My people will sleep for one
hundred years, but when they awake it will be
the artists who give
them their spirit back.
Louis Riel
1.
The loud,
overhead pounding woke Jack Wilson[1] with
a start. He wasn’t sure at first that what he thought he heard was in fact what
he heard. He rolled over slowly on bones seized from years of inactivity to see
if anyone else had heard it too.
“That’s for us,
ennit?” said the man next to him, who only went by his first initial, ‘T’.[2]
Both men were Paiute and had Paiute names, but neither had gone by his for more
than a hundred years. The reasons they abandoned them changed with the times.
Jack mostly claimed that his name had died of malnutrition somewhere just after
1890,[3]
and T asserted his was far too new-agey . . . might as well go by a moniker
like Crystal Rain or Rainbow Awakening. He sat up. “Guess we better get going,
huh?”
“Yeah. I guess
so.” Jack eyed his companion. “You’re not going to wear that, are you?”
“I
don’t know, I thought so,” said the other, poking a finger through a mildew-ringed
hole that may have been made by a bullet, or just as easily a moth, or maybe a
bullet that thought it was a moth. “I haven’t taken this AIM shirt off since
1973.[4] It’s
lucky.”
“It’s
something alright, but I’m not sure ‘lucky’ is what I’d call it,” said Jack,
who had always thought the only appropriate attire for these things was his
Sunday best. He kissed his still sleeping wife, Mary, and pushed a tall black
hat down over his grey hair; then the two men mounted a couple of scraggly
ponies and set out from Nevada in a northeastern direction toward Minneapolis.
2.
It was an angry
colonial wind that howled— a cold and calculating wind that blew long after it
bent your back and snapped your limbs. It blew long after it brought you to
your knees just so you could watch it carry the leaves of your children away.
It was Colonel Forsyth’s[5]
favorite kind of wind, coming up hard from the southeast. His face had been
tucked into his double-breasted coat right to the tips of the whiskers on his
upper lip, but now he looked out across the plains to watch the two young men
who crossed the horizon in a four-wheeler. He followed them with the iron
sights of his rifle, drawing a bead as their long black hair flowed like
horses’ manes behind them. He could drop the first and then the second before
either could register so much as a crack in
the air, but where was the satisfaction in it if you weren’t close enough to
watch the lights go out? Where was the fun for him if he could not see them see
him turn the switch off? And these days, he longed so desperately to be seen.
He’d gotten used
to white people not seeing him. They’d been staring through him since General
Miles had labeled him a murderer of women and babies.[6]
But the Indians? No, this was something he had not yet grown accustomed to,
because they still saw him long after the buffalo were gone, they saw him after
their television sets had given them the Eagle landing on the moon,[7]
and they kept on seeing him until textbooks erased their genetic memories and
the Top 40 drowned out the sounds their ancestors beat upon their ear drums.
Now tourists pointed cameras in his face, quick flash bulbs blinding him like
bee stings, capturing images that ignored the truth of a man like him.
Only
Sitting Bull could really see Forsyth
now. He could see him out there waiting for him, but Forsyth could wait, not
that the Chief lacked courage. He was just done with all of that now. He’d gone
out once to meet the Colonel in the Black Hills, not to fight, but to offer him
a cup of warm tea. Forsyth had accepted it without thought, mistaking Sitting
Bull for another nostalgic tourist. And it was true—apart from the long braids
he still wore, there was nothing left of the Chief for the Colonel to recognize,
not a trace of the glory or a single breath of the nobility Sitting Bull once
had. He’d long since given away his
horses and his most valued possessions, he’d given his flesh and he’d given his
tears, until all that was left to give to the people was his greatness. So
Sitting Bull gave it, too. Much of that greatness had ended up on postcards and
in internet memes bearing quotations concocted by Seattle’s ghost writer,[8]
but some of it still lived in the hearts of his people, not just the Lakota,
but also the Cree and the Dineh and even the Inuit. He’d once heard rumors that
some of his greatness had migrated south for a warmer climate and now lived in
songs sung by the Torre Straight Islanders[9]
under the stars.
No, Forsyth
would not see him coming today or any other day, because it was no longer for
him to carry his own greatness out onto the battlefield or into a room of
diplomacy. Sitting Bull finished the last sip of his chai and set the empty cup
in the sink. Looking out into the long-distant horizon through his kitchen
window, he watched curiously as the Colonel dismounted a thin-withered
Palomino.
Forsyth knew a
fight was out there somewhere. He could smell it, as only a man who lives for
fights (he knows he can win) can. He pressed his ear to the ground. “Aha,” he
said, then listened again. It was not the marked cadence of hoof beats that
rippled the earth, and it was not the erratic rhythm of war ponies carrying
young men to count coup[10]
on him that prickled the hairs on the back of his neck. No, somewhere out there
Indians were doing what was forbidden. He knew it. He recognized that mix of
drum beats and the sound the left foot made when it met the ground.
He stood erect
and caught the bitter taste of 1,000 nations’ hope on his tongue. He had a
hankering for an old family recipe of genocide soup, and he knew exactly where
to find the final ingredient. There was no time to waste. Forsyth swung a leg
up over the pale US branded rump,
settled into the saddle, and reined his mount’s head in tight, cutting dead east
in the same direction as the four-wheeler. Somewhere out there Injuns were
dancing that dance. They dared to join their hands and taunt him, taunt every
progressive, forward-thinking, industrious man of ilk. He’d make those savages
see him this time. They’d see him turn their switches off alright.
3.
Kicking Bear and
Short Bull,[11] who’d
recently gone back to their traditional names in protest of colonization, had
mostly been subsiding on the powwow trail, waiting for a good Forty-Nine[12]
to come up so they could relive the old glory days, the days before Forsyth and
the rest of the army had sent them away to live with the ancestors. They’d
marched in the South during the Civil Rights movement and danced in Baptist
churches crying “Hallelujah!” and “Lord, free us from our burdens!” They’d
burned bras with middle-aged housewives and thrown their military
accommodations over the fence alongside John Kerry. Most recently, they’d camped
for twelve years on Wall Street as part of the Occupy movement. They’d erected
a tipi long before anyone could see it, and it was, in fact, still standing
there next to the bronze bull, as invisible as it had always been. But this?
This was what they had really been waiting for. This was the moment.
Their four-wheeler
broke down somewhere outside of Albert Lea, so they jacked a Bradley off the
back of an Army trailer in a Super 8 parking lot, where the boys from the 7th
Cavalry[13] had
bedded down for the night.
Kicking Bear and
Short Bull were five miles outside of Minneapolis by the time the Private stood
with his mouth agape behind the Super 8.
“Indians,” said
the Sergeant.
“Indians,
Sergeant?” asked the Private.
“Indians.”
“Excuse me,
Sergeant, but are there any real Indians left?”
The Sergeant
picked up some loose asphalt, sifted it through his hands, and sniffed the air.
“Indians, Private. Indians, headed north.”
4.
Abe[14]
sipped a strawberry frappachino as he observed the heavy horde of savages
milling near the food court. Something was afoot.
“The Natives are getting restless, it seems,” said
Andrew[15], setting
his phone down next to a coagulated dollop of ketchup on a green vinyl table.
“Yes, it seems,”
said Abe. “Your call, was it important?”
“Oh, just my
friend Stephen[16] in
Canada.”
“Oh, yes. “I
remember him. Bright boy. Lots of promise.”
“Yes, yes, looks as if he is going to finally
clear up all that nasty business we should have taken care of long ago. Thought
for sure Teddy[17] would
wrap it up, came close, too, but this boy Stephen, my money’s on him.”
An Indian in a
tall black hat caught Abe’s attention. He turned quickly. “Say, I may be a
horse’s ass, but isn’t that . . .”
“Why I do
believe it is. Old Snake Oil[18]
shows up after all.”
“Now, now,
that’s a little harsh to suggest he was a con, don’t you think?” asked Andrew.
Abe looked back at
Andrew, and the two normally dour and stone-faced men erupted in laughter.
“Well,” said
Abe, “he did keep them quiet for us awhile, didn’t he? I mean, no one was out
fighting while they were busy buying into all that hippy talk about holding
hands and dancing, were they?”
From beneath the
brim of his black hat, Jack Wilson saw Abe and Andrew, too, but he preferred to
regard them with an over-familiar disinterest, as though they were inanimate
fixtures, much like the giant plastic palm trees or the metal benches in the
resting area. They were fixtures that would decay long after they had become
outdated and ceased to be of use to anyone. Someday, an archeologist would
unearth one from a landfill somewhere. “What’s this here?” he’d exclaim.
“That?” a
colleague would reply, “Oh that’s a Jackson, a rare find. They’ve been obsolete
for a few hundred years now.”
“What about
this? What do you make of this here?”
“That one must
be worth a fortune! It’s a Lincoln. Top notch administrative butcher, and still
he managed to get into the good books of history. Many of the best politicians
were actually made as replicas of this model here.”
Kicking Bear and
Short Bull burst in through the automatic sliding mall doors, out of breath,
having run with their hand drums all the way from the back parking lot where
they’d left the Bradley taking up three and a half spots. They pushed through
the thick crowd of people, nearly knocking Jack and T to the ground, jumped up
on the rim of a cement planter, and began banging the drums.
Jack shook his
head. “Not those two,” he said, knowing the pair were about to see a rebirth as
poster children for the round dance movement.[19]
They’d be AP superstar villains in no time. That would be good for at least
another hundred pages each in their FBI files. Maybe the government would have
to build a new room to house all that paperwork it had been collecting since
1889. Already there were four such rooms filled floor-to-ceiling with the usual
incriminating evidence: john shots and pizza delivery order wire taps.
The drums called
the milling crowd to organize itself into a large, looping but unjoined circle
of heavy, dropping left feet and hands clasped together. Others, mostly those
who called themselves settlers, who
carried the genetic memory of having once been indigenous refugees in spite of Columbus
Day and Thanksgiving, stood on the outside, placards waving high.
“What’s with
this new Forty-Nine music, anyway?” asked Jack.
“Kinda catchy, I
think,” said T.
“I like the
songs from the old days,” said Jack.
“This is a song from the old days.”
“Not my old days,”
said Jack. “Whose old days?”
“Their old days.
But you’re the guy who griped when he had a song written about him. No one ever
wrote a song about me. If they did, rest assured, I’d like it.”
“I never said I
didn’t like the Red Bone song.”[20]
“Didn’t you?”
Jack sighed. “It’s
not so much the music that gets to me. It’s the setting. Tell me again why they’re
doing a sacred dance in a shopping mall.”
“It’s a kind of
a protest.”
“Our rituals are
for protests now?” He shook his head. “The dancing is only meant for us.” He
pointed to Kicking Bear and Short Bull. “Remember what happened the last time
those two flaunted our dances for protest? To show the outsiders our strength
and the strength of our ancestors is to show them our greatest weapon. It is to
call them to war. When we show them the power of what they do not understand,
we invoke their fear. Fear does not produce humanity. It fosters hostility.”
T was silent a
moment. “Are we going to join them or what?”
“I suppose I’ll
never hear the end of it if I don’t,” said Jack, breaking in and joining hands
near the lead.
5.
Abe and Andrew
were thinking it was past time to call in the Cavalry when the two mall cops
arrived. The one named McLaughlin[21]
had a hand on his flashlight, just itching to take down a real live wild
Indian. Probably shoplifters, the whole lot of them. He’d been following them
around department stores and boutiques for his entire thirteen-year career, and
one of these days he was going to catch one, too, catch ’em red-handed. He
figured there was a reason why they called it that: red-handed. They didn’t
call it white-handed or yellow-handed or even black-handed, did they? “Let’s
round ’em up and hold ’em ’til the police get here,” he said as he smacked his
gum loudly. “They’ll probably give us an accommodation.”
“I’m not going
to give them the notoriety or the attention by dignifying their presence,” said
the one named Warner.[22]
“That’s what you
said last time.”
“Did I? Oh well,
who could have predicted they’d dance for so many days. But that was before
television. American Idol is on
tonight. Who’s going to miss that? And let’s not discount Twitter and Facebook.
This generation is going to be the first to get their pictures uploaded on
Instagram and their videos on YouTube.”
McLaughlin
agreed with his friend, but he wasn’t letting go of his flashlight, just in
case. He could see it now: the mayor shaking his hand and his picture on the
front page of the paper. Maybe he’d finally get a date with the girl at the
Burger King stand.
Forsyth was
hitching his steed to the bike rack outside when the 7th Cav pulled
up in hot pursuit of Kicking Bear and Short Bull.
The Sergeant
dismounted his vehicle, a Corporal and the Private in tow. He clicked his heels
and snapped a sharp salute that was echoed by his subordinates and returned by
the Colonel.
“Come on boys,
they’re in here,” said Forsyth.
“Indians, sir?”
said the Sergeant.
“Indians,” said
Forsyth.
The Sergeant
turned and gave a self-satisfied smile to the Private. The Corporal looked down
at the spot between his spit-polished boots. He didn’t like this business, not
one bit.
“Say,” said Forsyth,
“any chance you boys brought some Hotchkiss guns?”
“Sorry, sir,”
said the Sergeant. “Army fazed those out years ago.”
“Oh, I see,”
said Forsyth. “What do you recommend?”
“Tear gas and
rubber bullets are standard for crowd control these days, sir.”
“Can’t you call
the CQ and find me a Hotchkiss gun? What about those RPG things they talk about
on CNN, or some drones?
“Sorry, sir.
It’s a kinder, gentler Army now. Can’t do that sort of thing on home soil.”
“Kinder,
gentler? What the hell is that supposed to mean? You think it’s a kinder,
gentler Indian now? No. They’ve probably got AK-47s under their blankets in
there. They’re a bunch of terrorists bent on destroying the American way. You
think these boys value baseball and apple pie? Of course they don’t. Just
listen to them complain about Chief Wahoo[23]
some time. Poor Chief Wahoo. They hate baseball. It’s un-American to hate
baseball. This is war. Don’t you understand?”
“Yes, sir,”
replied the Sergeant, following Forsyth through the automatic sliding doors.
Kicking Bear and
Short Bull were now joined by many more drummers. They had come from across NDN Country and
from as far away as Africa, Norway, and New Zealand. Black Coyote,[24] a
reincarnated woodcarver from Seattle,[25]
led the procession of dancers, guiding them between vendor tables and water
features, up the escalator, around the mezzanine, and up the escalator again
like a twisting smoke signal of longing. He did so with the impeccable rhythm
of one whose ear drums had never been touched by the Top 40— one who matched
the vibrations of the world with his highly evolved heart drum.
As Jack held
tightly to Black Coyote’s hand, he allowed himself a moment of nostalgia about the
way it had been before 1890.
Abe and Andrew
had switched to espresso by now, while McLaughlin and Warner bickered over
whether or not things were getting sufficiently out of hand to act with
aggression.
The mall manager
came out from his third-floor office to see what was the cause of the racket. Oh my gawd, he thought, the Indians are taking over. This is bad for
business. Soon this will be known as an Indian mall. GAP and OLD NAVY will be replaced by second hand vendors, bottle
depots, and white-walled taverns. Burger King will be reduced to a bannock
stand. This will ruin everything. He could see it now. It would become the
kind of place where young, twenty-something hipster women like his daughter
would come for a taste of wild meat. Maybe he himself would be lured into wild
fornication with the woman who ran the bannock stand. No, not in his mall.
He pushed his
way through the dancers and hung his head over the railing. “McLaughlin!
Warner! Why are these . . . these people carrying on in my mall?”
McLaughlin shot
Warner an I-told-you-so look.
“Well, sir,”
said Warner, “I can’t say I can stand them or this noise much, either, but the
press is sure to be all over it if we step in, and who knows which way the spin
will turn. Could end badly for the mall.”
“Are you kidding
me? There’s enough nouveau rednecks in these parts to keep us in American Eagle
and Banana Republic for the next three centuries. Toss ’em.”
McLaughlin was a
yes man, so he took the elevator to the top and stopped Black Coyote before he
could lead the dancers onto the roof. Unfazed, Black Coyote side-stepped right past
him and made his way toward the down escalator, leading the dancers on.
“Stop!” shouted
McLaughlin.
The wood carver kept beat with all the
memories of the dancers in the chain that trailed after him, and with all the
songs they had ever sung. Their songs and their stories were so loud inside of
him, McLaughlin’s words drowned and faded before they were heard in his heart.
“Stop dancing and get out of my mall,”
McLaughlin said, holding his flashlight at the ready. “Get out!”
Black Coyote
kept on with his left foot, leading the others into a downward descending
circle that ringed the inner ascending one.
Forsyth saw this
spelled trouble. “Private, go help that mall cop,” he ordered.
“Yes, sir,” said
the Private.
A troop of Boy
Scouts decided it was time to mobilize. They took an Indian woman from New
Delhi as their POW and ran home to collect their .22s and enlist their fathers.
The Private
stood nose to nose with Black Coyote, dancing along to maintain eye contact.
“Get out!” demanded the Private.
Black Coyote
stepped onto the next downward escalator and started the procession toward the
main floor.
The Private
stopped and looked to Forsyth and his superiors as they watched disapprovingly.
Not to be made a
fool of by a redskin, the Private squeezed his way past Jack and T until he was
again face-to-face with Black Coyote. In his enemy’s eyes, the Private saw the
woman who would run the bannock stand where Whoppers once were sold. And inside
her eyes he could see the glint of the knife that had stripped the flesh from
his bones as he lay lifeless in the grass at Little Bighorn. But if he dared to look deeper still, past the
memory of his own battlefield death, he would find inside her black pupils the
startled irises of a ten-year-old girl who gazed at the sky as he fed his cock
to her. He would remember the scream on the underside of his hand as the
innocence was carved from her. But he made it a point not to look into the eyes
of mothers. And he did not make a habit of feeling with the underside of his
hand. No, he wouldn’t let this mall become the sort of place that harbored
bannock stands. He drew his Colt 45 and fired two shots into Black Coyote’s
belly, then fired another two into the woodcarver’s highly evolved heart drum.
“Why did you do
that? Why did you do that?” screamed a white woman, dropping her Settler in Solidarity placard and
running to the foot of the escalator where Black Coyote’s body lay lifeless.
Jack took the
warm gun from Birk and held the Private’s murdering hand to his mourning heart.
The Private made it a habit never to
feel with the underside of his hand.
Kicking Bear
dropped his drum and rushed the soldier as he pulled away from Jack and stepped
off the moving stairs, but the Sergeant raised his service weapon and let off a
round. The bullet that thought it was a moth left its projected flight path to
enjoy the freedom of its wings, but forgetting itself, crashed into Private
Birk’s skull instead.
Pandemonium
broke out. Dancers trampled each other while dashing for the exits. Women
screamed, clutching babies to their chests, but a SWAT team was now on the
ground. The heavily armed men repelled the shrieking dancers backward.
The Cavalry
reinforcements Forsyth had requested arrived on the heels of the SWAT team with
four Hotchkiss guns they’d procured from a military museum.
All around them
Jack and T watched men drop, shot in the head with bottles of whiskey and pain
pills ejected from the cannons— munitions so unethical the use of them in
warfare had long ago been banned under an amendment to the Geneva Conventions.
Forsyth had the
reluctant Corporal fetch his horse so he could have a better vantage point from
which to survey the carnage. It was a good day, the Colonel thought. The kind
of day a man could wait a century for.
Jack pleaded
with the dancers to remain peaceful in face of the assault, but Kicking Bear
and Short Bull were now wielding books they’d swiped from the Barnes & Noble.
The threat of armed Indians incited the Cavalry to respond with an ever-escalating
level of violence.
“Stop!” cried
Jack, jumping onto the cement planter. “Stop!” Women fell face forward in front
of Victoria’s Secret, while Abe and Andrew watched with amusement. Mothers
stumbled limply before the great water fountain, their babies leaving their
arms like discarded pennies, like forgotten wishes, like anonymous dreams.
“Stop!” Jack cried out again.
Forsyth reined
in his mount. “What do you want, old man?”
“Stop the
shooting. Stop harming my people. It’s me you want.”
The Colonel had
to agree. Jack was no Sitting Bull, but it was
the echo of his calls, after all, that had brought the people here to dance for
their slaughter.
Yes, he was the
man.
Kicking Bear and
Short Bull were not so sure that Jack was
the one. They thought the bullet in the Colonel’s chamber ought to be meant for
one of them and wondered if wearing bullet proof vests made of 100 tiny diamond
windows had really been such a wise choice.
“OK, said
Forsyth, I see your point.” He raised a shiny Winchester. “Any last words?”
Jack threw T a
mischievous look. “Yes. All people must dance. Keep on dancing! Keep on
dancing!”[27]
Forsyth pierced
the white of Jack’s Sunday best shirt with an ever- expanding circle of
crimson.
T laughed in
spite of the tragedy. He laughed and he laughed, until all that was left to do
was cry.
Jack lay on the
muddy, tiled floor, a smile frozen on his face.
The people at
last had their martyr.
Everyone was
quite satisfied now that the blood of their savior had been spilled and went
home to upload their pictures of the event. Kicking Bear and Short Bull hopped
back in the Bradley accompanied by the AWOL Corporal. While the Corporal drove
north, the pair planned another flash mob round dance on Facebook, using their
iPhones.
During a
friendly, celebratory coffee with Abe and Forsyth, Andrew received a text
message from his friend Stephen, saying he had just dispatched Colonel
Chivington[28] to Ft.
McMurray. Forsyth reckoned there would be many more wars that couldn’t be lost
in the North Country, so he bid his companions adieu and headed his steed
toward the Medicine Line.
6.
It was the night janitor, a Mohawk
who’d long since replaced the Warrior flag above his bed with a poster of Miley
Cyrus, who found the lifeless Jack below the plastic palm trees.
“You can’t stay
here,” he said, nudging Jack awake.
“Oh, yes, I
guess you’re right. But where do I go?” asked Jack.
“How about home
to your wife?” the janitor suggested.
It was cold
outside, but Jack stopped only once on the long trail back to Nevada. It was to
share a quick bite to eat with his old friend Sitting Bull, who was passing a
restless night in a roadside diner.
The sun was rising
over Jack’s left shoulder as he reached home.
He paused in the
doorway to brush off a light dusting of snow and hung his hat on a hook. Mary
looked up from the stove and smiled gently at him. He kissed her and sat down at
the kitchen table next to T. Engrossed
in composing an article for the Huffington
Post, T, clad now in a new T-shirt that read Keep it Riel, did not acknowledge Jack’s return.
“How did it go?”
Mary asked, placing a cup of tea before her husband.
Jack dropped a
few cubes of sugar into his cup and shrugged apologetically. “Same as usual. I
suppose it was to be expected.”
Meanwhile, Louis[29]
stood shivering in the only phone booth left in St Boniface. In fact, it was
the only phone booth left in Winnipeg. Perhaps, the only one left in the world.
Before him he had a list of artists his friend Gabriel[30] had compiled from
lists stolen from the FBI, the CIA and CSIS. He skimmed the alphabetical list,
as he waited for the operator: Robertson, Sainte-Marie, Secola, Tagaq…
“Oui, Madame, collect
call s’il vous plait…”
[1]
Jack Wilson (c.1856-1932) was a Paiute profit also known as Wovoka. A pacifist,
he was credited with starting the Ghost Dance movement
[2]
A great deal of controversy exists as to whether or not Tavibo was Wovoka’s
father. What is known is that his prophesies greatly influenced Wovoka’s.
[3]
The year of the Wounded Knee Massacre, after which Wovoka fell largely into
historical obscurity, marked the ruin of his reputation.
[4]
On Feb 27, 1973, 200 Oglala Lakota and American Indian Movement (AIM) followers
began the Siege of Wounded Knee in response to tribal and federal government
corruption. The siege lasted seventy-three days.
[5]
Colonel Forsyth is credited as the butcher responsible for the carnage at
Wounded Knee in 1890.
[6]
General Miles devoted a great deal of effort to bringing attention to the
crimes committed by Forsyth at Wounded Knee.
[7]
When Buzz Aldrin declared in 1967, “The Eagle has landed,” upon touching down
on the moon, it was believed to herald the coming of a new time of strength and
power for Indigenous people, as prophesized by the Hopi.
[8] Chief Seattle (c.1780-1866) is widely
credited with many famous quotations that were actually written by screenwriter
Ted Perry for “Home,” a 1972 film about ecology.
[9] Indigenous people of the Torres Straight
Islands of Queensland, Australia.
[10]
Warriors would “count coup” as a display of bravery. It involved touching or
striking the enemy with a hand, bow, or coup stick at close range. The reward
for doing so was the right to wear an eagle feather in the hair.
[11] The pair were credited with bringing the
Ghost Dance to the Lakota people.
[12] A style of Native American song that combines
traditional indigenous vocables and drumming with blues-like lyrics (often
containing English).
[13]
The 7th Cavalry was prominent in the American Indian Wars. In 1876
Custer led the unit against the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho at the
Battle of Little Bighorn, in an effort to claim the unceded territory of the
Black Hills. He and his men suffered a crushing defeat with casualties that
included Custer himself. For this reason, the battle is also known as Custer’s
Last Stand. However, the unit is still active today.
[14]
Abraham Lincoln approved the simultaneous execution of thirty-eight Native
Americans in Mankato, MN, on December 27, 1862. It remains the
largest mass execution in American history.
[15]
Andrew Jackson led campaigns against the Creek and Seminole Indians. During his
presidency the Indian Removal Act was passed, resulting in the death of more than
4, 000 Cherokees on the Trail of Tears.
[16]
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is well known for his anti-environmental
approach, and has been charged with fostering racist sentiments and policies
against the indigenous peoples of Canada. When his Conservative government
passed legislation that violated treaty rights, it touched off the Idle No More
Movement in 2012 which has spread worldwide.
[17]
Theodore Roosevelt advocated strongly that war against Native Americans wasn’t
just inevitable, but the most righteous form of war. He dispossessed Native
Americans of a great deal of their inhabited territory, including the Grand
Canyon and fifteen million acres of reservation land, by reallocating it for
National Parks.
[18]
Jack Wilson/Wovoka was considered by some to be nothing more than a
charlatan.
[19]
A healer named Wodziwob, along with Tavibo, preached that round dancing would
bring loved ones back from the grave. This was the precursor to Wovoka’s Ghost
Dance.
[20] A style of Native American song that combines
traditional indigenous vocables and drumming with blues-like lyrics (often
containing English).
[21]
McLaughlin was the Indian Agent who ordered Sitting Bull’s arrest and set the
wheels in motion that resulted in the Wounded Knee Massacre two weeks later.
[22]
Warner was an Indian Agent credited with saying he would not give Wovoka added
“notoriety” by having him arrested.
[23] Chief Wahoo is the controversial mascot of
the Cleveland Indians.
[24]
Black Coyote was a Lakota Sioux who refused to surrender his rifle. This is
credited as the incident that triggered the Wounded Knee Massacre, though it is
believed Black Coyote was deaf and could not understand what was asked.
[25]
John T. Williams was a deaf woodcarver who was shot four times and killed by a
Seattle police officer in 2010 for not immediately dropping his wood carving
knife after being asked to.
[26]
Birk is the surname of the officer who shot John T. Williams.
[27] Part of the chorus of the 1973 Red Bone song
“Wovoka.”
[28]
Colonel Chivington led 700 men in an attack against a peaceful village of
Cheyenne and Arapaho, killing somewhere between seventy and 163 mostly women
and children.
[29]
Louis Riel was the political and spiritual leader of the Western Métis and was
hung in Winnipeg in 1885. He is credited with saying, “My people will sleep for
one hundred years, but when they awake, it will be the artists who give them
their spirits back.”
[30]
Gabriel Dumont led the Métis military under Riel.
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