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Paha Sapa Sun Dance
We held our first sun dance at Yellow Thunder Camp in the summer of 1982. Because of everything our Khe Sapa meant to us, we were determined to make it as traditional as possible. Fools Crow, who came to Yellow Thunder often, was so old, honored, and respected that we didn’t ask him to run the ceremony; we merely invited him to join us. In late spring, we took the Yellow Thunder Camp pipe around to eight holy men on the Pine Ridge, Rosebud, Cheyenne River, and Standing Rock Reservations. Such men cannot refuse the pipe, and having accepted it, they must honor their commitments or the spirits will be offended, and it will come back on them. Despite that, all eight failed to come to our sun dance. But Leonard Crow Dog—to whom we hadn’t even taken the pipe, because of his relative youth—came to run it for us. Down on the plains, most of the medicine men we had invited to Yellow Thunder Camp held their own sun dances instead. Those had become status events that supposedly reflected the medicine man’s reputation in how many dancers attended and how large the “arena” was. Just as with white men, bigger was considered better.
In early summer, we cut saplings and skinned their bark to provide a framework for the sacred hoop that surrounds the sun dancers. There were twenty-eight poles—exactly as many as the days in a woman’s purification cycle, and exactly as many ribs as in a buffalo. When the hoop is complete, the sides are closed off from view. Those assisting the dancers enter the hoop at gates represented by flags in each of the four sacred colors—black for west, red for north, yellow for east, white for south. There is one break in the holy hoop, the east door where the dancers and all good things enter, and all bad things leave. The singers sit on the south end, shaded by pine boughs leaned against the saplings. In building our sacred hoop in the orthodox way, we learned another lesson from our ancestors. In contrast to modern sun dances, which drew hundreds of people, traditional rites were small events. With only twenty-eight poles, the hoop can’t be very much more than thirty or thirty-five feet across. There isn’t room for very many dancers.
By that time, I had participated in more than a dozen sun dances. Before each one, we ceremonially cut a cottonwood tree to symbolize the tree of life, just as our forebears had. Although I’m not fluent in my language, I know that the Lakota name for the tree our ancestors had chosen translates to “the tree with the whistling leaves.” There were no cottonwoods near Yellow Thunder Camp, however. On a windy day weeks before the sun dance, the eldest of the Thunder Shield brothers came up and said very quietly, “Come, let’s go among the trees. I want to show you something.” He took me to a mixed grove of conifers and deciduous trees, where we sat down. Suddenly I noticed a peculiar whistling noise—the wind surging through the leaves of an aspen. I love aspens. They are beautiful, unruly anarchists, the Indians of the forest, rooting themselves anywhere and everywhere. Aspens seem to have a mind of their own. They will share space with other trees, but the Forest Service hates them because they can’t be controlled. Planted in one place, they may die out or flourish, but their seedlings will spring up far away in following years. We sat there enjoying the wind as it sighed through the green bower, until I figured it out. The tree with the whispering leaves was the aspen, not the cottonwood, and it grew only in the hills. I said, “We never sun danced on the plains, did we?”
Thunder Shield shook his head. “Not before the white man came.” Once again, I was struck by how enjoyable it was to be around traditional Indians, wise people who allow others to experience each discovery firsthand instead of delivering lectures. That year, for the first time in more than a century, Lakota sun dancers used an aspen. After it was chopped down, a girl who had yet to become a woman was chosen to mark it, since only a pure person may first touch the tree that sacrificed itself for our dance. With traditional ceremony, a hole was dug in the center of the sacred hoop and filled with the four sacred foods—wasnd, a mixture of buffalo meat sweetened with chokecherry juice; wasin, buffalo marrow; chante, buffalo heart; and fikau, fat from the buffalo’s hump.
The tree was then carried in and placed upright. In the aspen’s fork, we put a chokecherry bundle and hung cloth in each of the sacred colors, along with tobacco ties—akin to prayer bundles—representing personal prayers from those who tied them on. The man and the buffalo skull were tied to the branches. Then ropes, later attached to dancers who pierced themselves, were tied to the tree. The tree would remain for four days, to be taken down after the feast and giveaways.
Sun dances are rarely held next to water, but the only place at Yellow Thunder with a suitable clearing was near the creek. That made it doubly hard for the fasting dancers, who could hear small children splashing in the water. In subsequent years, we held the dance later in summer, after the creek had dried up.
We built a bonfire to heat rocks for our inipi. While I was sun dancing, Forest Service rangers came to say that we couldn’t have a fire like that. It was too windy, and the blaze could get out of control. While the dance continued, people wouldn’t allow the rangers in. We knocked away unburned wood and didn’t put in rocks to be heated, but the fire still burned. By the time the dancers were headed back to the inipi, the rangers, accompanied by deputy sheriffs, had drawn their guns and were making threats. A few AIMsters began to slip away to their cars, where they kept their weapons.
Still wearing my dance outfit, I invited the rangers in. They said, “We’ve got a court order that if there’s a fire danger—and there is—we have to contain your fire.” They brought in metal pipe and heavy-gauge mesh and started to build an enclosure around our fire. As their work continued, I took part in a judicial hearing by radiophone. I told the judge, “This sacred fire will not harm the forest. Don’t you Christians have faith in anything?” The judge said, “No, no, sparks can fly in the wind and set off a forest fire.”
Nellie Red Owl, from Batesland, South Dakota, and several other old women—especially those who had kept the rangers and police out while the sun dance was going on—were willing to go to jail. They angrily cussed out the intruders. While the rangers dripped sweat and built the restraining screen as fast as they could, the old women were on them. Some people were as angry at me for letting the rangers in as they were at the white men for defiling our ceremony. I explained, “The sun dance is for peace. Once it begins, we can’t have a confrontation. We must act in respectful ways.” It was obvious that the white men didn’t like what they had to do. I felt a little sorry for them because they had to carry out orders or lose their jobs.
When the screen was completed, we stoked up the fire with fast-burning pitch pine. Suddenly the wind blew hard and the fire blossomed with a mighty roar. Despite the heavy mesh cage, big burning flakes soared into the air. Turning to my cousin Greg Zephier, I said, “Look! The spirits won’t let the fire stay in jail.” Then the metal mesh began to burn. The rangers looked on in shock and disbelief. “They ain’t going to believe this back at district,” said one. The mesh melted, leaving only the frame. Shaking their heads, the Forest Service workers dismantled what was left and took off.
In Yellow Thunder Camp, we all smiled at one another. No one had to speak. Everyone had seen and understood the power of the spirits. Gathering our hot rocks, we entered the inipi to give thanks to the Great Mystery.