A Sacred Moment — A Call to Truth: The Words of a Lakota Elder

I ask you to read this post in a spirit of rev­er­ence for those who came before.

When I was a teen, I read a book about the Plains Indian wars. I already knew that the Native peo­ple of North and South Amer­ica were the vic­tims of Euro­pean con­quest and geno­cide, but until I read this book, I had lit­tle idea how sav­age the destruc­tion of Native cul­tures truly was.

After my sopho­more year at col­lege, I received an invi­ta­tion to visit the North­ern Cheyenne Reser­va­tion in Busby, Montana.

As some­one raised in a large East­ern city, the bar­ren, high prairie of East­ern Mon­tana was at once a place that was entirely for­eign, but also oddly famil­iar to me. It felt both pow­er­ful and sacred. I was struck by the incred­i­ble silence of the infi­nitely spa­cious sky of East­ern Mon­tana. How­ever, beneath that sky was the glar­ing rural poverty and sad­ness of the Cheyenne com­mu­ni­ties. This once proud and inde­pen­dent buf­falo hunt­ing soci­ety of the high plains was now liv­ing in decrepit houses in a bar­ren world. Reduced to eat­ing processed meat sticks and end­less quan­ti­ties of Kool Aid. The reser­va­tion suf­fered from an unem­ploy­ment rate approach­ing 90%, an aver­age life expectancy of 39, and it was a place where sui­cide was the sec­ond lead­ing cause of death. It was not unusual for old peo­ple to sit out­side on freez­ing win­ter nights so that they might die of expo­sure by morn­ing. My sum­mer on the reser­va­tion changed me for­ever. My brief time in Mon­tana sug­gested to me that Cheyennes dealt with emo­tional cri­sis dif­fer­ently than what I observed grow­ing up in our pri­mar­ily Jew­ish sub­urb out­side of Philadel­phia, but I could not put my fin­ger on what it was.

As that sum­mer was draw­ing to a close, I had a remark­able con­ver­sa­tion with an old Lakota man at the Crow pow­wow. It was dusk, on a hill above the Lit­tle Big Horn River, right where Ara­paho, Lakota, and Cheyenne war­riors wiped out Custer and his men 94 years ago (at that time). He spoke to me in ques­tions, which I later learned is a fairly com­mon way of teach­ing in the “Indian” way. He had pre­vi­ously told me many “tall” tales and then would ask me if I believed them. I would politely reply that I didn’t and he would chuckle good-naturedly. On this day, he was more solemn and he said that he was going to tell me a dif­fer­ent sort of story. He won­dered if I would believe this tale.

He asked, “Do you know why we Indi­ans view white peo­ple with pity and con­tempt?” His ques­tion con­fused me. I didn’t know what he was refer­ring to, nor what he was try­ing to tell me. So I answered, “Is it our obses­sion with money, mate­r­ial things?”

He smiled and then asked me to look around and tell him what I saw. I told him that I saw hills, grasses, sky, and the river below us. He nod­ded in agree­ment. Then he said, “Where are the wolves Eric?”

“They are gone.” I answered. “Where are the bears? Where are the buf­falo?” and he asked about many ani­mals that are now gone. “Were they all here, before your peo­ple came to this land?” I hes­i­tantly nod­ded yes.

“Did not the white peo­ple kill the wolves, the bears, the buf­falo and all the other ani­mals that once lived here? Is this a story you can believe Eric?” I said, “Yes, I can believe that story.”

Then he asked me to look down at the river and he asked me, “Eric, would you drink from that river?” I answered no. He then asked, where are the many fish that use to fill that river? Isn’t it true that the white man killed them all? Do you believe that to be so?” “Yes”, I said, “I believe that to be so.”

A deep­en­ing sad­ness now filled the air. I started to trem­ble with the power of that sadness.

Then he asked me to look at the all but empty sky. He said that before the white man there were many more birds. He asked if I knew why there were so many fewer birds now than then. I said that I didn’t know. He explained to me that birds feed on the grasses, but that the white man did away with the wild grasses and cov­ered the land with grasses that need poi­so­nous chem­i­cals to live. The plows and chem­i­cals of the white man destroyed the orig­i­nal veg­e­ta­tion, which killed off many of the birds.

“Poi­son and death every­where.” He said softly.

He paused and then he looked at me sadly. “The white man kills any­thing that is wild. Do you believe that Eric?” He paused again and peered pen­sively into the dark­en­ing sky. He had become very seri­ous, as if he was unsure how to present his next question.

He then sadly asked, “Where are the wild peo­ple that filled this land before the white man came?” I then eagerly pointed out all the Indi­ans who were attend­ing the pow­wow. “They are here,” I said try­ing to sound hope­ful. But he responded with a quiet, “No, these are not the wild Indi­ans, they are the reser­va­tion Indi­ans, they are the con­quered Indi­ans.” He then asked again, “Eric, where are the wild Indians?”

I said very softly, “They are gone with all the rest.” I had to hold back tears.

“What has the white man killed?” he asked. I reluc­tantly uttered the long list we had now amassed … the ani­mals, the grasses, the birds, the wild peo­ple, and even the earth itself. For each increas­ingly heavy cat­e­gory of life now destroyed, he would tire­lessly repeat the ques­tion, “Do you believe this to be true Eric?” And for each point, I had to say “Yes, this is true.”

“Now I will ask you again, why do the Indi­ans have pity on the white man?”

Con­fi­dently I replied, because of the killing. The white man is a heart­less killer, I answered quite sure that I was def­i­nitely on the right track.

He said that was part of it, but not the whole story.

“What is it the white peo­ple kill?” he asked. I answered “Any­thing that stands in their way”.

He said, “Can you be a lit­tle clearer?”

I became flus­tered and wasn’t sure what he was try­ing to get me to say. I was con­fused and didn’t know where he was tak­ing this conversation.

He then answered his own ques­tion, “The white man kills any­thing that is wild. More than any­thing else, the white man fears any­thing that is wild.”

He paused, “The white man depends on con­trol. Any­thing that he can­not con­trol, he must kill or con­trol in some extreme way. But that is not the answer to my first question.”

He then asked, “Do you know the answer now?”

I was frus­trated with myself, because I just couldn’t fig­ure out what he was get­ting at.

There was a long pause.

He then said the answer. “If it were only the killing, if that was the only issue, we would not pity the white man. We would think that he is crazy, but we would not pity him.”

“We pity the white man because this killing gives him plea­sure. He loves to kill. The killing gives him a sense of accomplishment.”

“He looked out onto this land and saw it as use­less the way the Great Spirit made it. He has to fash­ion it in a way that serves his inter­ests. That meant that his plea­sure became killing as the work of God. We Indi­ans lived in peace with God. Your peo­ple have no peace with God.”

The old man let his head drop in silent con­tem­pla­tion. I began to weep and I truly wanted to die at that moment.

There was a long silence. I was so sad. He put his arm on my shoul­der and said, “It’s okay Eric, this too will pass. Life is a much longer jour­ney than we can pos­si­bly imag­ine and I have faith in you. You’ll be different.”

He smiled and we walked down to the river together. We walked down to the banks of the Lit­tle Big Horn River, the river the Lakota call the Greasy Grass as the sun fell beneath the horizon.

I never saw him again.

If you found inspi­ra­tion in this post which is true in every word, you might want to read this post. It will raise your heart in the blaze of the beauty of this day.

If you enjoyed this post, then you might want to read the whole story. You can read it for free — just check out the wid­get to the right on the home page. Or you can buy it in any elec­tronic for­mat for $4.95, at the side wid­get, just select your pre­ferred for­mat and voila! Or you can buy the actual bound book by click­ing here.

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The A Sacred Moment — A Call to Truth: The Words of a Lakota Elder by , unless oth­er­wise expressly stated, is licensed under a Cre­ative Com­mons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.