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?":

Whiteclay

Sweat lodge

Remains of a camp fire are still smouldering in front of a sweat lodge. A buffalo skull and a long pipe lay in front of the lodge entry. There was a ceremony here last night. For the Sioux the sweat lodge is not just a steam bath, it has spiritual significance.

Last night at first a camp fire was kindled, thirty two big round stones placed in the fire and sprinkled with tobacco. When the stones became white hot they were taken to a hole dug in the middle of the lodge. Then the participants in the ceremony entered, dressed only in clothing that could be drenched in sweat: women wore loose dresses, men had boxer shorts (I read somewhere that one should enter the lodge naked; apparently moral standards fall everywhere). Two boys entered with their hand drums. The leader of the ceremony sat by the entry, a container full of water and a ladle next to him. The helper who brought the stones from the fireplace remained outside, his job was to open and close the entry flap. The sweat lodge is covered with heavy blankets and has no opening at the top, so when the entry flap is closed it gets completely dark inside. The leaders pours water on the stones, the water hisses and fills the lodge with steam. The temperature rises immediately and in a few minutes one starts sweating profusely. The boys with drums start singing a song in Lakota language. After about half an hour somebody asked for fresh air, the leader stopped the ceremony for a time and the entry flap was opened, light from the fire shone in. One could breathe fresh air but only bending down to the ground. The break did not last long, the flap was closed again, water hissed on the stones and the temperature rose, everybody was sweating and the boys sang to the regular rhythm of their drums. There were a couple more breaks like this. The whole ceremony lasted about two hours. In the end everybody left the lodge, the sacred pipe was lit up, at first the leader blew some smoke in four directions, then the pipe went around the circle, everybody having just one puff. At the end of the whole ceremony everybody shook everybody else's hand.

I took part in this ceremony and I must say I felt honoured. I had read about it and I knew it was practised by more traditionally minded Lakotas. It is not practised every day but rather as a preparatory rite of spiritual cleansing before other ceremonies, for example the Sundance. Indeed, there is a feeling of even physical purification when one comes out from a seam bath like this. I read somewhere that one has to know one of the traditional people to be invited to such a ceremony but here I was, having arrived at the Camp Whiteclay Justice only a few hours ago, having learned about the camp's existence only a day before and having arrived at the Pine Ridge Reservation only two days ago.

An Indian grandmother I met at Wounded Knee told me about it. There were some horse riders camping there, members of horse riding clubs, who took part in a protest ride from Wounded Knee to Whiteclay. Whiteclay is a tiny village just outside the reservation, it has about ten inhabitants but four shops selling beer. Alcohol is prohibited on the rez but who can stop anyone sell it just outside its border, in the neighbouring state of Nebraska? For years Whiteclay was the place where one could see the proverbial drunk Injuns. The drunk Injun is now an American stereotype. The Sioux, once proud warriors, came to Whiteclay to drown their melancholy. The sober Indian organisations, including the reservation authorities, tried to stop all this. They won a court case in Nebraska and the authorities did not extend the alcohol licence to the four shops. The shop owners of course appealed. As I arrived at Whiteclay I was told that in a few days time there was going to be a hearing at the High Court in Lincoln. The young riders protested against opening of the shops. So did those who joined the Camp Whiteclay Justice. So when I heard about this camp I knew, I had to be there as well.

Drunk Indians are a problem well known in America. Proud and fearless Sioux warriors are the thing of the past. Crazy Horse, whose gigantic sculpture some crazy Pole is trying to make in the Black Hills, might have been as fearless as the warriors in movies but the modern stereotype is a drunkard begging in front of a supermarket. An overage American is of course just as likely to meet a white drunkard by the supermarket but a white bum is not a representative of the whole white race because person sees white people constantly in other situations: at home, at work, in church, in shops, on a train and a drunk by a supermarket is one of many white people seen. However, a white person is much less likely to see Indians in other situations so a drunk by a supermarket is in his eyes a representative of the race.

Joe Pullian

Which of course does not mean that there is no problem. The problem must be there if there is a ban on the rez. Despite the ban my first experience of the Sioux was exactly that: drunks in front of the supermarket. As I drove into the Pine Ridge Reservation I stopped in the first place with a supermarket and some fast food places. As I got out of my car a drunkard approached and asked for change because he was hungry. I bought him some food but a minute later I had seven more like him. And interestingly on the board at the entry to the protest camp Whiteclay Justice has also written clearly that alcohol is not allowed there.

I found the camp thanks to this board as the rest is invisible from the road. A few tents, a few tipis (modern ones, transported on the roof of a camper van), a field kitchen. As I drove in I saw some people gathered around a camp fire. A man in a red T-shirt came to greet me. This was Joe Pulliam, the leader of the camp. He was happy to answer all the questions. The protest here is to remind people that sobriety is important. Hearing that I was just coming from Wounded Knee he said that he supported the grandmothers there and not the new-agers who often drink or take some other substances. It was so at the end of the Standing Rock protest, where he himself would sometimes have a drink. Not here, though, this camp is sober. The camp is maintained only by donations and by the sale of pictures Joe paints. He is an artist and showed me some of his pictures: Indian motives painted on handwritten pages pulled out of some old reservation statistics books. He sells the originals for a few hundred dollars and prints for a few tens. He mentioned that they have a sweat lodge every evening and if I stay overnight i could take part.

The riders from Wounded Knee came in the early afternoon. Everybody from the camp went to the village of Whiteclay, which consisted of those four shops and basically nothing else. I had never been there before but still I had an impression that something has finished. There was an air of emptiness. The riders galloped through the village, then turned around and entered from the other side, from Nebraska, colours flying. A big flag of Ogalala Nation and some other flags. In the middle of the village they formed a circle. Some young boys got off their horses and with an accompaniment of a drum sang a song in Lakota. Some people gave speeches. I had no idea who the speakers were but later I learned that one of them was Brian Brewer, the chief of Pine Ridge Reservation.

Later the riders rode into the camp and there they had some more songs and more speeches about virtues of sobriety. In the end the horses were led to the pasture and the riders invited for lunch.

There were talks around the camp fire long into the night and again in the morning. Mixed company, some Indians and some white people. Joe is probably mixed himself, he says he is a Lakota but he doesn't look very Indian. There are some white supporters, like Carl, a young blues musician from New York, or Byron, an old pensioner travelling in an old pick up with his equally old dog. However, the majority of campers are proper Indians, like Rudel Bearshirt from Wounded Knee or Curly, who leads ceremonies. Or like a local grandmother whose name I don't recall but who takes an active part in any discussion. Or Frank Bearkiller who came for a short visit with his daughter and granddaughter. Talks long into the night, many different talks. Like that of Frank Bearkiller who told us his life story. He grew up on the reservation but saw what is beyond because his father subscribed the National Geographic. Frank wanted to see the world beyond the rez and one day he parted and travelled all around the continent. It took him two and a half years. He told us also how he quit drinking. This was after a talk with his grandmother who suggested this if he wanted to improve his life. Any Indian worth his salt follows an advise of his grandmother and Frank wanted to be worth his salt.

Riders at Whiteclay

It is quite interesting: many times I heard sober Indians telling a story how they stopped drinking. It seems they consider it an important moment in their lives. I also heard sober Indians when meeting for the first time asking each other: "When did you quit drinking?"

There was also a discussion about the figure of Crazy Horse in the Black Hills. The discussion moved to this subject when my interlocutors learned that I - like the crazy sculptor of the figure - am Polish. For my interlocutors creating any kind of giant sculpture out of a mountain is a sacrilege. "Why don't you do something like this in your own country?" asked Curly. I said I can't answer because this is not something that would actually interest me. "What do you mean? You have taken your picture, at Mt. Rushmore, haven't you?" I said that I didn't go either to Mt. Rushmore or to the Crazy Horse sculpture. This caused a round of laughter. The grandmother sitting in th circle said that Crazy Horse appeared to her in a dream. "They will never finish this figure", she said. "This figure shows direction where the whites said the Sioux were supposed to live but when Crazy Horse appeared to me in my dream he was pointing the other direction."

Interesting, this burst of laughter. They seem to have a stereotype of a white man who in the Black Hills has to take a selfie with the presidential faces at Mt. Rushmore. The burst of laughter suggests that my behaviour is to them no less surprising than to a white European a sight of a chief riding a Ford Mustang rather than a wild horse.

In the meantime Curly, who leads ceremonies in the camp, says quite interesting things.

"You take many pictures but during a ceremony you can't. If I see you take pictures I'll take your camera and wont give it back. This is because you will go to a distant country and the photographed ceremony will still work but I won't be there to protect you from bad effects...

"This is sacred land. We pray here but we don't call anybody by name. If you name someone, you won't let him rest. When you pray you call someone by name and therefore you don't let him rest. We don't name him therefore we have gifts.

"This Bible of yours does not belong here. The Bible talks about the past, you want to bring back the past. You have this Bible and it talks about Jesus. Has anybody met Jesus? Is there anybody going to meet him? But Wisdom can only be passed from heart to heart.

"The youngsters keep asking questions and this means that they don't listen. You have to have eyes and ears open. Whoever has Wisdom can pass it on only when he knows that the listener is able to take it."

At one point Joe mentioned that somebody from the Reservation Council gave him some money and now wants to see the accounts. Joe says that he only asked for funds for some people to go to Lincoln for the court hearing. There will be the appeal hearing about the Whiteclay shops in Lincoln in a few days.

How did he say it? There will be a court hearing in a few days in Lincoln? It looks like my Sioux trail will take me to another interesting place.

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

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?":

The old masters of Arnhem Land

Landscape of Arnhem Land

     Arnhem Land, the Top End of Australia, is an unwelcoming country. It is a country where for three months of the year it rains constantly, rivers burst their banks and carry away cars and when the drivers try to get out of the vehicles, they see grinning crocodiles waiting for a snack. It is a country where for nine months it doesn't rain at all and the once mighty rivers become chains of billabongs in whose stagnant waters grinning crocs wait for tourists who come too close to the shore. It is a country where above those billabongs raise rocks of incredible shapes, rocks that are perhaps pretty but one cannot even graze cattle properly between them. It is a country which the white owners of Australia consider hostile and useless. Or rather it has been decided that it is useless for white settlers but could be used as a reservation for Aborigines.

     The Aborigines of course lived there already and and had some input in its reputation as a hostile country. In the beginning of the 20th century it was a country where war never ended. It was a war fought with spears which - when thrown with a spear-thrower - could pierce a man from more than a hundred yards. Although sometimes a war between two particular groups ended and there was a peace ceremony - a most peculiar one, as many of their customs. As a sign of peace the chiefs exchanged their wives and this exchange was consumed on the spot, with everybody present. Nobody needed to take their clothes off for this as everybody walked around naked anyway. However, neither walking around naked nor this peculiar sign of peace meant that the people were promiscuous. Everybody knew who was whose spouse and one could be speared for running away with somebody else's wife. The runaway wife would be treated more leniently, only her tigh would by run through with a spear. She wouldn't complain, on the contrary, if she was denied the punishment, she might think that she wasn't attractive enough. Funeral rites were no less astonishing. If a respected clan member died, his body was roasted and eaten by the family, afterwards his bones were placed in a coffin made of a hollow log. This coffin was afterwards carried for years everywhere wherever the family moved, which was constant, as the Arnhem Land inhabitants were nomads.

Billabong

     Who would want to live in a country like this? Perhaps some adventure-seekers, like Paddy Cahill, who in 1906 set up a cattle station in Oenpelli, on the western edge of Arhem Land. He had problems of finding white workers and employed Aborigines as stockmen. Paddy Cahill knew Aborigines well, he had lived among them before and even learned a few of their languages.

     Another kind of people attracted to places like Arnhem Land were anthropologists. For them meeting people who had such strange customs was worthy of all the inconveniences of visiting such an inhospitable country. In a way the anthropologists were unusual among the white people as they saw these naked Aborigines not as wild people without culture but as people with a very different culture. But how to talk to them? Perhaps with help of an uneducated farmer like Paddy Cahill, who can speak some of the native languages?

     Baldwin Spencer, an anthropologist and a professor of the newly created University of Melbourne, did exactly that. He arrived at Oenpelli in 1912. He noted that the Kakadu people of Arnhem Land lead a nomadic life during the dry season but in the wet they stayed put in one place, built shelters from eucalyptus bark and painted strange creatures on their walls. He noted also that these figures painted on bark are quite similar to paintings in ancient caves in the area. He wanted such pictures in his museum in Melbourne and asked if somebody could paint them for him on a specially prepared piece of bark. Thus the precedent was created: bark paintings were made for people from an alien civilisation. Later a few more expeditions visited this mysterious land and collected bark paintings. The biggest one was made in 1948, after a war that was short, only a few years, but the weapons used were not spears but flying machines and bombs, some even atomic bombs. After that war ended the white owners of Australia decided they have to learn something about the country they had fought such a fierce war for. An expedition was sent there, led by C. P. Mountford. This expedition acquired the biggest collection of bark paintings before the market for Aboriginal art appeared. Thanks to these collections we can now observe how this art evolved.

Mother goddes in Arnhem Land rock painting

     The anthropologists noted that the bark huts and also the portable coffins were painted but it was by no means insignificant what was painted on them or who painted it. Only a member of a particular clan could paint particular patterns, the patterns were owned by a clan and nobody else was allowed to paint them. It was the same with body painting. One had to be adequately painted for a particular occasion in exactly the same way as in other civilisations people have to be dressed in a particular manner depending on where that are or what they do. In exactly the same way as in other civilisations somebody's social class can be guessed after the clothing that person wears, in Arnhem Land the Aboriginal people know who is from which clan seeing their body painting. The coffins and dwellings also have to be painted in a correct manner.

     But this is not all. The Arnhem Land Aborigines created bark paintings to illustrate myths (in Australia usually called "dreamings"). Those paintings were used for instruction during initiation ceremonies for boys. Each of those paintings had more than one meaning, the outer meaning was explained to boys and the inner meaning only to mature men. After the ceremony those paintings were destroyed (unless there was an anthropological expedition in the vicinity). Some of these pictures showed mythical progenitors with extra large genitals. One may think it logical that the mother goddess is pictured with her labia bigger than anything else but strangely for some of the white visitors this was totally unacceptable. Not just the labia but the very fact that somebody believed in a mother goddess.

Bark painting collected by Mountford

     This was because not only adventurers and anthropologists travelled to Arnhem Land. This country, where people wandered naked having never heard about Jesus, was a fertile land for missionaries. In 1925 the Anglican Church sent missionaries to Oenpelli, ten years later the Methodist church set up a mission on the east coast in a place called Yirrkala. Soon these two centres became the main points of contact between civilisations.

      For the first missionaries the initial challenge was the fashion because the natives favoured their birthday suit. A brave missionary can go to a wild place and build a church but could he let naked people enter it? Of course not! However, fashion tends to change everywhere, even in Arnhem Land. Wilbur Chaseling, the missionary in Yirrkala, wrote that in 1930ties there was a fashion among the young people for wearing clothes. Of course a naked man from the bush cannot just go to a shop in Darwin and buy a suit. The clothes worn by the Blackfellas of Arnhem Land in the 1930ties were acquired in other ways and varied immensely. Reactions to this fashion varied also, depending on the point of view. Tribal elders thought the old morals were breaking down because youngsters tried to hide something whereas a missionary was astonished to see a muscular warrior dressed in a Japanese ladies pyjama. It was only the youngsters, though, that were following this new fashion, the older people claimed that an honest person has nothing to hide and preferred their birthday suits.

     The fashion nevertheless appeared and to follow it one needed some purchasing power. How to acquire this power, though? Maybe selling bark pictures to anthropologists? The anthropologists are a very restricted market, their expeditions are not every day occurrences. The idea was, however, picked up by missionaries, they bought the paintings from their potential congregations and sold them in the cities on the coast. But how to pay the artists for their work? Some missionaries decided to pay depending on time needed to create a painting and how elaborate it was. If the buyer wants more elaborate pictures, then the artists will of course comply. Modern critics note the number of tiny strokes that was dramatically increased in Arnhem Land pictures around this time. Animals painted with just a few strokes on paintings collected by Spencer and Mountford from 1950ties on are covered in a net of minute strokes.

Modern mythical figure

     There was also another influence by the missionaries: the disappearance of the enlarged genitals. In the old days the labia of a mythical mother of a clan were painted bigger than anything else in the picture because they were holy. For a Christian missionary no labia can ever be holy. Anyway, how can one hang a picture with extra big labia in an art gallery? It would be difficult to find a buyer for such a picture therefore the mythical mother cannot have extra-large labia. In fact it would be best if she could wear knickers. Equally, an artist who claims he has nothing to hide and therefore walks around naked cannot be taken to an opening of an exhibition in Sydney. However, the trends in fashion among the inhabitant of Arnhem Land helped, the old morals were forgotten and the Blackfellas started wearing clothes.

     To be true, this particular change of fashion might have been a little forced. The anthropologists were an exception, most of the white owners of Australia thought that on the other side of the civilisational barrier is not another civilisation but no civilisation at all. Walking around naked was an obvious sign of a complete lack of civilisation. What was more, according to Australian law walking around naked in public places was illegal. Not sending children to schools was also illegal so schools were organised for the Blackfella kids. In the first half of the 20th century the missionaries ran those schools so the recent nomads congregated around missions like Oenpelli and Yirrkala.

     There was one more kind of Whitefellas who wanted to go to Arnhem Land: the miners. The land may be unwelcome for farmers but there can always be something worth digging. Some areas of Arnhem Land were considered haunted by Aborigines, entering there was a taboo and spirits would kill anybody who broke this taboo. No such taboos for white miners, however. In 1950ties uranium was found in those haunted places and mining companies were given government license to dig it. It was the time when the British needed uranium to build their atomic bombs.

     Having been to schools the Aborigines understood the world of the white people. They understood what courts were for. Perhaps the courts could be used to prove that the owners of Arnhem Land are its original inhabitants. For the clans the proof of ownership (always of clans, never of individuals) were ancient tales retold with the aid of bark paintings. Other clans of Arnhem Land respected this ancient law but would the courts of white owners of Australia respect this? In 1963 the clans around Yirrkala mission decided to check it. They sent to the Australian Parliament in Canberra a petition protesting against mining activity on clan lands. The government gave companies the licence but nobody asked the clans who owned that land. The petition, known as The Yirrkala Bark petition, was written in English but around the English text the history proving the clan ownership was painted on bark. In this case the ruling was against the Aborigines but the medial noise around it caused more friendly decisions later.

     Australian law could not accept a claim that a clan owned some land from times immemorial because the law of the white owners of Australia was based on constatation that nobody owned any land there when the first white people came. There were some nomadic hunters there but they walked around naked so it was obvious that they could not own land. They didn't have Australian citizenship anyway. They were considered too primitive to understand what "citizenship" meant and were considered "wards" of the state. They had to be taught how to wear clothes. But 1960ties was the time of revolutionary changes. In Australia there was a referendum among the white owners of the country whether the Aborigines can be given citizenship and as a result they are now citizens of their own country.

     The revolutionary changes were felt not only in Australia. The first half of the 20th century was the time of cubism, expressionism, abstractionism and other avant-garde artistic movements. For the cubists art of exotic peoples was not just worthy of note, it was an example to follow. It is well known that the cubists followed African sculpture but there is also an anecdote that Picasso himself, seeing some pictures of the Arnhem Land bark painter named Yirawala, said that he himself would like to paint like this. If Picasso himself says things like this, then it must be proper art, not just specimens for museum of anthropology. Yirawala paintings appeared in art galleries and museums and he himself even received the Order of the British Empire.

Painting of Yirawala

     It is interesting how different things interest people from different civilisations. For the inhabitants of Arnhem Land it is important whose bones are in a coffin painted in a certain pattern or who lives in a hut thus decorated. For the new arrivals, members of a civilisation that developed overseas, such things were not important. They wanted to know the name of a person who painted a coffin or a hut, or a stylised animal on a piece of bark especially cut for the purpose. To be more precise - as long as the bark painting was treated as an object in a museum of anthropology, nobody was really interested in the name of the artist. The anthropological specimens were created by "a people". But if the same specimen was hanged in an art gallery, then it was a different matter, then the name of the artist had to be known. Actually it shouldn't be just a name, it had to be a first name and a surname. If an artist doesn't have both, then either of the two had to be added. This was the case of Yirawala, who had only one name, but in some catalogues appeared as "Billy Yirawala". He himself protested but the creators of the catalogues decided that one name is not enough. It would be as if he appeared naked at an exhibition in Sydney.

     Yirawala is the best known artist from Arnhem Land. He had exhibitions in the cities on the coast and even in Europe. His paintings were treated like works of art, like those of Picasso. For the white public this may sound like an honour but Yirawala himself protested saying that his paintings are really religious in nature. They are in his view comparable to the Bible, a compendium of spiritual knowledge of Kuwinjku people. He said that missionaries came to tell the Blackfellas what they believe, so he - a Blackfella - wanted to teach the white people what the Kuwinjku believe. He said that each of his pictures had several levels of meaning, the deepest meanings would only be told to those initiated. He sang sacred songs when he painted in the same way as the icon painter prays when painting a holy image. Yirawala's paintings could be compared to icons of the Orthodox Church, both are supposed to lead the viewer towards the unseen world. Just like the icons, in the modern world Yirawala's paintings became just goods to buy and sell. However expensive they might be, for a white buyer they are just this, nothing else.

     Yirawala is considered the main painter of the so-called "school of Oenpelli". Modern critics recognise two clearly recognisable schools of Arnhem Land painting, the "school of Oenpelli" in the west and the "school of Yirrkala" in the east. Painters from Oenpelli paint their figures on a background of one colour. Painted animals are often shown with their inner organs, like intestines or bones, clearly visible. Such x-ray paintings of animals are often seen in rock paintings which can be found in the western part of Arnhem Land. Bark painting from Oenpelli area are considered a direct continuation of rock painting. There is one significant difference, however: the animals painted of bark are filled with intricate network of lines called rarrk.

Painting of the Yirrkala school

     The paintings of the Yirrkala school may look superficially similar but stylistically they are very different. They are also covered with an intricate network of tiny strokes in four colours of ochre, but in Yirrkala paintings these strokes form a pattern covering the background whereas the figures appear on that background painted in one colour, usually black. The patterns are property of particular clans and only the clan members may paint them, so seeing a picture one can tell to which clan the artist belonged. Often a painting is an illustration of a dreaming in several scenes in neighbouring squares, comic-like. An interesting process can be observed here: in the 1940ties some anthropologists collected such illustrations of dreamings made on paper with pencils of all colours, blue, green and others. Having access to new technology the artists used new possibilities. The art market, however, did not like this sort of development, only the "authentic" pictures made on bark with the four colours of ochre were accepted.

     From the 1950ties the individual artists are known. Probably the best known painters of Yirrkala school are the members of the Marika family: Malawan, his younger brother Mathman, Malawan's son Wantjuk as well as their friend Narritjin. Apart from creating individual works they are known for paintings they made together as a team. The famous Yirrkala petition to the Parliament was such team creation. Another famous picture created by this team were two panels for Yirrkala church. They were painted in 1963 and illustrated dreamings of Yolngu people living in the area. They were created at a time when the resident pastor was sympathetic to the Aboriginal culture and placed the panels in the church. A pastor who came later decided that they are illustrations of pagan myths and removed them from the church. At the time it was a well known case and possibly these panels could be the best known picture of Yirrkala school if not for the fact that they are now exhibited in a special place in Yirrkala and to see them one has to travel there. And to be sure, this is not a simple matter.

     This is because Arnhem Land is still a wild country. The inhabitants nowadays are fully dressed and send their children to school but they still prefer to live in small distant outstations where there are no roads. There are only a few dirt tracks in the whole of Arnhem Land and no tarmac roads at all. Perhaps the easiest place to reach is Oenpelli, which is only 16 kilometres from Ubirr, where tourists drive on tarmac to see the famous rock paintings. There is a dirt track from Ubirr to Oenpelli, but one has to cross croc infested East Alligator River. There is a concrete sealed ford there but the current is sometimes quite rapid and takes cars with it. I know this because I stood there and decided not to cross.

Road to Oenpelli

You will find this article, and many others, in my book "ART ETHNO".