The Battle of Lincoln Capitol

Frank LaMere on the steps of Lincoln Capitol

"This will be the first victory of Lakotas since the battle of Little Bighorn! Almost hundred and fifty years the Lakotas weren't allowed to win!", spoke Frank LaMere on the steps of the Capitol in Lincoln, Nebraska.

"If we win, it won't be time to congratulate ourselves, because we will have achieved something obvious, so really we will have achieved nothing. This is just the beginning of the road. There will be time for the prayer of thanks and for asking for forgiveness that we have done so little."

"Thank you all for coming here. This is not accident. I don't believe in accidents. We are here so we can learn from each other."

Frank LaMere stood on the steps of Lincoln Capitol, where a few minutes previously there was a hearing of Nebraska High Court. The subject of the hearing was a little village in the north-western corner of the state, just outside the border of the Pine Ridge Reservation of the Sioux. The village was called Whiteclay and its inhabitants until recently lived off selling beer to the Sioux. On the reservation alcohol is treated as a drug, it is illegal to possess or consume it, whereas in neighbouring Nebraska one can sell beer without restrictions. In Whiteclay, whose population was about ten persons, there were four corner shops selling whatever corner shops sold, but in this case it was obviously mostly beer. Consequently if someone wanted to see drunk Injuns and feel racially superior, one could go to Whiteclay, some drunk Sioux were guaranteed to be there. They even say that in Whiteclay one could use services of some thirsty girl, who performed the said services at the back of one of the stores for just a few beers. They say that even murders were committed under the influence. One could say that legalizing alcohol on the rez could solve the problem, but this ban was not imposed from above. There is democracy on the rez and suggestions of legalizing alcohol were repeatedly rejected in referendums. So the reservation authorities sued the shops in Whiteclay and won the case: in spring 2017 the shops lost licence to sell alcohol. The only street in the village suddenly became empty. The shop owners appealed to the state High Court and so there was a hearing. As it happened - I was there, too. Frank LaMere would say that this was no coincidence, we were there to learn something. One could say that I was there so my potential reader could learn something as well.

Lincoln Capitol

"The first victory of Lakotas since the time of Little Bighorn" did not take place in the prairies od the Rockies. Perhaps many years ago there were prairies there but today this is the centre of the city of Lincoln, the capital of Nebraska. Right in the centre stands the capitol, a tall building with a golden dome on the top. Frank LaMere is not a Lakota but Winnebago but he is a high ranking activist of the Democratic Party in Nebraska and in the past he was an activist of the American Indian Movement. Dressed in a suit (as a parliamentarian should be) he spoke on the steps of the Capitol because the press expected that. A group of Indian youth around him held boards with slogans: "Nebraska does not need Native misery money", "Stop the liquid genocide". The press took pictures. I am somewhere in those pictures.

I came because I heard about the planned court hearing a few days earlier, in a protest camp at Whiteclay. I came and immediately found myself among urban Indians. I was advised to go to the Indian Centre in Lincoln, there was to be a meal as well as places to sleep for the protesters who would come from the Whiteclay camp. I arrived in the evening and as I entered the hall I saw Byron with his dog Nick. It was the same Byron whom I met a few days earlier at Whiteclay. He was talking to a local Indian of Omaha tribe. Byron introduced him as a medicine man who just a few moments ago led a prayer for those who came from afar. The medicine man talked about his way of healing, very different from the Western medicine. He told us how one of his relatives was diagnosed with schizophrenia because she heard voices. "But we see it in a different way", he said. "She heard voices of the dead who stayed on earth because they weren't allowed to rest. I told those spirits during the ceremony to leave her alone and follow me. Later I passed them to the emissaries of the Creator and they took them to the Milky Way."

Another person in the hall was Michelle, an Indian girl in a red T-shirt with "go red" written on it. I met her at the Whiteclay camp as well. Seeing me she said that I could put up my tent on the lawn behind the building . She then went out for a minute and returned with two other Indian girls, who led me around the building and showed the place. There was also a big tipi put up on the lawn. "If you want you could stay with us in the tipi", said one of the girls, which proposition I accepted.

The Indian Girl Michelle

The girls' names were Felicia and Lucinda, there was also Lucinda's little daughter. They had a huge pot of soup for those who were supposed to come. There were supposed to be more people from Whiteclay camp but they had some financial help from the Pine Ridge Reservation authorities, the support included hotels and they preferred to sleep in hotels rather than in a tipi. As a result the only other person in the tipi was a guy who came from Minneapolis and didn't have any hotel paid for. At it turned out he was, like Felicia and Lucinda, a combatant of the Standing Rock protests the previous winter. During that protest there were clashes with the police, who wanted to remove the protesters. The guy from Minneapolis had some films from those clashes and showed them on his laptop. Half the night in the tipi we watched the most recent movies.

The following night Lucinda told me how herself and Felicia got involved in this protest. After the court hearing everyone went home, only Lucinda and her daughter stayed with me in the tipi. We talked long into the night and Lucinda told me how Michelle, the Indian girl in the red T-shirt, asked them if they wouldn't want to go to take some food to the protesters. They drove there all night in a car loaded to the limits with boxes on their knees, but it was nothing, when they reached the camp, they felt incredible energy. This was the camp of Water Guardians. The camp at Standing Rock had been closed since then but other have sprung up in other places, for example at Whiteclay. Somebody wanted to start one at Wounded Knee but there were some problems there. Also on the lawn behind the Indian Centre at Lincoln there was to be a camp for a few days. Lucinda and Felicia are urban Indians, they live and work at Lincoln, but they are prepared to support protests on reservations.

In a tipi

Lucinda also spoke about a medicine woman who earlier this evening had led a ceremony in the hall of the Indian centre. Lucinda and Felicia wanted to learn from her and initially she accepted them as disciples, but later she treated them as if they were servants. For example she phoned them because she wanted to buy something and bring it home to her. What does it have to do with the secret knowledge? (I thought at this moment that this might have been a test that the girls failed because humility is a requirement necessary to understand any secret knowledge). The medicine lady is especially in conflict with Felicia. She says that Felicia follows New Age philosophy but Felicia doesn't follow New Age, she just takes from each tradition what is best for her (and I thought at this moment that this is a strange way of learning, this choosing what one wants to learn; it is as if a children decided which letters from which alphabet they want to learn).

I went to the ceremony that the medicine woman led. I heard an Indian woman in the hall singing a song with an accompaniment of a little hand drum. A few people sat around an oyster shell on which a twig of prairie sage was burning. I joined the circle. The medicine woman having finished a song gave me the shell so the smoke would flow around me. The ceremony was in memory of a mum whose body has recently been found in a river but who left a little baby. The spirits of the dead have to be led to where they are supposed to go, this is what medicine men do. The spirits aren't any wiser only because they died. Some spirits even after their death don't know that they died and are shocked when they learn about it.

At the end of the ceremony we smoked the sacred pipe. Filling the pipe is a ceremony in itself. Four pinches of tobacco go in, each offered first to each of the four directions. The pipe goes from hand to hand clockwise around the circle, every participant has to inhale. Strong native tobacco almost made my head spin.

This was an authentic Indian ceremony in the hall of the Indian Centre, in artificial light, not a show for tourists. My impression of the medicine woman was very different than Lucinda's. I had an impression that her very presence brought something that cannot be conveyed in words. Maybe this was just an impression but this is what it was.

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