Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee

Clouds over Wounded Knee

“You see those clouds? Quickly take a picture”, says Bernadette Hollowhorn, an Indian grandmother.

Indeed, the clouds have an unusual colour. They would make a perfect photo over the cemetery of Wounded Knee. Grabbing a camera I run to frame it so that the clouds hang just above the graves. Unfortunately I don't make it in time. It is the effect of the setting sun, there just for a few seconds and then disappears.

Clouds gather over Wounded Knee, real as well as metaphorical. Bernadette Hollowhorn is here to drive those clouds away. And what am I here for? I certainly didn't come to meet Bernadette, but I did meet her and now I know why she is here. But why did I come in the first place?

Well, I had to come here, this place attracts not only clouds. Even though my heart does not have to be buried here, I had to come anyway. Although I guess one of the reasons why I did come was that someone wrote a book “Bury my Heart...”. Without that book the place would probably be forgotten. The book was published in 1970 and just three years later American Indian Movement (AIM) decided to declare a creation of an independent Lakota republic just in this place. The new republic was immediately surrounded by the U.S. Armed Forces and for the next few months there was something that the media usually called “a siege”. The Armed Forces' road blocks theoretically didn't let anybody go through but sometimes they would allow a truck full of food reach the besieged. One could also reach the village walking across the fields and rebellious young Indians from all over America emigrated to the new republic. The village lies on the Pine Ridge Reservation which belongs to Lakota Sioux but among leaders of AIM were also some Ojibwa, and among the besieged there were immigrants from the Navajo, the Iroquois and even from among Micmac people who lived on the east coast of Canada. In theory there were trenches and even some fire exchange but there was no attempt to take the village by force and it seemed that nobody really wanted to kill anybody. True, there were two casualties among the besieged but they seemed to be hit by stray bullets and the Armed Forces road blocks didn't stop cars taking the wounded to hospital. When in the end the agreement was reached according to which the leaders of the new republic were to be arrested, it turned out that they are not in the village because they escaped through the fields.

The media were present there, oh yes. An Indian uprising in the second half of the 20th century, this is something! Air time and the press were full of Wounded Knee. Not just in America but all over the world, I read about it in the press in the communist Poland at the time. Brave warriors hold out against the U.S. Army! Keep it up, boys!

The cemetery of Wounded Knee

But this was the "second Wounded Knee". The first, in 1890, was very different. It was the last "battle" in the Indian wars of the 19th century. A "battle"? The word is just as misleading as the "siege" of 1973. A group of a few hundred Indians , including women and children, danced the new "Ghost Dance" that was supposed to cause a miraculous disappearance of the white people from the continent. Commanders of army units stationed nearby decided it was an uprising, surrounded the dancers and told them to lay their arms. The fact that the Indians had arms should not be surprising to anybody, even today it is perfectly legal to own arms in America. Chief Bigfoot agreed to lay arms but supposedly not all warriors shared his opinions, some shots were heard and the commanders, hearing the shots, decided it was a battle and opened fire. Only a few years earlier, at the battle of Little Bighorn, a few hundred soldiers died and hardly any Indians, at Wounded Knee it was the other way around: hardly any soldiers died but the casualties among Indians are estimated between 150 and 300. It was winter, ground frozen solid, difficult to dig graves, so one big trench was dug and all the bodies thrown there.

I had to visit this place. It seems that i am not the only one attracted. This cemetery where a few hundred Indians are buried in one grave seems to be a kind of tourist attraction. There is a big car park there. Around it there are some stands where Indian women sell handicrafts. As I parked my car an Indian lady waved to me inviting to her stand. I asked her if she thinks I should start visiting a cemetery by buying trinkets. She didn't know what to answer but at least showed me where the cemetery was.

How misleading are the first contacts! Those who want to be the first to meet the newcomers are not necessary the good representatives of the inhabitants of the place.

At the entry to the graveyard I saw a big banner saying: NO MORE DESACRATING OUR SACRED LAND! Clearly somebody was again protesting against something. I didn't quite understan what the matter was. Anyway, I went into the graveyard. In the middle of it is a large grave surrounded by a wire mesh fence. There are many colourful ribbons tied to the mesh. These are ribbons which Indians tie to places where they pray. There are many small individual graves around the big one. One bigger than other, with a big granite tombstone; this is the grave of Buddy Lamonte, who died during the 1973 "siege".

Beyond the cemetery I see something that looks like a church, it even has a cross on the roof. There is a group of people on the porch. As I say "hallo" one of them comes to me and introduces himself as the deputy leader of the village council and starts explaining everything without me even asking me any question.

"This is our community centre. It used to be a Catholic church but the priests gave it to the reservation authorities and they gave it to us. Now we have here our community hall which we run without any outside financing. Here we have a kitchen, we prepare common meals for the elderly, my mother comes here to eat. Would you like to help us financially? For example by buying this T-shirt remembering the Little Bighorn battle..."

I ask where is the place of the 1973 protest and the answer surprises me completely. They, the inhabitants of the village, are gathered here in front of the church to protest against another protest that somebody else is planning. I am told that Bernadette Hollowhorn will tell me more. Bernadette does not need encouraging. She was a teenager then and remembers the siege. "We didn't take sides then but it was us, the inhabitants of this village, who suffered most" says she. "Myself and my mother had to run from our own home because there was no food. When we returned we found our home ransacked. It was the AIM activists who did that. And now some people who don't live in this village want to come here and set up a camp similar to that at Standing Rock in North Dakota. But at Standing Rock there was a pipeline being built across a graveyard but here there is no such thing! This place is famous only because our ancestors have been buried here. You see those tents next to the museum? Those people want to make a 'unity camp'. They say they are from AIM, but we don't want them here. We don't want anybody to use the name of Wounded Knee and make some business on it. Here our ancestors are buried and they should be left in peace."

I didn't realise there was a museum here. When I came I saw a colourful round building but there was nobody there and I didn't think it was anything worth attention (I visited the place later and learned that it was indeed not worth attention, it contained only a few badly exhibited pictures from the 1973 "siege" and nothing else).

The conversation on the veranda is in two languages, older ladies there talk in a language I don't understand and I am assuming this is Lakota. Younger people only speak English but they seem to understand what is being said. The younger people call the older women "grandmothers", which when spoken by an Indian is a sign of respect. Whatever a grandmother says has to be done. This is not an official function, nobody elects a grandmother, but when grandmothers says something seriously, they are listened to. Last year's protest at Standing Rock started when a grandmother didn't want to let a pipeline go through a family burial site. Here in wounded knee it is the other way around: the local grandmothers don't want some protesters to disturb the peace of ancestors buried here.

At one point I hear an interesting sentence said by one of the grandmothers: "In the old days women weren't chiefs but it was women who brought up chiefs to be responsible men".

Wounded Knee village

I hear them talking about organising the next meal. I say that I can go with them to the Pine Ridge supermarket, a few miles away, and buy them something. The grandmothers agree without hesitation. Phyllis Hollowhorn (who is, as I gather from the conversations, the main brain behind the protest) goes with me in my car and her daughter with her boyfriend in another car behind us. The ladies choose some burgers and other things and we go back.

On the way back my passenger is Nathan, the boyfriend of Phyllis' daughter. He says he has never met anybody from England (let alone Poland, about which he barely knows it exists). He asks me if I know Sundance. He has been a dancer for several years. This year he dragged five buffalo skulls sewn to his back with long thongs. He offered his suffering for all who experienced difficulties in their lives. This is Sundance, the dancers undergo torture but offer their suffering for others. Nathan asks me if I could come to the Sundance next year. I could pray for him so he could have strength to go through it. Because Sundance is not easy. It is four days without food or drink, even water. Lack of food is nothing, thirst is all the time in your head. This is why you need support of others who eat and drink in the name of the dancer. The first day is physical, the second is psychological, the third day is emotional, the fourth day is spiritual. It is hard but after the fourth day you don't want to stop. The fourth day is the piercing day when the skin on the chest of back of the dancer is pierced and thongs sewn through. Some dancers sew themselves to the central tree and free themselves in dance. Others - like Nathan - drag buffalo skulls on the ground until the skulls tear themselves off.

Later, as we sit on the verandah before the cemetery, two tourists come to see the graves. They come to us and the conversation touches the Sundance. They cannot understand: How it is, buffalo skulls sewn to the skin? To make them understand Nathn takes off his shirt to show them the scars.

Nathan comes from another place but he lives at Wounded Knee with his girlfriend and her five children from her previous relationship in the house of his mother in law. There is some communal housing in the rez but not enough and the houses are overcrowded. Nathan lives with ten other people in a house of four bedrooms. He and his girlfriend are waiting for their own place but they always hear "another two weeks". He himself is half-Sioux and half-Navajo, part of his life he spent on Navajo rez, but in the end he chose the tradition of his mother. This is why he is a Sundancer. He takes part i this protest because he trusts his mother-in-law. Phyllis Hollowhorn is respected in the village, she is one of those grandmothers whose word counts. Today's controversy about protests is similar to the times of Crazy Horse and Red Cloud. Crazy Horse wanted his own glory, he fought a war in which he could win a battle and gain fame but he couldn't win the war because all his arms and ammunition he had from his enemy, the Americans. For Red Cloud the good of his people was more important, therefore he didn't join this war.

There is some commotion at the foot of the hill on the other side. It seems that another camp is forming there. "They are the horse raiders", says grandmother Bernadette. "Tomorrow they will ride in protest to Whiteclay. There is another protest camp there at Whiteclay, they protest against drunkenness. It is an interesting place, you should go there."

Well, if a grandmother says so, one has to listen. That I am not an Indian? Well, not quite, but let's be honest: who didn't want to be an Indian at one time?

Pine Ridge supermarket

You will find this text, 
and many more on the subject, 
in my book "DO THEY STILL LIVE IN WIGWAMS?":