'Battle' of Wounded Knee was a massacre of the Lakota

Tim Giago: 'Battle' of Wounded Knee was a massacre of the Lakota
The government tried to conceal the truth of the 1890 slaughter. My
people never forgot.

Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji)
http://www.startribune.com/562/story/903315.html



While Americans agonize over the contents of the Iraq Study Group and
weigh the options of extricating its soldiers from the middle of a
civil
war, the people of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota will
gather on a lonely hill overlooking the demolished village of Wounded
Knee (Wounded Knee was destroyed during the occupation of the American
Indian Movement in 1973 and was never rebuilt) to commemorate and
grieve
the massacre of their ancestors.

It was after a night so cold that the Lakota called it "The Moon of the
Popping Trees," because as the winter winds whistled through the hills
and gullies at Wounded Knee Creek on that morning of Dec. 29, 1890, one
could hear the twigs snapping in the frigid air.

When a soldier of George Armstrong Custer's former troop, the Seventh
Cavalry, tried to wrest a hidden rifle from a Lakota warrior after all
of the other weapons already had been confiscated from Sitanka's (Big
Foot) band of Lakota people, the deafening report of that single shot
caused pandemonium among the soldiers, and they opened up with their
machine guns upon the unarmed men, women and children.

Thus began an action the government called a "battle" and the Lakota
people called a "massacre." The Lakota people say that only 50 people
of
the original 350 followers of Sitanka survived that morning of
slaughter.

One of the survivors, a Lakota woman, was treated by the Indian
physician Dr. Charles Eastman at a makeshift hospital set up in a
church
in the village of Pine Ridge.

Before she died of her wounds she told about how she had concealed
herself in a clump of bushes. As she hid there she saw two terrified
little girls running past. She grabbed them and pulled them into the
bushes. She put her hands over their mouths to keep them quiet but a
mounted soldier spotted them.

He fired a bullet into the head of one girl and then calmly reloaded
his
rifle and fired into the head of the other girl. He then fired into the
body of the Lakota woman. She feigned death and, although badly
wounded,
lived long enough to relate her terrible ordeal to Eastman.

She said that as she lay there pretending to be dead, the soldier
leaned
down from his horse, used his rifle to lift up her dress in order to
see
her private parts, and then he snickered and rode off.

As the shooting subsided, units of the Seventh Cavalry rode off toward
White Clay Creek near Pine Ridge Village on a search-and-destroy
mission. When they rode onto the grounds of Holy Rosary Indian Mission,
my grandmother Sophie, a student at the mission school, and the other
Lakota children were forced by the Jesuit priests to feed and water
their horses.

My grandmother never forgot that terrible day, and she often talked
about how the soldiers were laughing and bragging about their great
victory. She recalled one soldier saying, "Remember the Little Big
Horn."

The Massacre at Wounded Knee was called the last great battle between
the United States and the Indians. The true version of the events of
that day were polished and sanitized for the consumption of most
Americans.

Twenty-three soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry were awarded this nation's
highest honor, the Medal of Honor, for the murder of nearly 300
innocent
and unarmed men, women and children. Although 25 soldiers died that
day,
historians believe that most of them died of friendly fire when they
were caught in the crossfire of the machine guns. Many Lakota have
tried
in vain to have those medals revoked without success.

Before they died, the Lakota warriors fought the soldiers with their
bare hands as they shouted to the women and children, "Inyanka po,
inyanka po!" ("Run, run!") The elderly men, unable to fight back, fell
on their knees and sang their death songs. The screams and the cries of
the women and children hung in the air like a heavy fog.

When I was a young boy I lived at Wounded Knee. By then the name of the
village had been changed to Brennan, ostensibly to honor a Bureau of
Indian Affairs superintendent, but all of the Lakota knew why the name
really was changed. Because, although the government tried various ways
to conceal the truth, the Lakota people never forgot. They always
referred to the hallowed grounds as Wounded Knee, and they continued to
come to the mass grave to pray, even though it was roundly discouraged
by the government.

As a child I walked along the banks of Wounded Knee Creek and I often
had an uneasy feeling: It was as if I could hear the cries of little
children. Whenever I visited the trading post where my father worked, I
would listen to the elders as they sat on the benches in front of the
store and spoke in whispered voices as they pointed at the hills and
gullies. Never did I read about that horrible day in the history books
used at the mission school I attended.

Two ironies still haunt me. Six days after the bloody massacre the
editor of the Aberdeen (S.D.) Saturday Pioneer wrote in his editorial,
"The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the
total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries,
we had better, in order to protect our civilizations, follow it up by
one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the
face of the earth."

The author of that editorial was L. Frank Baum, who later went on to
write the children's book "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." In calling for
genocide against my grandmother and the rest of the Lakota people, he
placed the final punctuation upon a day that will forever live in
infamy
among the Lakota.

As the dead and dying lay in the makeshift hospital at the Episcopal
church in Pine Ridge Village, Dr. Eastman paused to read a sign above
the entrance. It said, "Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men."

Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, is the founder and first president of the
Native American Journalists Association. His articles are distributed
by
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

Mayan priests purify ruin after Bush visit

Mayan priests purify ruin after Bush visit

Thu Mar 15, 2007 5:38 PM EDT

By Mica Rosenberg

IXIMCHE, Guatemala (Reuters) - Mayan priests spiritually "cleansed" a Guatemalan religious site with incense and candles on Thursday after a visit earlier this week by President Bush.

Two priests lit colored candles on the four corners of the ruins to represent natural elements, burning incense and beating a ceremonial drum on top of a pyramid visited by Bush and Guatemalan President Oscar Berger on Monday.

The priests said they wanted to purify the site before a visit by Bolivia's indigenous President Evo Morales later this month.

"During President Bush's visit here snipers occupied this entire area," said Mayan youth leader Jorge Morales Toj. "It's a violent way of showing how disrespectful the U.S. empire is toward indigenous people."

The head of security at the U.S. embassy in Guatemala said it was standard practice for two sniper teams to protect President Bush while he was traveling.

The official, who asked not to be named, said he did not know if snipers had been positioned at the ruins for the visit.

Bush was dogged by protests throughout last week's five-country tour of Latin America, where he is widely unpopular.

His visit sparked violent scuffles with police and protesters in all the countries he visited.

At the Iximche ruins on Monday, Bush watched a reenactment of an ancient Mayan ball game played by young men in costumes using a soccer ball painted gold. Some Mayans said the show-game was an offensive portrayal of their culture as a tourist attraction.

The United States supported military governments in Guatemala during the country's 1960-96 civil war, which had its roots in the overthrow of a left-leaning government by a CIA-supported coup in 1954.

Entire Mayan villages were destroyed during the military's scorched earth counter-insurgency campaign that left nearly a quarter million people dead or missing.

At Thursday's ceremony, two spiritual guides said prayers in Spanish and the Kaqchikel Mayan language, handing corn that had been used as decoration during Bush's visit to kneeling women. Corn is sacred in Mayan culture and is the origin of man in the Mayan holy book the Popul Vuh.

The ceremony was meant to clear out residual "bad energy" at the ruins, the capital of the Kaqchikel Mayan people before the 1524 Spanish conquest, in preparation for the arrival of Morales, who will attend an international convention of native leaders here at the end of the month.

Morales is Latin America's first indigenous head-of-state and a close ally of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, the United States' principal antagonist in the region.

Chavez shadowed Bush's tour with fiery, anti-U.S. speeches in neighboring countries and has called Bush "the devil," saying the U.S. leader left a smell of sulfur lingering in the room behind him at a United Nations debate last year.

Mayan Priests to Purify Site After Bush Visit

By JUAN CARLOS LLORCA Associated Press Writer

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) - Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.

"That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday.

Bush's seven-day tour of Latin America includes a stopover beginning late Sunday in Guatemala. On Monday morning he is scheduled to visit the archaeological site Iximche on the high western plateau in a region of the Central American country populated mostly by Mayans.

Tiney said the "spirit guides of the Mayan community" decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of "bad spirits" after Bush's visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace. He also said the rites _ which entail chanting and burning incense, herbs and candles _ would prepare the site for the third summit of Latin American Indians March 26-30.

Bush's trip has already has sparked protests elsewhere in Latin America, including protests and clashes with police in Brazil hours before his arrival. In Bogota, Colombia, which Bush will visit on Sunday, 200 masked students battled 300 riot police with rocks and small homemade explosives.

The tour is aimed at challenging a widespread perception that the United States has neglected the region and at combatting the rising influence of Venezuelan leftist President Hugo Chavez, who has called Bush "history's greatest killer" and "the devil."

Iximche, 30 miles west of the capital of Guatemala City, was founded as the capital of the Kaqchiqueles kingdom before the Spanish conquest in 1524.

Violence, Memory and Colonizing Hollywood Myth

Violence, Memory and Colonizing Hollywood Myth
Without our own stories we become vulnerable

By Patrisia Gonzales & Roberto Rodriguez | Web Published 1.3.2007

Gonzales: Grandma's grinding stone echoes with the rasp and crackle of corn on the metate. Some things continue. Mamie Andrews's story emerged during the holidays, a picture now hung among my memories as I grind corn on the last day of the year. I only know of her because her great-grandson, Shoshone scholar Ned Blackhawk, evokes her memory in his telling of the "Indigenous body in pain" as part of Violence over the Land.

The great-grandma's story of a woman institutionalized in a mental asylum for most of her life grounds Blackhawk's account of Shoshone, Ute and Paiute history during European expansion and colonization of the American West. Mamie's mental instability was brought on by domestic abuse from a Native man affected by the racist, abusive conditions of the times. One of my own great grandmothers, Rosario, a Mexican Comanche, was also institutionalized. My aunties posit that her mental state resulted from the Change and she probably just needed medical attention. The story rattles like a snake with questions.

Using the "lens of violence" as a method of analysis, Blackhawk executes a meticulous account of Native peoples in what became the northern frontier of the Spanish colonial empire and eventually the U.S. West. Blackhawk's book provides a context for understanding how the pain of Indigenous peoples was seeded in the historical violence wrought by colonization:

"As many Indian people know all too well, reconciling the traumas found within our community and family pasts with the celebratory narratives of America remains an everyday and in many cases overwhelming challenge. One need not be an expert in psychology to grasp the psychological ordeals incumbent upon living with dignity amidst such hardships."

We share with you this story because Indigenous peoples must reckon with stories that others create for us. In a recent massively disseminated moment, the stories of Indigenous peoples as told by others takes the form of Apocalypto, the delusional vision of Mel Gibson. His cinematic fantasy of bloodthirsty Mayas is violating because so little accurate information is available in daily society to offset the mythic "Natives" produced by the entertainment industry. As Blackhawk notes, without addressing the pain of Indigenous America inflicted by European colonization, the histories of all involved "will remain forever incomplete."

Memory is part of our medicine. Taking control of our stories as Indigenous peoples is also a remedy, a medicinal practice. Without our own stories we become vulnerable. A recurring theme in many of the books written by Santa Clara scholar Gregory Cajete is the importance of Native people's "storying" their memory, lest we live by someone else's story of who we are. We need stories such as Blackhawk's richly investigated evidence to counter the narratives of Native America fabricated by Hollywood.

Rodriguez: In Apocalypto – a Euro-American narrative, actually – the Maya populace is superstitious... terrified of eclipses. In fact, per Gibson, they are stupid; they believe the universe will collapse if their god Kulkulkan is not fed a steady and daily diet of human hearts. Incidentally, Kulkulkan – also known as Quetzalcoatl to Nahuatl-speaking peoples – according to virtually all accounts, was a great teacher and opposed to human sacrifice. Of course, facts don't deter Gibson, Hollywood or Western society. Mel Gibson's fantasy is devoid of the actual history of this continent, particularly the brutality wrought upon the continent by Europeans beginning in 1492. While it is told in a Mayan language, it certainly is not the story of the Maya. At best, it is a Euro-American fantasy - the same one used 500 years ago to justify the worst genocide in human history, precipitating the attempted destruction, of two entire continents: America and Africa.

The Maya were scientific peoples who were completely aware of how the universe functioned and were well aware that the sun did not need blood to rise. Despite Europeans burning thousands of Indigenous books, a few codices survive and expose us to ancient narratives of this continent. But even more importantly, we know this because the Maya are still alive today. The truth is, this is not really Gibson's fantasy, but the fantasy brought to us by Popes, Kings, missionaries, blood-thirsty conquerors (and nowadays historians, curators and filmmakers) for the past 500 years. It is the story of physical, cultural and spiritual genocide and untold massacres, land theft and slavery... all made possible by Papal pseudo-legal edicts that to this day have not been revoked... edicts that purportedly gave Europeans permission to steal the continent and also to wage holy war against Indigenous peoples if they did not submit to the foreign religion of the helmeted intruders. In this fantasy, Indians are bad, demonic & evil. Europeans are good & godly. Indians are uncivilized, violent, barbaric & sub-human, living in an oppressive slave society. Europeans are bringers of light & civilization, saviors & peaceful envoys of Christ.

Apocalypto continues the American tourist tradition of thinking that simply adding the letter –o- to the end of an English word (in this case to Apocalypse) will permit the –natives- to understand them. This movie is not understandable. It has nothing to do with the land of the Quetzal, Turtle Island or Indigenous America. The only real question that needs to be examined is how this movie was permitted to be made? Should we now expect him to tell the civilizational story of Islam and "The Orient"?

Gonzales: I keep grinding corn on a metate older than me, and useful even with a broken leg. Now it is a story, though not so finely ground as by my grandmother's hands. We must tell, and retell, stories so that it will become part of the larger memory of this land. As Blackhawk admonishes, "… finding ways of celebrating the endurance and ascendancy of contemporary Indian people appears a thread from which to weave potentially broader national narratives." The sound of stone grinding upon stone continues … and many stories rattle like snakes with questions.

(c) Column of the Americas 2007