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Subject: Drained by Internecine War, Oglala Sioux Hope Roots Can Heal Ills<By William
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 92 04:42:03 EST
Message-ID: <2.1992Nov11.044204@AmeriCast.com>

Drained by Internecine War, Oglala Sioux Hope Roots Can Heal
Ills<By William Claiborne=Washington Post Staff Writer=

WOUNDED KNEE, S.D. - The prophesy, according to Sioux elders, is
contained in ancient pictographs found on a remote cliff face in
the Black Hills. Seven elks are depicted in progressively dimin-
ishing stature.

The first, which the Oglala Sioux believe represents the first
generation of the once-nomadic tribe that settled in the Black
Hills, is grand in scale and has a prominent head of antlers. The
paintings diminish in size until the seventh elk is shown with
only one horn and one leg and is lying on its side near death.

"I am fourth generation Oglala. My son is fifth generation. My
grandson is sixth generation, and my great-grandson is seventh
generation. Every time we go up into the hills and pray, we pray
that this won't be the last generation," said Joseph Swift Bird,
71, a tribal elder.

Although few of the 16,000 residents of this nearly 2 million
acre reservation in the arid Badlands of southwestern South Dako-
ta have seen the elk paintings, the prophesy invariably comes up
in conversations with the Oglala Sioux, who are descendants of
the warriors Crazy Horse and Red Cloud.  "It warns us to return
to our traditional way of life. If we understand our own culture,
we can adapt to any culture there is. But if we fail to listen to
our past, we will die as a people," said Elaine Quiver, a direc-
tor of the Grey Eagles Society of elders.

For years, cultural revivalism has been an episodic phenomenon in
many American Indian reservations. More often than not the move-
ments capture the fleeting attention of the younger generations
and then recede in the face of encroaching cultural assimilation.

But it seems different in the dirt-poor Pine Ridge Indian Reser-
vation, where a battle in 1973 between radical activists of the
American Indian Movement (AIM) and heavily armed federal forces
at the hamlet of Wounded Knee focused national attention on
long-standing American Indian grievances.

During the siege, one Indian was killed and a U.S. marshal shot
and paralyzed during firefights between heavily fortified build-
ings in Wounded Knee and the federal forces's observation points
in the hills surrounding the hamlet.

The hamlet was picked by AIM radicals because it had been the
scene of the infamous massacre on Dec. 29, 1890, of Oglala Chief
Big Foot and 300 Sioux men, women and children by the U.S. caval-
ry, and was an emotive rallying point.

Deep ideological and generational divisions in Pine Ridge were
exacerbated during the decade following the 1973 occupation of
the Wounded Knee hamlet, leading to a wave of vengeance murders
that left 162 Oglala Sioux and two FBI agents dead before the in-
tratribal warfare receded in the mid-1980s.

It was the bitterness of that virtual civil war and the high
death toll, Pine Ridge residents say, that gradually led to "bat-
tle fatigue" and the movement to return to traditional values
that is slowly and tentatively beginning to take hold.

A sobriety movement was launched after the Oglala tribal council
approved a resolution last July declaring war on alcoholism on
the reservation, which has had 10 times the national rate of al-
cohol abuse.  Also, groups such as the Grey Eagle Society have
been actively promoting, and getting, increased participation by
young people in traditional ceremonies including the Sun Dance, a
harvest-time thanksgiving observance in which life, as symbolized
by a ceremonial tree, is worshiped.

Tribal secondary schools and the 1,000-student Oglala Lakota Col-
lege have added to their curriculums numerous courses on American
Indian history and culture, and a new reservation radio station
gears its programming heavily to cultural awareness.

And, increasingly, Oglala Sioux are abandoning or modifying their
Christian names, given to them or their forebears by missionaries
and perpetuated by Bureau of Indian Affairs legal requirements,
in favor of ancestral names.

"It's only a start, but the biggest change here since 1973 is
that the Oglala people are regaining their pride in being Indian.
We have a long way to go, but we've made a start," Yellow Bird
Steele said.

In the face of the cultural progress, however, there remain for-
midible social and economic problems that make Shannon County,
which covers most of the reservation, the poorest county in Amer-
ica, with 63 percent of all residents living in poverty, accord-
ing to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The unemployment rate, according to tribal authorities, is 87
percent, with most job-holders working for a government agency.

Joblessness has been such a drain on the reservation's economy
that tribal officials have even begun talking with manufacturing
firms that planned to relocate to Mexico under the North American
Free Trade Agreement in hopes of luring low-paying jobs.

They also are exploring the possibility of opening two casinos on
the northern and western edges of the reservation, a revenue and
job-producing enterprise that has been successful at other reser-
vations.

Suicides occur at twice the national rate, homicides at three
times the U.S. rate, and for every 1,000 babies born in the late
1980s, 29 died in infancy, which is three times the national
average, Oglala officials said.

But, of all the reservation's staggering social problems, Oglala
Sioux across Pine Ridge said in interviews, the most debilitating
has been the legacy of bitterness and hatred left in the wake of
the 1973 takeover of the hamlet of Wounded Knee.

The Pine Ridge reservation at the time was almost evenly split
between AIM supporters and backers of the then-tribal president,
Dick Wilson, who were reviled as Bureau of Indian Affairs "goons"
by members of the younger, more militant faction.

Before and after the 1973 standoff, tensions on the Pine Ridge
reservation were worsened every two years because of the long-
standing practice of newly elected leaders of appointing family
members and friends to patronage posts in the government, thereby
displacing many civil servants from the few jobs available on the
reservation.

No tribal president since 1973 has served more than one two-year
term.  Survivors from both sides of the virtual civil war in Pine
Ridge now say that the Oglala Sioux are beginning to bury the
past and come together in an effort to overcome the social and
economic problems that they believe threaten the future of the
seventh generation of the tribe.

"We don't have time for conflict between ourselves anymore. We
have too big a job to do in saving ourselves," said Mona Wilson,
a daughter of the now-deceased tribal president and the director
of an alcoholism recovery program in Pine Ridge.

"More young people really want a change from the past. They're
tired of the fighting and drunkenness and hatred. I see a very
positive movement toward traditionalism and holistic wellness.
More people are coming back to their traditional roots," Wilson
said.

Melvin Lee, a former AIM "warrior" who was arrested during the
Wounded Knee siege while smuggling ammunition into the sealed-off
hamlet, said he has had second thoughts about the violence.

Lee was standing by the tombstone of the only Indian killed dur-
ing the 70-day siege here, whose epitaph reads, "2,000 and 500
came to Wounded Knee in 1973.  One remains, Lawrence Buddy
LaMonte, April 27, 1973."

"Maybe some good people would still be alive if we had found
another way, if we had negotiated more," said Lee, who also was
one of the last seven holdouts in the 1972 AIM takeover of the
Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington, D.C.  Later,
sitting in the Oglala tribal offices, where he is un unpaid
volunteer, Lee added, "There are still a lot of hard feelings, a
lot of 'You killed my brother' kind of stuff.' But it's starting
to change. Fifteen years ago, I couldn't even come into this
building."

Melvin Lone Hill, another former AIM militant whose grandfather,
Frank Fool's Crow, was the spiritual counselor to the Wounded
Knee occupiers in 1973, said, "We still have factions, but they
are scattered. There aren't just two big factions fighting each
other, like there used to be, but there are lots of groups look-
ing to the future instead of tearing each other apart.

"As young warriors, we never took part in preserving spiritual
and cultural values like the young people are doing today,
preserving what you call religion and we call a way of life.
That's the hope for the future that I see, the younger people
getting involved in preserving their past," added Lone Hill, who
is now the tribal vice president.02:02 11-11C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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