’s thigh, hanging heavy over esoteric farms. It’s been 10 years since AIM took back this land, in the latest last Indian stand in Amerika.
We pass a slate colored lake surrounded by rose and buff cliffs. Arroyos and mesas with scoops hollowed-out for cliff swallows, and red willows, sleek and elastic shivering along the islands of the Platte River. Immensity of perspective falling down into the purple-lit twilight valley silent and deep as feathers, as the edges of these sacred badlands. Sunset. A black horse grazing just after moonrise, her solitary silhouette scored against the moon’s pale blue dappled biscuit, that chiaroscuro stone spinning around us driving the far off sea waves into rock-gnawing frenzy as she swells. This land sings love songs to slaughtered Indian ancestors, blowing fragrant over sage-breath mesas. These humping hills are the once-endless buffalo herds, their slow migration illumined by the pipes and cymbals of the setting sun.
Full moon in 2 days for the radio station dedication. W-KILI— the country’s first Indian-owned-and-operated radio station. Kili means Cool. Sunset spills melting hot, molten golden foundation of the day-sky, splashing pink helium balloons over the Sacred Black Hills to cheer them. Smoky purple Nebraska sets to the south. There’s this immensity of perspective—we’re falling down into the purple glowing twilight valley, soft as baby’s breath, as the ripples of the Cheyenne River flowing alongside us. Welcome to South Dakota, says the bullet-riddled highway sign.
We’ll spend the night in a house filled with political posters, revolutionary books, and magazines. Albums by Vicor Jara, posters proclaiming Remember Three Mile Island, Free Leonard Peltier and Dick Marshal, Support Irish Political Prisoners. No U.S. intervention in El Salvador, in Nicaragua. Water for Life! Bread and Roses.
Morning in the Badlands. The tortured earth thrusts upward, folds inward, leaving sculpted pyramids for time to wear away. Chimney buttes and stiff crinoline shadow mountains wrinkle up, frowning in disdain of us. Wasichu. Invading again. Bareass alkaline earth, table shapes like wine corks put up chest-first to the blue. Crusted castles, paper-thin, angular, switchblade hills under the silent roar of the sun.
Walls rear up, eroded by the scythe of time, perpetual victim earth carved and served up in the brunt thrust of eternity. Land manifest with blasted gulleys, gnarled old cottonwoods and shaggy red cows, framed by stratified walls harboring an occasional cedar patch of still-spicy shade. Struggle for this land, symbolic in its every glance and gesture, the contest for development set against the militant resistance of the earth herself. We pass occupied houses with holes in their walls. We pass the bar where Dick Marshall was set up by the FBI at the second Wounded Knee occupation, the A.I.M. siege of 1973, ten years ago.
Here on Porcupine Butte, the KILI building stands in blasting winds, a huge tower, red and white against the blue feathered sky. Old and young Native people in bright dress, beads and headbands in their shining hair greet each other. “Congratulations!” Trucks with bumper stickers reading “America: Love it or Give it Back!”, and another with an Indian-head nickle says “The Only Indian America Ever Loved”. The third world is here, contained in these original people.
The station dedication begins with a 96 year old medicine man offering the blessing. Toothless, his stiff white braids and power-filled pipe, beaded and feathered, pointing to the 4 directions. I’m sitting with Marielle LeSuer; 83 year author of many books. She tells me that she’s writing a noun-less novel, and has thousands of pages. Having rejected the linear way of life, she dwells in the cyclical.
At the mike, speakers talk about the ultimate sacrifice at that second Wounded Knee battle, which gave them the courage to lead the struggle onward to glory. Thick, glossy braids, best-beaded buckles, feathered hats and bone necklaces, smiling at the runny-nosed, long-lashed children racing around. I stand next to a black wool draped white priest, who looks washed out beside the intensity of these very real very other faces. The drum begins. Five men with sticks capped by soft cotton beat on the tight skin. They fix the beat as Ted Means sings, his hand cupped over his ear. They make the building shake. Heavy and deep throbbing rises up off the floor. Who do they summon?
We walk together to Wounded Knee, site of the burnt church, ten years of blood ago. The mass graveyard framed by barbed wire, tumbleweeds trapped against it. Three flags—red, yellow, white—ragged from the constant wind match the colors of ribbons worn today. Graves of those who made the ultimate sacrifice are strewn with bright plastic flowers. Wilbur Whiteface, Don Roy Burns Prairie, Frances Black Bear, Joseph Horncloud. Another mass grave guarded by two big flags, a granite slab marks The Chief Big Foot Massacre, where olive junipers dot the tan hills. Ten years ago, these people fell, hand missing the drum’s taunt skin, limp forever beneath the dirt, beneath the whipping colored flags.
There is a feast and sleeping space at a giant gym. Old people sit around the perimeter, silent, kids playing, all of us wrapped in the smell of frying grease. Out there the late sun rays blaze each grasshead in the long open valley that rolls on away as the full moon begins to rise, pale and materializing as I stare. Two Indian kids gallop their horses across a ridge, silhouetting the setting sun blaze spreading, imprinting on my eyes like a super flashbulb. Out there they’re preparing another stage for the Bonnie Raitt concert tomorrow. The moon glows in a sapphire sky. The continents of the moon roll, marbles in a plastic ball suspended in the constant tug of gravity, caught on the barbs of eternity and of law.
Seven men stand around the drum now, whooping like birds, like horses and wild dogs, like monkeys. Russell Means, striking in long, tight leather-wrapped braids, a beaded jean jacket, a long knife hanging at his side, and white lightening bolts running down his legs. This is a sexy man, and a power-filled man. Even my lesbian sensibilities can appreciate his heat. Long quill earrings sway against a very tight aura. He is the head of AIM, a warrior and mystic leader. They honor Fools Crow, the 96 year old Ogallalla Chief, and Rick Two Dogs with gorgeous quilts for their efforts at the radio station. “We celebrate the inherent power of having a radio station— the voice of those who have no voice”.
Full moon, and the cold seeps up from the earth and all is blue and deep. Sitting on a big stump within a half-circle of ancient, bare cottonwoods, pointing at stars, dropping back to earth in weary sighs and peeling bark. The moon lavishes light on these plains, drenching the rattled voices of these cracked twigs.
Dan leans over to whisper, “If you knew how much fire-power was here tonight, you’d freak out!”
The ultimate purpose, for now is to regain these sacred Black Hills as sovereign treaty land. The radio station, the health clinic— all are steps towards sovereignty. They stack up like grains of sand that terrace these desert lands, these stegosaurus spines, the stiff accordion earth, her pyramids and saucers raised to the clouds. The land rears like a furious mustang battling alien lassos that slip, seeking their wild throats, this homeland of sun and wind, these tailings of poisoned uranium, this legacy of exploitation and genocide. Here, every road sign, every billboard and building is shot through with bullets proclaiming the frustration and rage that boils storm-like seeking revenge.
Next morning we walk the 8 miles to Wounded Knee with hundreds of others. The sky ripples and swirls, and everything about it says eagle feathers to my mind.
The Sacred Black Hills International Nonviolence Conference
1984
I return to the Sacred Black Hills, in the shadow of nuclear-armed Ellis Air Force Base, for an international non-violence conference. A truly amazing group of activists gathered here, in the indigenous heart, and central core of the nonviolent resistance community of North America. On this piebald morning of Aug. 5th, 1984, Hiroshima day is close in our thoughts.
“Lakota people would come to these hills seeking visions.” Our first speaker tells the group.
200 of us gather in a tent at twilight to celebrate, center, share our spirits.
A Ghandian man from India speaks, “Greetings from the other side of the world. I’ve come here to make the connection between this horizontal network and the problems that come vertically down.”
“We want the whole globe to be ours, the whole world to be blessed and holy.” An Indiginous woman from Chile speaks. “Between Napuaches Indians of Chile and Native Americans from South Dakota there exists a bond stronger than the Andes and the Rocky Mountains.
A Comanche woman is next— “Women of all red nations, I know the smell of an oil well in the backyard and what happens when it runs dry. I have a bumper sticker on my truck ‘US out of North America’. I’d like to see the US out of the world as quickly and nonviolently as possible.”
After many circles, it is decided that Roots, Shoots, and Fruits will be our metaphor as we create a mission together—creating a nonviolence agenda for the next decade. We need images, dance, music, symbols, magic, rituals, as well as words. Our first priority is re-creation. We’ll share information with each other everywhere we go. The Lakota say that for every physical reality there’s a spiritual manifestation.
The womyn’s circle begins the day at 6 a.m. Womyn speak in circles, and it’s so lovely. Swimming this morning in the oceanic cycles, blood cycles that encompass the earth.
“Greed and fear are 2 incentives for change. We need Love as an incentive. The 2 giant systems that rule the world today are based on greed and fear. It’s equally wrong to accept injustice as it is to perpetuate injustice. The moment you say no to it, you begin your nonviolence strategies. NV is a method and an attitude, both a technique and a way of life. As inseparable as ends and means. We need affinity groups, oceanic circles rather than the pyramidal structures that exist all round us. Razing to the ground, as well as raising from the ground. Both require tactics, strategies, based in NV. Struggles cannot be avoided, only enriched. Prepare for joyful suffering. Suffering doesn’t have to be negative. The essence of change is searching and not being content with the answers of others.”
“Feminism, the women’s movement, has arisen to raise the status of female things which are in us all so we can internalize those aspects and operate upon them. This is the time of the right brain, horizontal over vertical power. Telling kids to be careful all the time is a form of greed. Pity each other. “unchiechelape” Help each other.”
“We live in the most violent country that’s ever existed on the face of the earth. We must be humble and accept our part in it if there’s to be true change.”
Ghandi and Martin Luther King, invoked over and over, their spirits flame out of a sunflower.
A Nicaraguan revolutionary speaks, “In Nicaragua, counterrevolutionaries are jailed, taught to read, then released back into the communities where they did their damage. And they are welcomed. We require spiritual advancement, spiritual self-revolution as well as social revolution.”
Sonia Johnson begins her workshop telling us that she’s “symphinaic- learns in great blobs of light.” She continues, “ This country deliberately conspires against womyn. The womyn’s movement is the greatest spiritual revolution in the history of the world, and we are going to save the earth, and ourselves, which are one.
There are two great big lies— that the powerful are going to give the powerless power. And, that power is outside us, a controlled commodity.”
She’s running for president on the Citizens Party. Has us all stand with our arms up high and say “If I were president, I’d___” And then she says, “That’s Feminism. That’s my platform— Decentralize the penis system/ de-penisize the central system. If we leave things in the hands of the people in power, we’re going to die. Either war is finished or we are. Feminism is the most descriptive and inclusive analysis of humanity that’s ever been on the planet. We have to call it “feminism” ‘cos we have to make a conscious choice to choose womynly things.
The change has to clearly be about womyn. We havent’ seen one second of peace on this planet for 5,000 years. Everyday men will rape over 2,000 womyn. The most profound betrayal of trust possible. Nothing like it ever happens to men in what they call “wars”. 4,000 womyn will be murdered by men who say they love us. We are their enemy and they say femininsts hate men?! They’ve got it backwards. The oppressors always suffer too, and it’s always necessary in history for the oppressed to rise and liberate themselves AND their oppressors.”
Leroy Moore tells us later that “The structure of social dominance is 2 pyramids—feudal and modern states. Top is aristocracy/top-dogs, the bottom is workers/underdogs. Both are exploitation, a vertical structure with someone on top of someone else. The middle class is a very real myth, which claims to have the energy and the will to collapse these distinctions and lead to equality. But the middle class always seeks to rise and leave others behind or below. The ones below are penetrated by the presence of dominance which causes them to become that as they shove their way upwards. This is the myth of climbing the social ladder.”
The Rosebud dancers drum and ritual the happy honkeys, as we’ve named ourselves, to dance.
Next morning, Power and Empowerment session. First, the Tibetan brass bowl gongs against the tipi talking stick. Then native flute music, and we hold hands, 200 of us in a great wise smile that spreads like light around the circle.
A radical Catholic nun speaks—“Power starts within, not out there at the Pentagon. The hardest job for social change is inside—the nuclear-arms-race-within stops us. If I really change myself, I can change the world. The saints show us that— they made empires quake. We’re empowered by the wind, which gives life. The breath, not the brain. The difference between the sound of the wind and of B52’s from Ellsworth Air Force Base next door is that the B52 can’t stay in one place forever and the wind can. The holy spirit is blowing through Ellsworth all the time, and one day it’s going to blow it away.”
“See the heart of the universe as a rock—compressed energy and light. The heart of the universe is love, not chaos. We are all sitting on love, which can come up through us like a fountain through the very earth.”Rosemary Bramble tells us to “Seek the playful nature of power — transformational power. Hate in your heart for technology is too negative. It’s just an extension of our senses, perhaps of our spirituality, because it’s shoving us up against the wall right now. Technology simply won’t allow us to be warlike anymore. The power that was theirs is now ours. Transformation. Listen to people; don’t argue but let them talk their way around without your analysis. The strategy of being patient in a conversation. Playful looks at power — Use it, treat it like a gift and give it back to the movement— humor, writing, a listening ear made available.
Be a cheerful role model for the movement. Suffering is the desire for non-suffering. When it becomes part of the human endeavor it becomes joyful. Who you are is dependent upon who you share your life with and what you do with your life. The ripples are interplanetary. Every contact is changing the world. “
We are those who can. We are at the tip of the human experience. Examine non-violence for hidden depths of violence. Issues are all linked, so focus deeply one one issue and learn all you can, then put it into a world context. There’s no end in sight— it’s a process.
Yellow Thunder Camp.
We pass the security check; a red, white and blue banner hangs over the road “pray for religious freedom”. The shield is painted with a red gun upside down, 4 eagle feathers hang from it, and the barricade is a downed tree with an arrowhead and arrow-tail.
It’s the last night. We sit holding hands and singing in light, breath, energy of the Sacred Black Hills, her red earth and this gathering, our spirits.
We’ve made a ten year calendar for Non-violent Social Change. The world community throbs and lifts our spirits with its promise. Western Solidarity, Peace Brigades International, The Nuclear Freeze Campaign, Indigenous People’s Supporting Treaty Rights, WARN, WAND, WAMM, WILPF, Witness for Peace, Indian Ghandians, Educators for Social Responsibility, Radiation Victims of Hiroshima and American WW2 soldiers, Catholic Resistance Communities, Ground Zero Nevada Test Sight activists, indigenous leaders, lawyers, grandparents, students, children, teachers, doctors, Buddhist monks, priests, all say we’re preparing the home for the child who’s been born.
Last night the t-shirt fashion show was fabulous! We all got to stand in the circle, one at a time and model our favorite political t-shirts, explain the messages and the history, express hearts, share concerns. Agreed as one to the commitment to support treaty rights of native people’s everywhere.
“The source of power is being open to the charge and the change.”
We honor the presence of nonhuman community all around us who participate in our co-creative peace making efforts. Pledge to help the poor first. To honor an elder circle always. To take care of somebody’s kids on a regular basis. Somebody else calls for a break and a hug and that did it!
For the next hour and ½ we hugged. Walked in the huge concentric circles walking slowly and hugging everyone. Everyone. 200 wonderful peace filled pilgrims. High!high!high! We hold each other and sway singing Holly Near’s Gentle Angry People. Many throw in suggestions and we sang for a long time and then my dog, Chiba, barked, once. It was perfect.
Carl calls for the Ghandians to relate stories of Ghandi and they begin. A man tells his story of a child’s life in Ghandi’s ashram.
Now we gather for the last time. We listen to stories from Hiroshima survivors. Then, stories about blockading E.L.F. transmission systems. The White Train, the Republican National Convention plans. We share our upcoming plots and plans — Tax resistance, withdrawing money from banks if Reagan’s elected, plans to pour blood on Vulcan Phallix Launching System heading for the Panama Canal to attack Nicaragua. Also demonstrating against Cruise missiles in NY harbor. Micronesian struggleagainst nuclearization and their radioactive legacy . The MLK Center for Non-Violence in Atlanta.
We promise to take one person each to a demonstration who’s never been. We vow together to focus on one day, on one event where we can actually stop them for one full day. Stop the train for a day. Blockade a base for a day. Stopping rape for one day like Andrea Dworkin says. Simplify our own lives. Two hours of proposals later, we try to wrap it up.
“We came here as USians, the people living in the bus that’s going down the road. We stopped the bus and got out. Got close, connected. We will continue to network in personal and national ways to stop that bus.”
We will learn to stand on one foot like the crane does. Be willing to have just one foot on the ground, be vulnerable, open to falling.”
We end with a spiral dance. All of us open and vulnerable. Nobody falling.
Our final action is on peace activist, Marvin Kammera’s ranch, nearby. We made three enormous circles, huge, with big white stones we all painted last night, and that the bombers can see when they takeoff. The circles hold symbols for Peace, Women, and the Earth— life and death on the interface. Right next door to Ellsworth Air Force Base, here we stand, peace rising with our music, though our hands, by our connection, rising, taken on that wind and blown to the 4 directions like a giant bedspread cover, smoothed by soft hands of love.
Then, shattered by the noise, the smoke and stench of death, of war, as the bombers strafe the earth around us. We sing louder, lift our hands in peace signs and know they’d soon have to face our circles every day, every night, every flight. Those three symbol circles, sacrosanct and on private land, also sacrosanct, resisting death and war.
Then I l did as I was asked, leading the womyn’s ritual around the earth symbol. I’ve taken so many risks these past few days. The safe space of the conference gave me this gift, to stretch in ways I’ve needed, to express, to share.
Rosemary Bramble last night speaking with such depth and breadth, cosmic thoughts I’d never before encountered, and I felt like a child trying to grasp them. She said that so many religions have prophesized the coming purge, the apocalypse that will bring healing, that she’s pretty sure the nukes will have their day. But, she added, “It’s so important for us to do our work, especially in the light of that reality, because we set the stage, frame the mood, the vibe and tone and karma for this last scene…. We are all spirits who wanted to be here for this. Who needed to share the lead-up for this final scene, experience the end, which will ease the joyous beginning into creation. The beginning is coming, and we can, by our devotion to peace and love, transform what could be despair and darkness into joy and light shining through the human family.”
“The planet Earth is an experiment in Containment. We are all of us free spirits, but we don’t always soar. Gravity, necessity, illusion of this place as the only reality have put us into a contained situation, but maybe now it’s been this way long enough. Maybe now we can begin to experience the freedom of un-containment— of the home that binds us being undone so that we may truly and finally soar free beyond the illusory limitations that evade our subjective human condition.”A sister who can speak with nature says, when she goes into the woods, the animals tell her not to be concerned. It’s all compost. They know too of the healing purge that awaits us.
This is where the compost heap flowers. Dancing in the dragon’s jaws may be the only statement we can make in this world.
Seventy-two Canada geese settle at our feet. Thank you, Mother, for Life. Thank you, wild womyn, for insight. Thanks be to sisters and brothers scattering now like seeds on the wind and our prayers. These are lessons of the cosmos, shared. Time to go home and act.
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