By: Jim Tolstrup
(Originally published in the Elephant Journal – 2009) I felt a bit depressed and aimless before Christmas last year. I know I’m not unique in this. Many people say that helping others makes one a happier person and I’ve experienced this myself. So when the opportunity came to drive a truck full of donated toys, food, and clothing to the community of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, I jumped at the opportunity.
The name Wounded Knee is infamous in American history because of one very dark day, December 29, 1890. On this day 350 men, women, and children, members of Chief Big Foot’s band of Minneconjou Lakota (Sioux,) were mowed down by the guns of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry and buried in a mass grave. Big Foot’s people were practicing the Ghost Dance, a non-violent prayer for the restoration of the environment, the return of the buffalo, and the return of their many dead Lakota relatives. The Ghost Dancer’s dream of protecting the culture and ecology that existed on the Great Plains for over ten thousand years died there in the bloody snow at Wounded Knee and the legal right to practice their traditional religion would not be returned to the Native Americans until a special act of the U.S. Congress in 1978.
In 1986 a group of Lakota including Chief Arvol Looking Horse, a descendant of Chief Big Foot, initiated an annual commemorative ride on horseback that retraces the journey to Wounded Knee by Big Foot’s people. The Ghost Ride, as it is called, was intended to “wipe the tears” of the Lakota people and release the psychic trauma of a troubled place.
In typical Lakota style, these warriors endured great hardship on their cold journey and laughed the whole time. Once when the riders had not eaten for a long time they came to a small town with a Chinese restaurant that had an “all you can eat” buffet; after watching some of these big guys were chowing down a very anxious owner came out of the kitchen and shouted, “You go now!” The telling and re-telling of this story provided them with hours of entertainment on the long ride.
Chief Looking Horse has worked to protect sites sacred to indigenous people in North America and around the world and received the Temple of Understanding award at the United Nations on October 18, 2006, for his work in promoting world peace.
Today Wounded Knee is a small community of about 300 people in Shannon County, S. D. the second poorest county in the United States. Toward the end of his second term, President Clinton visited Pine Ridge Reservation and pledged to do something about the poverty there but like so many other promises made to the Indians, so far nothing has happened.
Our travel weather on December 23rd was sunny and strangely mild but the snow from a recent blizzard was piled deeply along the roadside. My companions traveling in a separate vehicle were Beverly, a Buddhist, who has organized these donations for Wounded Knee for many years, and Christinia a Lakota woman whose sister-in-law was recently killed in a car accident in the reservation, leaving behind 5 children. My co-pilot in the truck was David, a member of the Unity Church, three times divorced, and like myself looking for a little bit of meaning in the holiday season.
When we got to Pine Ridge we stopped at Big Bat’s store and gas station, a local landmark whose name derives from Baptiste “Bat” Pourier, a French trader of the 1800s who married a Lakota woman. At Big Bat’s two local Indian women, Loretta and Misty offered us beaded earrings which they make to sell for a little holiday cash for their families. I bought two pairs for our young friends Lauren and Mikayla with whom we spent Christmas day back in Colorado. A couple of local drunks panhandled us and harangued us about Jesus.
We arrived at Wounded Knee around 10 p.m. The night breezes remained warm. I have been to this place a half dozen times since the mid-seventies and it always feels like a place where there is some kind of gap, where seen and unseen worlds, past and future overlap in a way that can be unsettling.
Stopping at a little church, we unloaded our U-Haul truck which was filled floor to ceiling with frozen turkeys, potatoes, carrots, apples, oranges, and canned goods, as well as 4 or 5 bikes, presents marked for recipients by age, and lots of new clothes with the labels still on them. I felt heroic and happy like one of the characters in the Christmas specials I watched when I was a kid or maybe the Grinch when his heart grew three sizes.
In the midst of this reverie on the meaning of Christmas, I saw one gift in the pile which really hit me. The gift was a puzzle for a toddler that had elephants, tigers, and monkeys on it. These questions struck me, “How many children that age will ever see those animals?” and “Will those animals continue to be part of our world in the near future?”
The Lakota have a prayer “mitakuye oyasin” which means “all my relations.” To this day at the core of their culture is an ingrained sense of not taking more than one needs and always leaving enough for other beings, “our relations.” This is one lesson that our indigenous brothers and sisters dearly wish that we would learn also.
It struck me that the whole Christmas iconography is threatened. The little town of Bethlehem now lies in the midst of a region that has long been divided by violent conflict and due to global climate change, reindeer, and polar bears; even the North Pole itself is in jeopardy. Whether we think that Santa Claus is silly or charming the question looms large, what will we tell our children and ourselves when the very heart of our Christmas dreams, the North Pole, ceases to exist? It may seem like a foolish question, but after all, who has actually been to the North Pole? The plight of polar bears drowning because they can’t swim the increasing distance between the shrinking polar ice and the mainland may seem remote, maybe even inconsequential. But what is truly at risk here is the essence of our humanity and possibly our continued existence as well.
The stories we live by during this season are important, whether it is Santa Claus bringing toys to all the children of the world, the blessing through the long dark nights, or three wise men guided by a star, seeking a holy child born into humble circumstances. These stories point to the best potential of the human spirit. Christmas is one time that we seem to recognize that giving to others brings us great joy.
Perhaps we could transfer this important lesson, learned in the Christmas season, toward giving a little bit back to the Earth which is our only home, as well as the home of every known living creature. Leading scientists say that we may have ten years at best to fix the problem of Co2 emissions and climate change; beyond that, the damage may be irrevocable. But solutions to this looming ecological crisis exist, awaiting implementation.
The real test of the human spirit will be whether we can learn, like Ebenezer Scrooge, to care about others, keeping Christmas in our hearts throughout the year and possibly conserving a little bit for the future. Or will our own children of the next generation (over nine billion of them) wander like poor Tiny Tim, hungry, sick, and neglected, due to our present thoughtlessness? Will our own fate be like that of the ghost dancers, fervently wishing for the return of all that was beautiful and dear to us after it is gone, never to be seen again?
Driving back from Wounded Knee on Christmas Eve I made a silent prayer for the thousands of little birds who had been pushed by the snow to the highways cleared edge, and for the rest of us as well, “May all travelers on this uncertain road arrive home in peace and safety, All My Relations.”
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