THE CONFESSIONS OF FOFI LITTLEPANTS

PART V

by Fofi Littlepants

V. SOCIETY I ~ NATIVE AMERICA

While the land and nature found within the United States are unqualifiedly beautiful, the society sojourning on its surface, and its underside, are a much more complex mixture of radiance and ugliness. I’m not able to comment fully on American society here because of limitations in both space and understanding ~ I surely didn’t get a full grasp of all its idiosyncracies through my limited life experience and a three-month trip ~ but I felt it would be a disservice if I didn’t relate and comment on some things that I saw and heard.

One topic that I feel is unconscionable to omit in any discussion about the United States, is its history as it is tied up with that of the numerous American Indian / Native American tribes. And while this is another area where I’m clearly not an expert (and I discovered that I was in fact even more infinitely ignorant than I thought), I’m including some observations here (and questions that occurred to me) because it seems criminal to ignore it altogether. My comments clearly can’t do justice to the issue; they are mostly limited to a few observations from the Lakȟóta Nation, where I spent a bit of time and received some information. I apologize in advance for any errors and omissions and hope qualified people will correct me.

***

Traveling through the U.S., one would have to be purposefully blind to not be aware of the vast Native American presence throughout the country.

Joey and I were struck by how much the United States, especially in the Plains and the East, is dominated by placenames derived from a phenomenal range of American Indian languages (the West is also dominated by Spanish names because of its historical origins as Spanish colonies then part of independent Mexico, but some of these also have indigenous roots). I found out later that 11,000 placenames in the U.S. have been catalogued as having etymologies rooted in Native languages (and this does not even contain Hawaiian placenames.¹) Roughly half the names of U.S. states stem from American Indian languages, including Massachussetts (from an Algonquin language), Kentucky (Iroquois), Ohio (Seneca) and Tennessee (Cherokee); Alabama, Dakota, and Missouri are themselves names of actual tribes.

The breadth, diversity and coverage of those names give just a small sense of the history of the numerous Native American tribes that inhabited the land prior to white arrival; they similarly mark the magnitude of what was lost ~ we observed that most of these places, while keeping the names, are now dominated by whites and show little trace of historical knowledge or contemporary respect for the original cultures.

***

The issue of names is incredibly complicated if one takes the time to study it. One thing I learned from visiting American Indian nations and talking to people was that the mainstream American understanding of Native Americans is constituted by either purposeful misrepresentations, or a staggering amount of omissions. This isn’t breaking news, but it really was much, much more extensive than I had previously grasped. For myself, as a good little progressive I was generally aware that U.S. policies toward American Indians have been genocidal, but came to realize that I didn’t even know a small fraction of what I should. One embarrassing indication of my ignorance was that it took me forever to try to figure out even the correct names and spellings.

I had heard before, for instance, that there was/is debate, on what umbrella term is the least offensive in describing the numerous tribes that were original inhabitants of the land within the current boundaries of the United States.  “American Indian” and “Native American” are the most widely used, but both have problems (“American Indian” relies on Columbia’s misnomer of “Indians” from his erroneous perception that he had arrived in India, and “Native American” is an invented academic categorization, like “Hispanic”.) Despite lots of research, I didn’t feel qualified to make a decision on which one is better, so I try to use both equally here, as well as “Native”; but I don’t use “Indian” because there are now lots of Asian Indian people from India in the United States. I would be interested to hear views about this.

Of course, I think there’s agreement that when referring to a specific tribe, the accurate tribal name should be used; lumping everyone together into “Native American” or “American Indian” reinforces the stripping of identity and humanity that has characterized the dominant approach by the U.S. to the vastly diverse tribes. But I learned that many of the names that are commonly used in the U.S. to refer to specific tribes are often not the right names. For instance, most Americans use the name “Sioux”, but this is not correct ~ by most accounts that is a Frenchified version of an Ojibwa (Chippewa) word for a small snake (some translations are “treacherous snake”), and many consider the word insulting. This is not what the people involved called themselves ~ the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Seven Council Fires) had seven tribes with three major groupings, each of which had different cultures and dialects; they came together at different times, and called themselves “An Alliance of Friends”: in the language of the “sedentary and agricultural” Isáŋyáthi (Santee) the word is “Dakȟóta”; in Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋ (Yankton) dialect it is “Nakhóta”; and for the “warrior and buffalo-hunting” Lakȟóta (Teton), it is “Lakȟóta.”²

(The Lakȟóta are further distinguished by bands: the Húŋkpapȟa (Hunkpapa) Lakȟóta, the Itázipčho (Sans Arc) Lakȟóta, the Mnikȟówožu (Miniconjou) Lakȟóta, the Oglála Lakȟóta, the Oóhe Núŋpa (Two Kettle) Lakȟóta, the Sičangu (Brulé /  Burned Thigh) Lakȟóta, and the Sihásapa (Blackfoot) Lakȟóta.)

Further, I realized that even the individual names of specific persons have been warped in American history. This is not just a matter of difficulty or error in translation ~ the name of Chief Heȟáka Glešká of the Mnikȟówožu Lakȟóta can be translated as  “Spotted Elk”, but, he is much more widely known as “Big Foot”, a derogatory name given to him by U.S. Soldiers. A Lakȟóta man at the Wounded Knee Massacre site in Pine Ridge told us that the names of the dead from the massacre were recorded by the U.S. Cavalry, and they did not bother to be accurate ~ they even made up many names, some of them being farcical.

But the usage of the U.S.-coined names have been so pervasive (it was probably also reinforced by the U.S. banning many Native languages for many years), that many tribes still continue to use them; they probably feel they have no choice in many circumstances because no one in mainstream America would know what they are talking about otherwise (it would be impossible to explain or document certain historical injustices, for instance, without using the U.S.-attributed names.) But I assume that this is not the ideal state of affairs, and the tribes would want people to learn the correct names. Here, I try to use the Native names and put the commonly used U.S. word(s) in parenthesis, though don’t know if I did a good job (among other potential errors, I saw a variety of spellings of Native words even among Native American sources and don’t know if I picked the right ones). And the issue of names, of course, is only scratching the surface of the titanic problem of misinformation and misrepresentation about American Indians. If I have perpetuated any errors in name, fact, characterization, or anything else, I sincerely apologize, and hope that people will correct me.

***

When Joey and I visited the Oglála Lakȟóta Pine Ridge Reservation, a Lakȟóta man told us about the severe racism by whites against Native Americans, with a recent shocker being the distribution by McDonald’s a few months earlier of “Custer Rides Again” Happy Meal toys. Apparently, the empire was not aware that Native communities would find this unbelievably offensive (or, it knew but just didn’t care.)

Custer, of course, was the U.S. Army officer and cavalry commander made most famous by a spectacular defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, in which his entire battalion was wiped out by Lakȟóta, Notameohmésêhese (Northern Cheyenne), and Arapaho warriors led by Tȟašúŋke Witkó (Crazy Horse) and Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake (Sitting Bull). Many in the U.S. mainstream continue to refer to the Battle of Little Bighorn as “Custer’s Last Stand”, viewing Custer as a tragic military hero and martyr that gave his life for his country.

In the American Indian view, however, it is the height of racism and insensitivity to celebrate Custer. He is seen as personally and symbolically representing the genocidal nature of U.S. policy against Indians; noted Standing Rock Lakȟóta scholar and activist Vine Deloria Jr. calls him “the Adolph Eichmann of the Plains” (Eichmann being the “architect of the Holocaust”).³ As a commander in the Indian Wars, Custer had already become notorious for the massacre of a peaceful Cheyenne village in 1868: earlier that year, Custer, who had been suspended by a military court for mistreatment of his troops, was reinstated in September 1868 and tasked with searching for Cheyennes who were making raids in Kansas and Oklahoma. When he found a Cheyenne village by the Washita River in November 1868, he ordered the attack of the sleeping inhabitants without any evidence that they were the raiders; survivors’ accounts tell of women, children and elders who were killed (most of them while trying to run to the river), as well as reports of atrocities including the slicing open of the wombs of pregnant women.⁴ 103 people are said to have been killed, 11 of them “fighting men”; the other 92 were women, children, and old men.⁵

There continues to be rabid debate over the characterization of Custer; some whites are adamant that whatever flaws Custer had, he was a hero and brilliant soldier. But many say that it was the kind of rash, racist attitude that he demonstrated in the Washita River Massacre that foreshadowed his demise at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. When Custer was seeking to round up Plains Indians in order to secure U.S. government control over the Black Hills in South Dakota (which, by the way, were supposed to be Lakȟóta land pursuant the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868, but in which gold had subsequently been discovered), he happened upon a Native American encampment. Accounts vary on what exactly Custer thought and did, but most agree that he charged arrogantly into an attack without fully investigating the number and strength of the Native warriors there ~ he refused reinforcements, some say because he considered Americans Indian inferior and thus no match for him and his troops, and he had assumed that he was attacking a small Native American village with few warriors (as he had in Washita.) What he failed to realize was that he had chanced upon a large gathering of Plains Indians that had been called by legendary Húŋkpapȟa Lakȟóta Chief Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake (Sitting Bull) (perhaps the largest recorded gathering ever), which brought together an estimated two thousand warriors from the Lakȟóta, Arapaho and Notameohmésêhese (Northern Cheyenne) tribes (some counts put the number closer to a thousand, and others over 3000.) Custer’s entire regimen of several hundred was annihilated.⁶

The distribution of Custer toys nationwide, especially in states with high Native American populations like South Dakota, was likened by American Indian critics to distributing Adolph Hitler figurines in Israel. McDonald’s reportedly quietly stopped distribution those toys, at least in South Dakota (though it made no clear apology). But such mainstream insensitivity isn’t limited to Mickey D’s ~ the toys came from the “Night at the Musuem II” film, which portrayed Custer as an ineffectual but sympathetic character.

***

It took me and Joey at least nine weeks of hitchhiking from the West to East to cross enough ground to get our first glimpse of the Mississippi River. Standing on the river’s edge, it was hard to believe that the U.S. government at one time promised all lands west of the river (with the exception of Missouri, Louisiana, and Arkansas) to the American Indian tribes. The Mississippi runs 2348 miles from north to south, all the way from its source in Minnesota, through Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. An 1834 Congressional Act agreed that no white person would be permitted to settle beyond this line if Native Americans would allow themselves to be herded past this “Western Frontier”; the Act even pledged to use its military to enforce its provisions, including by apprehending any white person who violated it.⁷

Clearly, the U.S. did not abide by that promise ~ it went on to swallow up all the land stretching all the way west to the Pacific Coast (and eventually event went beyond, annexing Hawaii, a sovereign indigenous nation, in 1898.) The 1834 Act of course was only one of many broken promises and other atrocities.

***

It was clear to us in states like South Dakota that the white and Native populations are still locked in racial, social, cultural, economic, political, and religious adversity. Local whites were obviously vested in upholding white culture and power; it’s probable that the construction of the myth of Custer as hero/martyr was important to many of them because it is tied up with the evaluation of the entire history of U.S. policy toward Native American tribes, and consequently, the defensibility of the current domination by whites.

In this context, it is probably not accidental that the white culture in South Dakota was probably the most unfriendly one that Joey and I encountered while hitchhiking across the country. There seemed to be a conservatism and closedness that was striking ~ we found it to be one of the hardest places in the country to get rides: we noted that local whites seemed to pass us by; the people that gave us rides tended to be people of color, or those from some other state. We could only guess at the underlying reasons: it might have been from a generalized fear of outsiders, deviants, or poor-looking people; or perhaps a Bible Belt disdain for heathens and heretical women. It might also have been the virulent white rejection of the wandering lifestyle, which the U.S. tried for years to stamp out of the nomadic American Indian tribes (like the Lakȟóta), to be replaced by a “civilized”, agricultural life that was more similar to whites (and more convenient and controllable.) Or, perhaps white South Dakotans thought I was Native American and this triggered a racist reaction ~ I’m Asian American but I was mistaken twice on this trip for being American Indian (Navaho and Apsaalóoke) (though both times it was in Montana).

***

At the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre, in southern South Dakota, a peeling green metal sign marks the area in which more than 350 men, women and children from the Lakȟóta Nation were killed by the 7^th U.S. Cavalry Division in 1890. The dead are buried in a mass grave perched on a hilltop cemetery overlooking the site, which contains plastic flowers, tall dry grass, and rattlesnakes.

A long series of events had lead up to the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. The most immediate events were that Húŋkpapȟa Lakȟóta Chief Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake (Sitting Bull), who represented the most powerful resistance to white domination even after decades of warfare, conflict and persecution against his tribe, was murdered on December 15, 1890 (by American Indian police seeking to enforce U.S. orders to arrest him.) Mnikȟówožu Lakȟóta Chief Heȟáka Glešká (Spotted Elk, who had been dubbed “Big Foot” by U.S. soldiers), against whom arrest orders were subsequently also issued, fled with his band from Cherry Creek to seek to join Oglála Lakȟóta Chief Maȟpíya Lúta (Red Cloud) at the Pine Ridge Reservation. Heȟáka Glešká succeeded in getting to Pine Ridge despite the severe winter and being gravely ill from pneumonia, but did not reach the protection of Maȟpíya Lúta; he was intercepted by the 7th U.S. Cavalry Division on December 28, placed under arrest, and escorted to Wounded Knee. The next morning, December 29, 1890, while the army was disarming Heȟáka Glešká’s band, a skirmish started because a deaf Lakȟóta man was slow in giving up his gun; the result was the wholesale slaughter of at least 350 Lakȟóta men, women, and children. Some put the count at much higher.⁸

The Lakȟóta people that hang out at the massacre site stressed that the tragedy of Wounded Knee is not of the past. Many felt that the magnitude of the atrocity has never been fully acknowledged; the tribe has struggled to preserve the memory of what occurred. Important features of the atrocities of the event are still not well-known ~ for instance, we were told that the mass grave contained survivors who were buried alive, including a crying infant. Many of the twisted, contorted bodies were posed for maximum utility as U.S. propaganda (for instance, the photo of Heȟáka Glešká’s body was taken after a gun was placed by his hands, and his head was covered to hide the fact that he had been scalped.) Soldiers are said to have coaxed out children who had fled and were hidden in caves, then hacking them into pieces.

It took years of struggle by Native American activists to even have the event recognized as a “massacre” ~ for many years it was called “The Battle of Wounded Knee”, and celebrated as a grand victory for the U.S. military that ended the Indian Wars. (The peeling green sign says “Massacre of Wounded Knee”, but it’s obvious that the word “Massacre” is a correction ~ it is  printed on a separate little strip of metal that is bolted on to cover up a word underneath, which must have been “Battle”).

The U.S. Cavalry members that participated in the atrocity, rather than being prosecuted, were lauded for their valor and service, with 20 of them being awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. (Similarly, the massacre at Washita was dubbed the “Battle of Washita”, and reported by Custer as a grand military victory). There have been Native demands that these Medals be rescinded from at least as early as 1999 (see for instance Oneida activist Bob Smith’s efforts), but the military and Congress have so far refused to do so. ⁹

***

We saw that alongside the mass grave of the dead from the massacre of 1890, there lie the resting places of two other Wounded Knee victims.

One was that of Zintkala Nuni (Lost Bird), who as an infant miraculously survived the massacre shielded by her mother’s body, but was taken by U.S. General Leonard Colby to be “adopted.” He exploited her financially (using her to seek American Indian claims) and sexually abused her; cut off from her Native roots and rejected in white society, she suffered dislocation and poverty, eventually working in Wild West shows and in prostitution for a time, dying destitute and ill in 1919 at the age of 29. She was ultimately brought back from an unmarked grave in California to Pine Ridge in 1991.¹⁰ (We were told that the issue of American Indian children being taken from their families and tribes is also not a thing of the past ~ many American Indian children continue to be placed in white adoptive or foster homes, often because of a misunderstanding or denigration of Native culture.¹¹)

In the same hilltop cemetery, a gravestone bears this engraving: “2000 and 500 came to Wounded Knee in ’73; One still remains.”

Lawrence “Buddy” La Monte was an Oglála Lakȟóta, one of the two Native American activists shot and killed in April 1973 in “Wounded Knee II” (the other is Frank Clearwater, an Apache.) The deaths were part of the 70+ day standoff between the American Indian Movement and the FBI and other officials.¹² This was the beginning of the “Pine Ridge Reign of Terror”, a 3-year period from 1973 to 1976 in which the FBI, COINTELPRO, BIA police, “Guardians of the Oglala Nation” (GOONs, a paramilitary force that was run by corrupt tribal chairperson Dick Wilson) and others engaged in surveillance, harassment, assaults, and killings in Pine Ridge, mostly directed against members of the American Indian Movement and people perceived to be their supporters. At least 64 American Indians were reportedly killed, and at least 350 others suffered serious physical assault.¹³ It was within this cauldron of violence that the 1975 shootout in which two FBI agents were killed took place ~ the crime for which AIM activist Leonard Peltier was convicted in a trial widely recognized as severely flawed (among other problems, key ballistic tests and documents were withheld, and many witnesses who had testified against Peltier later stated they had been coerced.)¹⁴

Wounded Knee “I” of 1890 is often described as the “last armed conflict in the Indian Wars”; the bitterness in the Lakȟóta man’s voice was clear when he said this is not true. Wounded Knee “II” and what followed took place less than a hundred years after the first; we were told that some elders were witnesses to both. A girl selling earrings by the graves told us that some families that lost loved ones in the massacres moved to live closer to the site, in order to be able to honor the dead.

***

The girl selling earrings told us that she had family members buried at the graveyard. The youngest addition was her son, who had died when he was just a year old. She was trying to make money so that she could buy a gravestone for him. We saw his plot, which had little teddy bears and plastic flowers, but no headstone. She was in her fourth year of trying to save up this money.

***

The Oglála Lakȟóta Pine Ridge reservation, where the Wounded Knee Massacre site lies, is said to be the poorest place in the United States (some say the continent.) There is little game there; the unemployment rate is 73 to 85 percent, the per capita income is $6143. Life expectancy of men is 55 and females 60 (compared to the U.S. national average of 75 for men and 80 for women); 69% of the children are in poverty, the infant mortality is 2.6 times higher than the national average, and the suicide rate is 72% higher than average.¹⁵

Some believe that this is not coincidental. That because it was the Lakȟóta that resisted white domination the hardest and longest, they got the worst lands and the least assistance.

***

But Native American life and action clearly didn’t end with Wounded Knee, or any of the other tragedies and challenges that all the tribes have survived.

The Lakȟóta, like other tribes, have been engaged actively in righting the wrongs from the past. In addition to other efforts, the Lakȟóta have been undergoing (and may have completed) a spiritual healing process for Wounded Knee ~ the Sitanka Wokiksuye (Big Foot Memorial Ride) movement organized five annual pilgrimages to Wounded Knee from 1986 to 1990, in which hundreds of Lakȟóta riders and their supporters traced the route that Heȟáka Glešká took to Pine Ridge. We spoke to a Sitanka Wokiksuye rider, who told us about the challenges of riding in -20 degree weather in the South Dakota winter; I later read a statement by another rider, Alex White Plume, an Oglála Lakȟóta who spoke thus before Congress on the significance of the final day of the fifth and final pilgrimage:

On December 29, 1990, the [Sitanka Wokiksuye] riders will honor the descendants of the 1890 Massacre victims. This will mark the end of 100 years of mourning. The spirits of Chief Big Foot and the men, women and children killed by the Seventh Cavalry will be released, in accordance with sacred Lakota ceremonies. The “Wiping of the Tears” will take place when the spirits are released.

Black Elk said that the sacred hoop of the Lakota people was broken by the 1890 Massacre. He prophesied that the Seventh Generation of Lakota would mend the hoop and rebuild the Nation. We are the Seventh Generation and we are making his prophesies come true.

The Lakota people are proud people who believe in maintaining the traditional ways. We believe in our language and religion. We believe in our people. We have survived on the North American continent for thousands of years, and we plan to be here forever. ¹⁶

That year, the Lakȟóta and other American Indian tribes had organized numerous other events and actions to commemorate the 100th year anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890, including hearings held before Congress; they yielded a concurrent Senate resolution (S. Con. Res. 153) that “expresse[d] its deep regret on behalf of the United States to the descendants of the victims and the survivors and their respective tribal communities”. Another step forward was the (re)naming of the “Little Bighorn Battlefield” from its previous “Custer Battlefield” in 1991 (though the Lakȟóta call it “Battle of Greasy Grass Creek”); Congress also authorized an Indian Memorial to be erected at the Battlefield that would recognize that in addition to Custer and his soldiers, 100 American Indian men, women and children had died in the battle too, and that they fought in the defense of their families, land and traditional way of life.

I know that the Lakȟóta and other American Indian tribes and activists continue advocacy on correcting the wrongs from Wounded Knee I, such as to make the site a national monument (though proposals to make it a national park are controversial)¹⁷, and rescind the Congressional medals of honor from the perpetrators.¹⁸ And a wide variety of American Indian activists and groups are engaged in broad range of other issues, including the strengthening of tribal sovereignty; recovery of ancestral lands and holy land; improvement of education and social conditions; reduction of alcoholism and health problems for Native Americans; advocating for the release of Leonard Peltier and investigation of the Pine Ridge Reign of Terror; and resistance to continuing U.S. governmental efforts to encroach on native land (for instance, the Lipan-Apache, who live on both side of the Texas-Mexico border, is currently engaged in a struggle to resist Homeland Security efforts to take over their lands to continue the border wall into Texas.)

***

For myself I would guess the best things I could do with myself as a non-American Indian would be first to learn more (but I’m open to other suggestions). In particular, I think this means making the effort to seek out Native American sources of information, in order to make sure that my views on history and issues are not shaped purely by U.S. government propaganda, nor, just by white scholars, no matter how sympathetic and well-meaning. I’m embarrassed to say that I had read Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee but not renowned Standing Rock Lakȟóta historian Vine Deloria Jr.’s many works, such as Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. While Dee Brown and other white scholars clearly make important contributions, I would think that they can never fully understand or represent the experience of Native American tribes and individuals; further, it seems they also tend to get undue weight because the nature of American society fosters the wider distribution of “white” information about Native Americans than information from Native Americans themselves (for instance, Dee Brown was required reading for me in college, while Vine Deloria Jr., an icon and household word within Lakȟóta and other tribes, was not).

If people out there have recommendations for Native American sources of information (especially progressive political information), I would love to hear about them (this might also benefit other readers out there?)¹⁹ I also thought I should give money and support to American Indian groups doing good work ~ but I’m open to having someone tell me that such outside influence is not a good thing.  If outsiders should give money and support, I would love to hear suggestions ~ I know there is a wide range of organizations that vary in mission, membership, and method.

***

And of course, American Indian life encompasses many other dimensions ~ there is the cultural, familial, spiritual, philosophical, scientific, artistic, athletic, among others. Joey and I were grateful that we were allowed to be present at some vibrant expressions of some of these ~ pow-wows, a Lakhóta wi wanyang wacipi (sun dance), a Native rodeo, Native athletic events (like horse relays), a national Native art show, and other intangibles.

–Fofi Littlepants

FOOTNOTES:

1  See William Bright, Native American Placenames of the United States (2004), a 600-page reference book.

2  See Stacy Makes Good Ta Kola Cou Ota, “Sioux is not even a word”, http://www.Lakota Country Times.com, March 12, 2009, at http://www.lakotacountrytimes.com/news/2009/0312/guest/021.html; and “History of the Sioux” at Lakhota.com, at http://www.lakhota.com/extras/articles/history.htm

3  Vine Deloria, Jr., Custer Died for your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, 1969.

4  “Lodge Pole (Washita) Massacre (November 1868): the Families’ Stories”, at http://home.epix.net/~landis/washita.html

5  James Horsley, Washita, Genocide on the Great Plains, at http://www.dickshovel.com/was.html

6  See for instance, Killing Custer: The Battle of the Little Big Horn and the Fate of the Plains Indian by James Welch (Blackfeet-Gros Ventre novelist and poet) & Paul Stekler; Dee Brown, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.

7  Dee Brown, p. 5, 38, 44.

8  See for instance, Cankpe Opi at http://www.dickshovel.com/WKmasscre.html; Statement by Mario Gonzalez, Attorney, Cheyenne River and Pine Ridge Wounded Knee Survivor’s Associations and Oglala Sioux Tribe, at Senate Hearing before the Select Committee on Indian Affairs, September 25, 1990, at http://www.dickshovel.com/mario.html; Karen Strom, The Massacre at Wounded Knee, at http://www.hanksville.org/daniel/lakota/Wounded_Knee.html; http://www.danielnpaul.com/WoundedKnee.html

9  See for instance, “Lakota ~ Wounded Knee: A Campain to Rescind Medals”, at http://www.footnote.com/page/1299_lakotawounded_knee_a_campaign_to/

10  See Renee Samson-Flood’s Lost Bird of Wounded Knee: Spirit of the Lakota.

11  Renee Sampson-Flood’s book also discusses these practices as stemming from a devaluation and oppression of Native culture: she recounts witnessing a white social worker successfully pressuring a poor Native American woman to give up her newborn for adoption on the argument that she could not give her child a decent life, and the child would be better off with a wealthy white family.

12  See Friends of Peltier, http://www.freepeltiernow.org/reign.htm; and Frederick E. Hoxie, Encyclopedia of the North American Indians, at 528, available at http://books.google.com

13  See for instance, “The ‘Reign of Terror’” at http://www.freepeltiernow.org/reign.htm; and “We Will Remember: Pine Ridge Reservation 1973 – 1976: Chronology of Oppression at Pine Ridge”, at http://www.geocities.com/crazyoglala/1973-76PineRidgeRez.html; the various articles filed under Pine Ridge Reign of Terror in http://ourfreedom.wordpress.com/category/pine-ridge-reign-of-terror/; and Frederick E. Hoxie, Encyclopedia of the North American Indians, at 528, available at http://books.google.com

14  See Leonard Peltier, “Thirty Years of FBI Harassment and Misconduct: When Truth Doesn’t Matter”, Counterpunch, January 9, 2007, at http://www.counterpunch.org/peltier01092007.html; Leonard Peltier Defense Committee website, http://www.leonardpeltier.net/newsroom.htm; and Leonard Peltier Defense-Offense Committee at http://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info/index1.htm

15  Data from the Red Cloud Indian School in Pine Ridge. See also Stephanie M. Schwartz, “The Arrogance of Ignorance: Hidden Away, Out of Sight and Out of Mind: Regarding life, conditions and hope on the Pine Ridge Oglala Lakoa (Sioux) Reservation of SD”, October 15, 2006, at http://www.nativevillage.org/Messages%20from%20the%20People/the%20arrogance%20of%20ignorance.htm

16  Mario Gonzalez & Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, The Politics of Hallowed Ground: Wounded Knee and the Struggle for Indian Sovereignty, 1998, p. 62.

17  The proposals to make the Wounded Knee site a national park are controversial because some allege it will lead to displacement of many Lakȟóta families, and cede Lakȟóta land to federal control. The site was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965, but I suspect this was for the purpose of lauding it as the “Battle of Wounded Knee” ~ hence the original green sign.

18  See for instance, “Rescind the Medals of dis-Honor” Campain at http://www.dickshovel.com/RescindMedals.html

19  In surfing around, I found some websites that seemed good to me, like “First Nations Issues of Consequence” at http://www.dickshovel.com/, which has lots of articles and opinions by Native writers and a First Nations Bookstore, and Native Village at www.nativevillage.org; I would love to hear opinions about them, and other sites.

_________________________________________

Read the complete:

CONFESSIONS OF FOFI LITTLEPANTS

I  Trainhopping

II  Hitchhiking

III  Other Particulars

IV  The Journey

V  Society I ~ Native America

VI  Society II ~ Identity

VII  People

VIII  Penises

IX  Of Dreams And Spirits

X  Conclusion

THE CONFESSIONS OF FOFI LITTLEPANTS

PART IV

by Fofi Littlepants

IV. THE JOURNEY

Our odyssey spanned 29 states, 3 countries, and 1 federal district. We didn’t have much of a plan when we started, except that we decided to head north from California, rather than southeast, because we had already explored those states in the past.

In the end, we went through every major geographic region of the country, with the exception of the Southwest and the Deep South (unless you place Arkansas or Tennessee in the Deep South, but I think most people consider them to be in a distinct region, like the “Upper South”.)

We started in the most quintessentially Western of states, California, and hitchhiked north into the Pacific Northwest through Oregon and Washington, then took a bus over the border into Canada (nobody would give us a ride over the border), and hitchhiked around British Columbia. Then we came back into Washington, and then hopped a train east, through Idaho and into Montana.

We hitched around Montana and Wyoming, but rented a car to go to Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks (there was no public transport, and we didn’t want to have to follow the schedule of families on vacation with their kids). We also visited Apsaálooke (Crow) nation, and then hitchhiked east to South Dakota, through the Black Hills, and got a car to explore the Badlands and visit Lakȟóta (Sioux) country. We were planning to trainhop south toward Texas, but failed a number of times and then ended up having to flee the state in a hurry ~ we were camping on the side of a rest stop off the freeway, when a stupendous storm with tornado potential started gathering ~ a trucker rescued us at 2 am, and we sped away in his 18-wheeler into Minnesota, with the storm following us a few minutes behind; we eventually arrived in Wisconsin.

After exploring a bit of Wisconsin (we were in Madison, and then went to Oshkosh just because we liked the name), and after visiting a wonderful friend in Chicago (who drove an hour outside of town to pick us up from an obscure White Castle where we had gotten dropped off), we hitched southward through the vast flat expanses of the Great Plains, crossing from Illinois through Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and on to Texas.

In Texas we explored Austin and Hill Country, and while Joey was visiting people in the north of the state, I got a car for two days and drove around at great speed through north, central, east and south of the state, and went into Mexico twice to just see what the border was like (the second time, I got detained for inspection, and had to wait while my rental car went through all sorts of probes that included lots of agents, dogs, mirrors and banging.) Joey and I then hitched through the Upper South, through Arkansas, Tennessee, and Virginia, and finally ended up in the South Atlantic ~ Maryland and D.C.

By the time we got to Maryland, we celebrated that we had gone coast to coast by train or thumb; we retired that part of the trip, in favor of Chinatown buses, which will take you to and from most major East Coast cities for $20 or less. Our justification for this was that we only had a couple of weeks left and didn’t have the time to hitchhike in the face of East Coast paranoia ~ it had taken us 12 hours to get from Richmond, Virginia to Baltimore, Maryland, over a distance that would have been a one and a half hour drive by car.

From a basecamp of our friend’s house in Baltimore, we rented a car for 3 days and explored New England: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. And finally, going through mid-Atlantic Pennsylvania and New Jersey, we brought the journey to a close in the most quintessential of eastern states, New York.

We were well aware that this trip really just scratched the surface of what there is to see and know in the United States. But I guess we’ll save the rest for another trip.

***

It’s cliché to say this, but the United State is an enormous, endlessly varied place. Every place we passed through exhibited a splendid diversity along innumerable dimensions: from landscape and vegetation (snow-topped peaks in Washington and Montana covered in pines, to the total desolate flatness of the many Plains states); the number of people (you don’t realize in California people are living like crowded ants, until you go out to Wyoming and drive miles and miles to see the next house); weather (from tornados and hailstorms in the middle of summer in South Dakota, to the ginormous sauna that is Texas), wildlife (from deer, bear, moose, foxes, skunks, and raccoons in the wooded north and east, to marmots, mountain goats, mountain lions, elk and birds of prey in the mountains, and bison, prairie dogs, porcupines, and rattlesnakes in the Plains, to name only a few).

Even the color of sunlight and sky, the shapes of clouds, and feel of the air can vary greatly. Dusk in the Plains casts the richest orange light on everything ~ a portraitist’s dream ~ then it slowly gathers itself into a sunset glowing deep purple. In the sea of Montana Big Sky, Botero clouds backfloat voluptuously across unending blue. In the woods of Maine, the air is so warm and velvety that you feel like you’re being held in an embrace.

Sounds and vibrations also vary greatly. I don’t think I had ever experienced the absolute stillness and silence that envelopes the Great Plains and the Mountains. Nor the reverberation in my chest from the humming of Texas insects, which miraculously hide themselves in trees despite surely being the size of helicopters. And as Xena Warrior Princess said, there is also much to be heard if you “Listen not just to the sounds, but what’s behind the sounds.”

Another salient regional difference was in driving style. In the Plains, where there are flat roads and few people, people push the 80-mile per hour speed limit, grumbling all the while that there used to be no speed limit at all; they couldn’t comprehend the ludicrous 55-mile per hour limits in California. But even that paled in comparison to the East Coast, where even peace-loving Buddhist progressives transform into maniacal terminators on testosterone when they get behind the wheel.

Other interesting road-related indications of regional differences were the variations in street signs ~ depending on where you are, they can manifest silouettes of deer and moose, as well as tractors and snowmobiles. A related (sadder) one was the diversity in roadkill ~ dogs, cats, and deer are ubiquitously littered on the side of the road, but in some regions, porcupines and skunks add themselves to the pile.

***

Some people ask what the highlights were out of the things that we got to see. We don’t have a very good answer, there isn’t a really obvious list. The best we could do is to name a few experiences that we remember and come to mind: In Glacier National Park in Montana, we hiked through the snow along the edge of a cliff, looking over our shoulders for bears. In Apsaálooke (Crow) country, we watched dancing competitions at a pow-wow while chewing on Indian fry bread. In South Dakota on the eve of Fourth of July, we caught a ride with a motorcycle gang to Mount Rushmore for fireworks (though it was too foggy to see any), and the next day visited the Crazy Horse Memorial, a colossal mountain statue that is being carved into the Black Hills of the famed Lakȟóta warrior Tȟašúŋke Witkó (Crazy Horse), designed by sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski at the invitation of Lakȟóta leader Henry Standing Bear. In Lakȟóta country, we felt lucky to be allowed to attend a wi wanyang wacipi (sun dance), a traditional ceremony that represents life and rebirth, in which dancers connect spiritually to the center of the universe. We also talked to people and read historical materials at Wounded Knee, the infamous site of the massacre of 1890 and the standoff with the American Indian Movement and the FBI in 1973. In Texas, we discovered a magical blue spring in rolling Hill Country; I also watched baby turtles pull themselves into the sea in Padre National Seashore, then watched a U.S.-Mexico soccer match on a television at a border town fruit stand. In Little Rock, Arkansas, we visited Central High School, where federal troops had landed in 1957 to enforce the Brown v. Wade desegregation decision in the face of virulent resistance by local whites. In Memphis, Tennessee, we went to the National Civil Rights Museum, constructed inside and adjacent to the motel outside of which Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, reading about the long history of the civil rights movement, and the various theories on the perpetrators of the assassination. In Salem, Massachusetts, we watched a reenactment of a witch trial, and saw a memorial for the 19 people that were hanged for witchcraft in 1692, and one who was crushed to death with rocks. At Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, we floated on the water and on our philosophical musings, and sat in the replica of Thoreau’s cabin. We also watched in wonder as a fuzzy green caterpillar, over the course of almost an hour, contorted and writhed in existential ecstasy/agony to haul itself up on a translucent string, from the ground all the way up to a tree branch far above. We followed its progress intently, afraid it would fall and die, but little by little it danced ever so effortfully closer to its goal. We would have found it incredibly inspirational to witness it cross over into its tree branch nirvana, but at the last moment, we lost site of it, and could not find it again. Maybe such things are not for human eyes to see.

***

There is one story I feel I have to include here, because no odyssey is complete without a trip to the underworld.  Mine came in the guise of a sacred quest to navigate Spunky the Guinea Pig down to the depths of hell, the entrance to which can be found on 110^th Street in Manhattan.

The story goes like this: in New York, a wonderful family I knew had agreed to let me and Joey stay at their house while they were gone on vacation. In exchange, I was to take care of their two guinea pigs, “Spunky” and “Lonny”, the pride and joy of the family’s 12-year old daughter. I went by a few days early to meet the guinea pigs and to be initiated into guinea pig care training ~ I diligently took notes on the two baby carrots, handful of greens, excess of hay, minimalist layer of pellets, two bottles of water, and air conditioning that the guinea pigs required daily.

When Joey and I finally arrived on the fateful day, it was after much trial and tribulation hauling our luggage around in the subway from downtown in Chinatown, to the apartment all the way uptown, in Innwood around 200^th Street. When we arrived at last, I offered to introduce Joey to Spunky and Lonny. But when we went into the airconditioned room in which they lived, I almost had a heart attack ~ one of them was missing! Spunky was nowhere to be found. We crawled around the whole apartment and looked everywhere. In the midst of this, my friend called. He asked how things were going, and I had to admit sheepishly, Spunky was not in his cage! In response he said, “That’s because he died this morning. If you look in the refrigerator he should be in there.” (!) A neighbor that had checked in on the apartment earlier that day and had found him, he said. He asked me to look in the fridge to see if he was there. I was expecting to see a stiff guinea pig belly up in the middle of the center rack with its face contorted into a Ringu scream, but instead found a heavy shoebox in a plastic bag. “Well, there’s a shoebox in the fridge in a bag”, I said into my cell phone. “That’s him,” said my friend, “we don’t put our shoes in the fridge.”

I was instructed to take him down to Animal Control Center to get him disposed of. It was on 110^th Street, on the east side. The apartment was on the West Side; Manhattan is split into East and West by Central Park, and the train only runs north and south on the sides of the park. So I figured out that the best thing was to take a train down to 110^th to the top of the park, and take a bus across town. Then, after Animal Control, I could go downtown to Trader Joe’s, which was toward the east side ~ we needed groceries.

The next morning, I put poor Spunky, shoebox and all, into my backpack and started for the Animal Control Center.

I was following my plan to take a train down to 110^th, but, this was thwarted because the train turned out to be express, and before I knew it, the train had already passed 110^th street and ended up in all the way downtown. I ended up on the east side, miraculously close to Trader Joe’s. After some amount of tortured internal debate, I ended up swinging by the Trader Joe’s and shopping for organic pasta sauce and herbal salad, with Spunky still in my backpack. I wondered what the reaction of the other shoppers might be if they found out I had a dead guinea pig in my pack ~ would there be a screaming stampede? Was it a violation of a health code of some kind, I also wondered, to bring along your pet corpses to the supermarket? Would I unleash some kind of new epidemic on the world ~ like “Guinea Pig Flu” ~ if I handled any of the food? I tried to shop and get out of there as quickly as I could (though it seemed an eternity because it was so crowded), all the while occasionally sniffing over my shoulder to check that Spunky wasn’t starting to smell.

When I reached the Animal Control at last, it was with Spunky and a bag of organic groceries in hand. It all turned out fine ~ Spunky’s body seemed to have held up just fine in the New York summer heat even with the detour to Trader Joe’s (and to a pizza joint afterwards to get a slice of pizza.) (I just hope Spunky’s family doesn’t read this and get offended ~ but Trader Joe’s was airconditioned, so I thought it would be okay!! But oh… now I don’t remember if the pizza place was…sorry!!!)

The Animal Control Center on 110^th Street was clearly the gateway to Hell. It had the feeling of a prison, and a stuffy, chemically smell. The reception window reminded me of a police station counter window (though it didn’t have bullet-proof glass), and there was a line of people looking like they were waiting to cross the River Styx. Most of the people in the queue had old-looking dogs, I guessed they were bringing them there to have them put to sleep. The place gave me the creeps ~ though it wasn’t visible to the eye, it had the heaviness of a place where living things were getting imprisoned and killed. Fighting off a suffocating feeling, I shuffled into the line with everyone else, and with the gray, doomed dogs, to drop off old Spunkaroo to his final fate.

While in line though, a remarkable thing happened. I guess mythical descents to the netherworld require a glorious ascent, and I think I saw one happen. While Spunky didn’t miraculously resurrect from the dead, another beloved pet may have been given new life.

A lady had come in, with a happy looking dog but herself on the verge of tears; she talked loudly to herself and anyone that would listen.

“Oh, you know this is a bad place!” she said over and over, and I couldn’t agree more. She was moving to Atlanta to work, she went on, and couldn’t take her dog with her because the building she was going to live in didn’t allow pets. She had nowhere else to take her but this pound. The dog’s name was “Beautiful”. She had had all her shots, she was a good dog, she was trained and everything. The woman really hoped that she would get adopted, so she wouldn’t get killed. The lady sat on the side of the line, distraught, obviously having second thoughts about leaving the dog ~ pets only had three days to get adopted before the ax dropped.

People in the line started sympathizing and giving suggestions. I got in the fray, my suggestion being to find a no-kill shelter, and so started looking up some numbers on my Blackberry and calling them. Everyone in the end was admiring Beautiful and trying to help find a home for her. This generally consisted of each person attempting to convince the next person that walked through the door to take the dog home, because they themselves couldn’t.

It was really kind of wrenching. The woman was obviously not wealthy. Someone gave her the suggestion to put the dog on Craigslist, but she didn’t know how to use a computer. If she had money she probably could have found an apartment where she could take the dog, or maybe she wouldn’t have had to be moving to Atlanta in the first place. I always knew that when you’re poor you have to go without so many things that other people take as a given. And this brought it home that it’s not just with material things, but with things even as fundamental as love. It was obvious that this woman loved this dog and it was breaking her heart to drop it off to its likely death. It occurred to me that all the people in line bringing in their old gray dogs loved them, but they couldn’t afford the luxury of a vet that would allow the dog and the family the peace of the pet dying painlessly in loving arms.

Then a miracle happened. A young couple walked in, and almost immediately took a liking to Beautiful. And it turned out that one of them worked for a no-kill shelter. The shelter was full, they said, like all the others I had called, but they told us that we should call later, and could drop her name (Lara). She gave the owner-lady a card, who handed it to me and asked that I call. I did, even though Lara had suggested calling later, not now. After quite a bit of confusion and running around with the phone and some embarrassment for Lara (it turned out that I had eventually gotten her boss on the phone), Lara said that she had gotten approval to try to take Beautiful with her, if she fit in the car. The owner was overjoyed.

I left before I found out what ultimately happened. I felt like I had done my part, and couldn’t do anymore. I didn’t want to insist on knowing what happened in the end, because I have to believe that when you contribute what you can, it has meaning even if you don’t get the exact gratification or rewards you think you want. (“Providence has its appointed hour for everything. We cannot command results, we can only strive.” ~ Gandhi.) And no matter the final outcome, it wouldn’t have changed the lesson that I carried away from that journey to the underworld ~ that love can transcend, transform, and redeem.

–Fofi Littlepants

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Read the complete:

CONFESSIONS OF FOFI LITTLEPANTS

I  Trainhopping

II  Hitchhiking

III  Other Particulars

IV  The Journey

V  Society I ~ Native America

VI  Society II ~ Identity

VII  People

VIII  Penises

IX  Of Dreams And Spirits

X  Conclusion