The Colgate Scene
November 1999
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Buffalo crossing the road at Wind Cave National Park in the Black Hills
Pine Ridge is home to the Oglalas, a division of the Lakota-speaking Tetons, a tribe that also includes the Sichangu, Hunkpapa, Miniconjou, Sans Arc, Two Kettle and Blackfeet bands. Put much more simply, they are Sioux Indians.
I parked next to the wagon that had in the past quarter-century carried Pete Catches (medicine man), Lost Bird (baby picked up by an Army Colonel at Wounded Knee) and Little Soldier (last surviving Lakota who fought Custer) at the Kyle, SD, home of Joe Whiting.
Having served as a tribal policeman during the American Indian Movement (AIM) occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973, a set manager and cultural correspondent for Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves, and simply raised as an Indian in a non-Indian world, Joe is a good storyteller and has many to tell. If Joe is free and you ask him, he will take you anywhere in the west you want to go.
Dancer at the Oglala Nation Pow Wow in Pine Ridge, South Dakota
In the morning, Joe and I headed west through Sharps Corner, then south through Porcupine, and stopped at Wounded Knee. Besides a double-sided sign for tourists, little stands to explain the horror and struggle that has visited the valley twice over the past five generations. A rectangular chain-link fence surrounds the trench where an 1890 photo shows U.S. soldiers standing over a pile of corpses. The poignant image from American history textbooks crashed into my mind. Substandard housing painfully typical of Indian communities dots the surrounding countryside and weaves Wounded Knee into the continuing history of colonization that the Lakotas have suffered.
The trek continued north to the small community of Manderson, the home of Lakota Holy Man Black Elk, through Rocky Ford, and west towards the Black Hills.
After a rough 60-mile drive across the rolling prairie on a dirt road, the Buffalo Gap emerged. The gap is a natural opening in the southern end of the dark pine-covered slopes, shaped like a river delta, where the buffalo of the great northern herd -- the lifeline of many plains tribes -- flowed in and out of the aboriginal Lakota homeland. The dirt road is said to have been cut over the freshly torn sod of the original buffalo trails. The gap, in its magical splendor, came and went with little fanfare for its ecological or cultural significance. Tourists have yet to find it.
Traffic in nearby Wind Cave National Park was unconditionally halted and dwarfed by a herd of more than a thousand head of buffalo crossing Route 79. Continuing north, the next stops were at the Crazy Horse monument in Custer, Mt. Rushmore and Rapid City. Route 44 emptied southward out of the hills through the badlands to the reservation-border town of Scenic. There we found the Longhorn Bar, notorious for capturing the South Dakota sentiment with its large billboard "NO INDIANS ALLOWED." The "NO" was painted over about ten years ago, but the glaring empty space and silhouette of thick black letters will never be erased.
A fellow member of the Santa Fe Native American study group photographed Petrush at the Pueblo Alto ruins at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, in September.
My weekend adventure through the rising buttes and historical valleys of the Black Hills was just one of many trips during an internship at the tribal courthouse on the adjacent Rosebud Reservation, home of the Sichangu Lakota. From June 22 to August 13 I observed the actions of the court and tribal council, read law review articles and immersed myself in many facets of Lakota life. It was a moving experience that began ten months earlier in the familiar Lawrence Hall office of academic adviser Chris Vecsey. Professor Vecsey arranged the internship through Frank Pommersheim '65. Pommersheim, professor at the University of South Dakota law school and Chief Justice of the Rosebud Supreme Court, is highly regarded throughout Indian Country.
My largest project at the Rosebud Court culminated in the creation of an affidavit (facts of a case) in support of an injunction to be filed in Federal Court in Pierre, South Dakota. An injunction is an application to a court for relief from a specific action. The FBI and U.S. Marshals often remove inmates from tribal jail when charges are elevated to Federal status, a pattern throughout Indian Country. I researched those inmates simultaneously held on a tribal court charge. Failing to make application to the tribal court for release on tribal charges is a violation of the national sovereignty of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, bilateral treaties, and other sources. The first defendant will be Janet Reno and second the entire Justice Department. The implications of the case for the field of Indian law and U.S. government procedure in Indian Country are enormous.
The struggles of times past represented by Wounded Knee and the Black Hills are fought every day in tribal and Federal courts. The modern weapons of war, largely invisible to the American public, are words, files, motions, affidavits and injunctions. I am planning a career in one of the three main frontlines of Indian law -- academia, an Indian tribe, or a specializing law firm.
My work at the courthouse was empowering, but my fondest memories are with the Lakota people. Although Rosebud's 80 percent unemployment earns it a label of economically depressed, the Lakota, like most indigenous peoples, are not poor. A strong interlocking system of extended families, profoundly deep religious values and sense of identity sustain Lakota communities.
In my free time I paddled down Nebraska's Niobrara River, played basketball with Lakota youth, sang at local community pow wows and drove west through the Black Hills.
The sunset on that July day created a blazing vermilion blanket on the horizon, adding contrast to the gray and tan hues of the rock and soil. The piercing light set the amber brown grass on fire. Spectacular sundown light shows are a routine on this part of the northern plains.
Dave's summer work also included an internship in the Washington, DC, office of Representative Ed Pease (7th District, IN).
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