38
The Longest Walk
Dennis Banks was still on the run. California Governor Jerry Brown had refused to honor an extradition request. He knew it would have amounted to a death sentence if Dennis went into a South Dakota prison, so he was free as long as he stayed in California. Nevertheless, he sometimes disguised himself to truck around the country for a while, including occasional excursions to Pine Ridge and Minnesota, before sneaking back into California. Dennis was chancellor of D-Q University near Davis, California, a Chicano and Indian school established by local Indians at an abandoned Nike Missile site they had taken over. D-Q stands for Deganawidah, an honored Six Nations prophet, and Quetzalcoatl, the ancient Toltec deity.
In February 1978, Dennis started the Longest Walk, setting out on foot from Alcatraz with Lee Brightman. The purpose was to protest a new tide of anti-Indian legislation—an average of about thirty anti-Indian bills a year, many of them blatant attacks on our treaties and on issues of Indian sovereignty—that was being considered by Congress.
Chief among Brightman’s concerns was an insidious form of genocide—the forced sterilization of Indian women, which had become commonplace. By 1969, despite an infant-mortality rate worse than in any country in the Western Hemisphere—about one death for every three live births—Indians had become the fastest-growing ethnic minority in America. That apparently was unacceptable to the U.S. government. If we didn’t follow the buffalo into near extinction, it would be harder to seize the rest of our land. Between 1972 and 1976, the Indian Health Service sterilized 42 percent of all Indian women of childbearing age. The sterilization program affected practically every fertile Indian woman who walked or was carried into an IHS hospital. Pregnant women who came to deliver their babies were tricked or forced into signing release forms. When they came out of anesthesia, they had had tubal ligations. Even women who went in for appendectomies or sore throats were told that if they did not submit to sterilization, their children would be taken away or their families would lose welfare benefits.
Nobody knew about the sterilization program until some strong-willed Indian women, led by Dr. Connie Uri, dug the facts out of the government’s own reports. They tried to obtain publicity about it but got nowhere. They then asked Brightman and me to try for national exposure. I had many friends in the media, including the producer of a network news program, but even he couldn’t get the story aired. We hoped the Longest Walk would get us on live television and radio, where we could disseminate the story to the American public.
The plan was to walk all the way across the country, picking up marchers along the way and finishing with a rally in Washington, D.C. The marchers went as far as they could each day, then were shuttled to a campsite to rest overnight. In the morning, they were driven back to where they had stopped the night before, and the walk continued. Although the walk generated a lot of initial fanfare, it faded off the national news radarscope once it reached Nevada. The walkers trudged on through Utah and Colorado. By the time they got to Kansas, things were falling apart. Fewer than forty people were still involved. Dennis called Minneapolis and asked for help. Clyde Bellecourt and my brother Bill went down with an AIM contingent and reorganized. They instilled discipline and, to the chagrin of some of Dennis’ supporters, took over the money. They got cities to open parks for overnight camping and to contribute meals from food banks. They sent advance parties to round up donations, both cash and goods such as tennis shoes or gasoline for support vehicles. They got publicity by arranging for the walkers to be presented with keys to cities or by getting mayors to proclaim “Indian Day” or anything else that would get the community involved and attract the media. By the time it got to Kansas City, Missouri, the march was once again generating national publicity that attracted hundreds of walkers from everywhere in the country.
Since Clyde and Bill had turned things around and I was preoccupied with several projects around Pine Ridge, including treaty issues, I stayed away from the walk. Then the South Dakota Supreme Court ruled on my case, upholding the trial judge’s decision. Suddenly the possibility of prison loomed again. I decided it was time to go on my first umblecayttpi—crying for a vision. With Richard Moves Camp, a powerful young medicine man—Ellen’s nephew—I built an altar of red cloth on Eagle Nest Butte, southwest of Wanblee on Pine Ridge. My son Scott came along to help with the ceremony. Richard selected a place for me among towering ponderosa pines on the west face of the butte. Nearby was an eagle’s nest. For a time, I could see its occupants soaring above me in the distance. I was naked, because we seek to meet the Great Mystery just as we came into the world, covering ourselves at night only with a buffalo robe. I didn’t have one, so I brought a star quilt, a light layer of filling in a coverlet with tiny diamond-shaped patches of cotton sewed into a star design. Scott and Richard left, and I began to pray in the bright sun.
Gradually, the sky filled with dark clouds, and sheets of water fell. Soon my quilt was sopping wet. Well after nightfall, the rain broke and I dozed off but was awakened by a shadow swooshing by my face, and then another—a pair of nighthawks buzzing the red altar cloth. It was a moonless night, and they came plummeting silently out of the darkness to dive-bomb the cloth at a point a few feet from where I sat. They went on for a long time, two tiny but fierce fliers, wings fluttering as they clawed and beaked the altar.
Then I heard an owl very close-by. Indigenous peoples in every corner of the world believe that the owl is a messenger of death. If one visits your home, it means someone close to you will die soon. That night, however, I got a different message. I felt the owl was trying to tell me it would make sure nothing would bother me.
Before dawn, I was awake to pray. It rained again, but by midmorning the sun reappeared and everything but my quilt was soon dry. I sat praying all day and on into the evening. Summer twilight often lingers until nearly ten in the northern Plains, and when darkness finally approached, I looked up. To the northwest, on the usual weather track for the Plains, was an enormous storm front, miles high and wide and tens of miles long. The cloud tops were gorgeous shades of pink from the last rays of the setting sun; the bottoms were dark and menacing. I was sure they held hail—one mean storm, heading right for me. Shivering and fed up with rain and cold, I spoke plainly to the thunder spirits. I said, “Give me a break here! Enough! I can’t pray while I’m being pelted with hail and rain! Please—no more.”
The air became very still. As the storm approached, I heard the distant rumbling of thunder and the crackle of lightning, saw the sudden flickering of bolts deep within the clouds. Around me, birds and insects sought cover and the butte grew silent. The wind that always announces such storms blew in my face, cold and strong. Dark and angry, as irresistible as anything in nature, the clouds bore down upon me.
I prayed harder.
Suddenly I could smell the storm on the breeze—the ozone, perhaps—a special sweet taste. I knew that in half a minute or less I would be drenched. My prayers became almost frantic.
The wind shifted, then died.
Before my eyes, the entire mass of roiling clouds altered its course from south-southeast to due south, skirting the butte by perhaps a mile. As I prayed my thanks, the huge storm sailed majestically past me, drenching most of Pine Ridge, and then resumed its original course. As darkness fell, the air atop Eagle Nest Butte warmed and a canopy of stars appeared.
White men may scoff, but I know the thunder spirits heard my prayers and took pity on me. I saw what happened.
I spent the rest of the night in prayer. Every now and then, the owl issued a reminder that it was still watching. The nighthawks came again, dark shapes against the starlight, hurling themselves at my altar. When I prayed through the second dawn of my crying for a vision, it was plain to me that the owl and the nighthawk had joined me in a spiritual alliance. From that time on, their medicine has helped to safeguard me. Later, I would realize that thunder and lightning had also become my friends and protectors.
I was to report to Sioux Falls on July 27, 1978, to begin serving my four years. My options were accepting that sentence or petitioning a U.S. Supreme Court justice for a stay of execution of sentence. If I got one, I could then ask the full court to hear my case. If nothing else, that probably would delay my entry to prison for at least a year. Since I didn’t know if that strategy would succeed, I made sure to get in another sun dance before going to prison, one that was run by my uncle and cousins, the Zephiers, on the Yankton Reservation.
Afterward, I got a call from the Reverend John Adams, who had been so helpful to us at Wounded Knee. He was with the United Methodist Church’s national office in Washington. Adams said there was trouble on the Longest Walk and he needed help, especially since it was approaching D.C. and he had to devote his time to fund-raising for the walk. I agreed to come if I could bring Peggy and Sherry. Because I was going to Washington, I decided to try to get a petition for a stay of execution of sentence before Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
I joined the Longest Walk in Pennsylvania. Among the celebrities who came to stroll at least a few miles were Muhammad Ali, accompanied by squadrons of media types, and an elderly bonze who was spiritual leader of Japan’s Buddhists. The walk’s leaders, who included people from Pine Ridge, said to me, “We need more publicity, and your name can generate it, so can we use you?”
“Of course,” I said. “That’s what AIM and I have always been about, and that’s how Indian people should use AIM.” Adams had lined up hotel rooms for us, but I preferred to stay with the walkers, now almost three thousand strong. I camped out with the Lakota people. In that way, I met people from all over the country, but the California bunch, Dennis’s people, were resentful of what AIM and my brother Bill had accomplished, and an undercurrent of dissension ran through the walk.
I spent my evenings with the walkers, but drove into Washington almost every day to work on my Supreme Court case and to help Adams line up some events in the capital. One day in the United Methodist Church’s offices, I got a call from Senator Jim Abourezk’s assistant. She said, “It’s an emergency—a confrontation between the Longest Walk and the Maryland National Guard.” She came over and picked me up, and we drove out to learn what the problem was. As it happened, the guardsmen had come to set up a field kitchen and a mobile dispensary to feed the marchers and take care of minor medical problems such as blistered feet. The Californians and some others among the walkers had said, “Hell, no! We don’t want the U.S. Army here!” When we had calmed everyone down, Clyde stood up and said, “Five years ago, when I was inside Wounded Knee, if anybody had told me that the U.S. Army would want to feed me and all my people for free—and put up a hospital tent for us—I’d have called them stark, raving mad. I’m not going to pass this up! We’re going to let them put up their tents, and we’re going to eat their food. Think about it.” That was the end of the rebellion.
When the media blitz began, I appeared on ABC’s Good Morning, America, where I finally got the sterilization story out, as well as on NBC’s Today, the CBS Morning News, several local television talk shows, and in D.C. papers. After those shows aired, some of the walkers, especially those who had trekked all the way from California, demanded a secret meeting with me. I took John Thomas along to watch my back. Those guys were pissed off because I was in the news. They said I didn’t deserve the attention because I hadn’t been on the walk from the beginning. I guess they had been putting one foot in front of the other for so long that they had forgotten why they had come—to focus national publicity on Indian causes. They were so consumed by petty jealousies that they had lost sight of the message we were trying to get out.
An Indian man who had helped found D-Q University made a big speech about how disappointed he was in me. He said I had the potential to be a great leader, but I had to watch my ego. Other Californians jumped on John Thomas with accusations that he had ripped off the money, and with it was eating in good restaurants and staying in a fancy motel. It was all a sick fantasy. John lived no better than anyone else on the walk. I noticed one big, well-built guy who looked as though he had just gotten out of prison, with tattoos covering his arms and neck. He paced back and forth, occasionally shouting, “It’s a good day to die!”
John and I each had a piece tucked into our boot, but we said nothing. As the torrent of abuse went on, we just stood, eyeing each other and the seething mass of hysteria. Finally it was quiet, except for the guy who kept saying, “It’s a good day to die!” I wanted to tell them that I had joined the walk only as a favor to Adams and had allowed my name and image to be used only to help our struggle. I wanted to say that I was a few days from going to prison for the crime of standing up for my people. I knew John was close to taking out his piece and giving Mr. Tattoo an opportunity to find out if it were indeed a good day to die, but I was so disgusted with those shortsighted, ego-consumed guys that I could barely speak. I said, “Are you all through now? Why don’t you get the entire leadership in here and ask them why I’m the one on the news. Do that. Ask them.”
Then we left. They never said another word to me, but they left a lasting impression. It was a sad day when I realized that despite all AIM had achieved, many Indians still didn’t recognize the enemy. Instead, they were so twisted by a bitter legacy of colonialism that they would fight their brothers and sisters for a few moments on the white man’s television, for the mention of their names in the white man’s newspaper, for a few crumbs of what they imagined was dignity. I decided right then not to petition for a stay of execution of sentence. It was a very long shot, anyway, and I was tired of messing with guys such as the Californians.
That decision left me only a few days of freedom. When the walk reached D.C. on July 17, Marlon Brando joined those at the head of the procession, thus ensuring more media coverage. I knew every hang-around-the-fort Indian in the world would crawl out of his hole to march alongside Brando for a share of the glory, and I didn’t want to be with those sellouts. I didn’t join the march.
So many people were trying to get into D.C. to support us that the Beltway became a vast parking lot. At least eighty thousand marchers—the biggest crowd since the Poor People’s March, and far more than an Equal Rights Amendment demonstration the previous week—entered Washington through the black ghetto, stopping at Malcolm X Park. With Sherry and Peggy, I waited at the Washington Monument and watched the walkers arrive. The scene was awesome. When everyone had gathered around the monument, there were a couple of speeches and an announcement that we would reassemble and march on Capitol Hill the next day to show our displeasure to Congress.
When we convened in the morning to march to Capitol Hill, Senator Edward Kennedy showed up uninvited. By then, America had become aware of his sponsorship of Senate Bill 1, an omnibus crime bill which included unconscionable mandatory sentences and other provisions that robbed people of their rights under the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments. Although white people would suffer under the bill, I was most concerned because it sought to increase the provisions of the Indian Major Crimes Act from fourteen felonies to about twenty-six. Among the proposed provisions were sentences of as much as ten years in federal prison for such infractions as breaking a window or spitting on a government building. The bill would have stripped Indians of protection against illegal search and seizure, the right to an attorney while being questioned at length, and the loss of other civil liberties.
Kennedy mingled with the walk’s leaders, but also with all the D.C. bureaucrat Indians in the top layer, who make very good livings exploiting the misery of their own people. Traditional Indians don’t believe in voting in the white man’s world, but nearly all the sellouts were Democrats brainwashed into believing that the Kennedy family was God’s gift to the Indians. When Kennedy mounted the steps to deliver a speech about how his crime bill would do wonders for everyone and how we should support it, nearly everybody paid attention. Even AIM’s lawyers, reclining on the grass, lay back on their elbows to listen. I had read the bill, however, and knew what it really meant, so I ran up to Clyde and said, “We’ve got to do something!” He handed me his bullhorn. “You do it,” he said. I didn’t want to be out front, so I ran over to some skins, including my brother Bill. None would confront Kennedy. When I went to our lawyers, they said, “It’s an Indian thing. You guys have got to do it.” I was surprised to hear that, but of course they were right. It was up to Indians to stand up for their own rights.
I took Clyde’s bullhorn, and when the senator finished speaking, I said, “Wait a minute! Not only is your bill bad for white people, it’s ten times worse for Indians.” As I went down the list of reasons, Kennedy grabbed the bullhorn and interrupted. He lost all control. His necktie got too tight, his face swelled up, and he turned purple—he looked as if he were choking. I just let him sputter.
The next day, Senator Abourezk’s staff and the Indian lawyers arranged to get together with Kennedy’s people and talk about the crime bill. That was the first Indian input. The proposed legislation had been written by Kennedy’s staff, so he didn’t even know what provisions in it pertained to Indians. We had appointed Larry Leventhal to head our team, but when Kennedy sent word that he refused to attend the meeting unless I did, I went along. I was flattered, but as soon as we both showed up and agreed that our lawyers and his would hassle things out, Kennedy and I left. The omnibus crime bill never got through Congress, but since then, a steady stream of more narrow bills have been enacted. Today, most of the key provisions of Kennedy’s original bill have become law. The major exceptions are the revisions to the Indian Major Crimes Act, which have not changed much since 1978. Strangely, there is now far more crime everywhere in America except Indian reservations.
When President Jimmy Carter agreed to meet with people from the Walk, each group chose representatives, mostly elders. When the one hundred or so Lakota met, several elders were chosen, but only one person was selected unanimously, and I felt deeply honored. As with Wounded Knee, when I was sent to meet with White House officials, it was a humbling experience to be chosen by my people. There is no way I can ever repay what I owe them, because everything I am or want to be is because of them. Of course I declined the honor. After all, the job of the President of the United States is to oppress me, my children, and my people. Meeting somebody like that is an insult to my ancestors’ integrity. When the delegation, minus me, went to the White House to demand that Congress and the government end their policy of terrorizing Indians and destroying our heritage, Carter and Vice President Walter Mondale were kept waiting for more than an hour—not intentionally, but because we live on Indian time. To the white man, we’re always late, but to us, as a free people, there is no time. Things take as long as they take, and therefore we’re never in a hurry.
When we announced that we would be filing a $300 million damage suit on behalf of Indian women who had been tricked or coerced into sterilization by the IHS, Senator Abourezk forced the government into a moratorium on that program. Two years later, however, the genocide resumed with a new name—“family planning.” Although it consumes more reams of paper and includes a supposedly mandatory waiting period, the government is still stealthily sterilizing Indian women.
The week after the Longest Walk concluded in the spring of 1978, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution saying that national policy was to protect the rights of Indians “to believe, express and exercise their traditional religions, including but not limited to access to sites, use and possession of sacred objects, and the freedom to worship through ceremonials and traditional rites.” Naturally, it was a nonbinding resolution that changed nothing, but it allowed white politicians to claim they had voted to support Indians’ rights. Nothing changes in that town—it’s still a brick wall.