People who have been around longer than I...

DAY 6

Lauren Yellowbird, born in white shield on ft berth old reservation. medicine horse is his 'indian' name. given to him when he graduated high school. it is of great importance. (like a barmitsfuh)

Works at ft union as a park ranger. people from all over the world visit, and he has a very short time to give them as much information as possible to help them interpret the culture.

his background, he is a descendant of Son of the Star. arikara chief. a very distinguished man. He is one man Lauren admires in all of history. Bear's teeth is on his fathers side, lauren studied culture and anthropology. bear's teeth was a very powerful medicine man. dThese are two main figures that he is tied to. the medicine lodge had a lot of things there, they were very spiritual people. He also is Part hidatsa, some people don't like to claim a certain heritage.

the arikara people have lived in the dakotas for over 750 years. ONe thing they are famous for is in the 1800's little big horn battle. arikara was the main fighting/scouting force for custer. sometimes arikara catch flak for helping custer. other tribes will come up to arikara and call them 'traitors' two things remember growing up, mother corn and bloody knife. bloody knife was a scout. they had a lot of back and forth with the sioux. their village was attacked over 600 times over 6 years. the hate was there. based on this information, custer was one of the people that wanted these two groups to come together peacefully. He got them together to work out a peace treaty. the arikara and sioux were ready to help. It was said that an arikara woman had lost her son, she wanted to know what happened to her son. once the peace was attained, she could find out more about her son.

The arikara went to ft lincoln, son of the star told them, "what we will do today will be hard, the enemy will send our hearts to the ground. Be strong, if you are strong, we will have peace." They settled down, then the lakota came.

The lakota have the warriors lead, they are very fierce. They were going to test the arikara on that day, the war leaders and their wives were holding scalps, and the arikara woman saw her sons face on the stick and she fainted. then they rubbed the face in their 'faces' and started a very volatile situation. the chiefs managed to settle this down.

at that point there were only 1500 people who were arikara. those people were most likely family. everything settled down when tom custer, (general custer's brother) and he brought a pipe, and the arikara puffed and passed to the, and the second man puffed and was shot. the arikara warriors stood up and were ready to fight. nobody came forward for a long time. it was a different band of sioux, just one member, and the peace talks broke right there. the scouts were away from the main tribe, and they would bring their wives and family. and the women of the scouts were molested by the drunken white soldiers.

A woman who came there with her two kids after her family was wiped out. she would go to where the soldiers were cooking and dug through the garbage to feed her kids. some soldiers got in trouble because they dumped boiling water over her.

white shield has a cemetery dedicated to scouts. that stuff is fading. the younger people aren't understanding or paying attention. society is polluting the old ways. it bothers lauren from a historians point of view, and also as a veteran (desert storm) he also followed a lot of spiritual ways. It is important to remember who we are, and what we care to perpetuate to our descendants.

he grew up seeing some of his own people walking the streets drunk, and going into the store without an adult was unpleasant. He grew very bitter, he didn't like whit people. It took a long time to get over it. He had to learn how to become together with another race. it is very easy to become prejudiced when you are among your own people.

    [This reminds me of a somewhat racist routine done by Chris Rock (if I remember right, the guy from the Rush Hour series) he was talking about how (in worse words) African Americans are racist against each other. He was talking about how 'gangsters' use the N word. It was very funny, yet poignant skit.]

they had a tour group of little kids at fort union from a montana school. (3rd graders) the students came, you always get rambunctious kids. there were two little indian girls among them. and a little boy ran around yelling "kill all the indians" and the little girls were very afraid. the teacher wouldn't do anything to stop it. there is still a lot to do.

     [In grade school we played cowboys and indians, then that wasn't allowed, so we played cops and robbers. After that was outlawed, we played boys chase girls. Kids like to chase each other and pretend to be fighting. It hones the survival skills, and kids will use things they learn about to 'reinact' as play. I think back on the thanksgiving celebration in kindergarten. The project was to make a vest and hat out of some paper grocery bags. Half the class was assigned to be pilgrims, the other indians. Then, as kids usually do, we started to play our parts. Then we see old western movies, or COPS, and start copying it. Thats what people do, COPY]

     [That could be a segway to last weeks lesson on hate. However strong my feelings are that hate is not a learned emotion, the way hate is expressed, and who or what it is felt toward is learned.]

they did a 2 week training with the military, they went and did a support operation o pine ridge reservation. built homes through the DOD and Department of interior. everybody was happy and waving while they were working on this stuff. one lakota guy was driving and a slodier waved at him and the lakota man flipped the bird. and all the sudden the soldiers thought they were in trouble "look what they do to us" the man was bitter because his company didn't get the bid to build the houses.

last lecture to university was indiana university to a bunch of PhD's. A couple things that made an impact on lauren's life

1) back in '02 he was in standby to go to afghanistan. they were getting ready to do some training in the mountains. like any place, before you go, you get briefed. he mentioned that there were historic sites in the training area, and they couldn't just dig anywhere. when they started setting up he heard one gentleman walk by and he said the most offensive things. he said "idk why the F these guys care. Is pocahontus going to come to life" lauren said "why don't you shut up about indian people" he stopped and said "hey, man, I'm not a racist." and later on he looked at his buddy (motions to the ground lol) and the buddy says, "i guess these areas are indian burial sites" as soon as that was said to me, people asked why anybody cares about his stuff. "it shouldn't be a problem" they said it is in the past. lauren didn't know anything about it but defended it anyway. he said "maybe you're right" and they said "you need to move on because it's in the past" and lauren said "the twin towers is in the past. let's move on." and the reply was "we cant do that" and how do they know that some of the families from this tribe could be fighting in afghanistan right now. the indians have the highest rate of serving military members. they don't think about all of the things that native americans do for the country.

     [It's like having a training op on what was once Arlington Cemetery.  700 years from now. Imagine if the US ceases to exist, and some other government is instituted and the "American" people are few in number and have all but lost their culture. Now this government starts holding training missions on the burial site for our most honored warriors. Granted, Americans don't seem to have the respect for soldiers like the Native Americans did  (and Americans need to remember who to thank for apple pie and baseball) And now these people are digging trenches and foxholes over the remains of those who we held in the highest esteem.]

during desert storm, when the military were coming home. his sister avoided the political aspect. she got a bunch of people together in bismark to support the native troops, and she introduced lauren to a lakota man who was a korean veteran who was playing a role in the support project. He said "the mechanized infantry brother and the airborne brother saw each other in the staging area. and they found each other." he invited lauren to be there for the brothers' homecoming, but he couldn't make it. laurent sister said when they arrived, his sister assembled all the people from the tribes and brought a traditional drum, and as soon as the soldiers started coming off, they sand a welcome home song. everybody got quiet because they hadn't seen this stuff before. a white soldier stood with his family and watched. and as everything got over they started leaving, that family said that was interesting "i wish something like that would happen for me" and the old man stopped that kid. it is the native way to do that, and they will do these things because we're supposed to. now we will do it for you. and the mother didn't know what to do. they sang for that guy, and gave his mother a shawl.
     [Wow... Just... Wow... It is absolutely wonderful to hear that story. Native Americans relied on their hunters and their warriors for survival. If their warriors were not strong enough, then the tribe would fail. For all of the culture that was taken away, the respect for warriors is still strong. With Native Americans having the highest percentage of serving militarymen(women), that love for being a strong and loyal warrior is still there. And the respect for those that are strong and loyal warriors still exists.]

 
"i do get asked a lot about the fighting sioux name. truthfully the best people to ask are the sioux people. I believe that these guys want to honor them. the problem is that they push it on them. democracy and respect go out right there."

     [They should change the name to the Pillaging Norskmen. But seriously, I don't think it was a big deal untill some guy with a whole lot of money said it was, and then some big association decided to take up the fight. Just let it be... If the Native people don't like it, then they will say something and it can go from there. But there is no reason for some big organization that doesn't even come from this area to start saying what can and cant happen. /end rant]

what helped you not dislike the white poeple?

"you guys aint all alike. and that's a shock to me, but, i was in a class with a guy who was very outgoing. he'd come over and sit and talk, he'd have lauren join them for basketball and stuff like that. This was a culture shock moment for him." " i was very guarded, at one point he was driving his car and he heard somebody throwing snowballs at his car, he thought they were being racist, it pissed him off. and here it was the guy from the class. it was weird."

their culture is fading. and he has nieces and nephews who are gang members. they wouldnt come in here because we are assembled here. he has to hear them complain about every other race. there is so much there that can teach us many things, we cannot lose this culture.

the language music, ceremonies, ediquitte repect visions of leaders. these all need to be kept alive. it is not easy, because a lot of the people can't speak their language. a lot of what they do is adopted by the lakota. vision quests. find somebody powerful like that.

     [I've heard of those vision quests before. I think that a number of different cultures have a variation of a vision quest. Inner meditation, the answer to anything can be found if one can look inward. Its pretty heavy stuff, pretty cool stuff.]