When we speak of "mitakuye oyasin" -all my relatives, we know always
that the growing and moving things of the earth, the winged, the
four-legged, and the two legged are all children of the earth and they,
too, want to live. So we say mitakuye oyasin.
Black Elk
I have used this quote because it explicitly verbalizes and puts us
into the state of mind, which the ohunkaka demonstrates; a way of
relating to our environment that is Lakota. The traditional Lakota
folk story, the ohunkaka is particularly suited for use in the
political restructuring of the Lakota future, as it has embedded in it
the symbology of culturally-specific features that could be used to
redefine the Lakota relationship to its past and thus, redirect the
perceived future of the people. As noted by Elaine Jahner in
"Cognitive Style Oral Literature" the "Lakota ohunkaka function
primarily as pedagogical means." The most recent, and perhaps, most
explicitly political use of the _Stone Boy (Inya Hos ki)_, was seen in
the prepared statements given by Charlotte Black Elk, Lakota Oral
Historian, at the Sioux Nation Black Hills Act hearings held on
Wednesday, July 16, 1986 at the U.S. Senate. In her testimony, Ms.
Black Elk states that her purpose is to show that "traditional Ikce
(Lakota) philosophical principles and theological concepts for
organizational design and management practice is one the Lakota have
used for thousands of generations, and is still appropriate,
particularly for the Black Hills."
This need to reaffirm the Lakota people's connection to the land--
particularly to the Black Hills, through myth arose out of the attempts
by the United States to negate the Lakota's claim through numerous
practices. This has included the use of myth, in the sense that it is
as a way of relating to a mutually agreed upon past history of a
people. This myth written and propagated by Americans, rewrote the
history of the Lakota and introduced them as recent denizens of the
plains, and put their discovery of the Black Hills, the sacred Paha
Sapa at about roughly the same time as that of European explorers like
the Vendryes brothers, intrepid 18th century European pioneers of the
Dakota territory. As recorded by Emerson Hough in 1909, "The Sioux did
not always live in Dakota, but once dwelt in South Carolina, where
their remnants were cleaned up by the savage Iroquois even after the
establishment of the English settlements on the Atlantic coast."
Thomas Mails, biographer of Chief Frank Fools Crow, despite noting that
Mr. Hough did not see fit to site any sources for this information,
asserts that we should accept it in good faith as have many other
experts of Sioux history.
This myth is far from dead today,this idea is being propagated by even
popular commercial historians like James Michenor in his best-selling
epic Centennial, published in 1974. He writes, "do not depict the
plains Indians as having been for any great length of time in the
locations where the white man discovered them. Do not fall into the
error of writing about white men intruding into areas which the Indian
had held from time immemorial." He then goes on to assert that from
6,000 B.C. to 1750 A.D. the Great Plains were devoid of "permanently
settled human beings," and he concludes that, "it must not be thought
that they lived there. They were nomads, hunters who went wherever the
Bison went and it was of no concern to them what type of land they
lived on. THEY HAD NO HOME."
Of course, the power of this myth to limit or even possibly eliminate
Lakota land claims to the Black Hills is obvious, and is hotly
contested by the Lakota themselves. Dr. David B. Miller, a professor
of History at Black Hills State College, Spearfish, South Dakota draws
the obvious legal question that the new American myth begs, "at what
point in time does an historic seizure of land without just
compensation become a moot point?" As the Chairperson of the Open
Hills Association, a political organization that stands in opposition
to the Sioux Nation Black Hills Act (the Bradley bill), he states,
"opponents of the Bradley bill believe that the bill's supporters
should offer traditional and historical evidence such as that offered
by the Cheyenne for Bear Butte to substantiate Lakota claims for sacred
aspects of the Black Hills."
The testimony and prepared statement given by Ms. Black Elk is unique
in its explicit use of the ohunkaka and other culture-specific features
to directly address this question. The way in which she uses these
thematic structures in such original new ways calls to mind the
statements made by an earlier generation of Lakota to Lakota
ethnologist Ella Deloria concerning the adaptations embodied in George
Sword's storytelling: "tales were never told in that manner. We had
tales treating of Ikto, Iya, the Owl Maker, the cold wizard, the old
woman or witch, coyote, and these were personified as humans and
besides them there was nothing." Ms. Black Elk may be particularly
able to tackle this task; as she notes in her testimony, she is the
great-granddaughter of the famous Lakota medicine man and visionary of
Black Elk Speaks, as well as the great-granddaughter of Hollow Horn and
a college graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Earlier testimony given in previous years, including that of the 1974
"Sioux Treaty Hearings" held in Lincoln, Nebraska has never been so
specific in its detail. Although, the ideas given form by the ohunkaka
Black Elk recounts have been articulated by elders like the great
medicine men Chief Frank Fools Crow. As recorded in his biography,
"when Fools Crow said this same thing, and stooped down as he did so to
grab a handful of South Dakota dirt . . . in the Sioux mind they have
always been an integral part of the Plains country, and God created the
first Sioux out of that very ground. To understand any of their
religious and political views one must hold this fact in mind."
Thus, the testimony that Ms. Black Elk gives in the Sioux Nation Black
Hills Act hearing accomplishes a number of things: 1) it establishes
the antiquity of the Lakota claims and use of the land; 2) shows the
relationship between the religious practices of the Lakota to
particular locations within the Black Hills; 3) organizes the
culture-specific features (oral history, myth, astronomy, and
linguistical knowledge) of the Lakota in a European definitional
fashion; and 4) then transposes this into a traditional Lakota teaching
story, the ohunkaka for the non-Lakota U.S. Senate Select Committee.
She begins this process by beginning from the beginning, the Lakota
creation story in which the forces of life are personified in a manner
similar to (and perhaps derived from) the work of George Sword and
relationships are established between them and the Lakota people. This
is the definitional lexicon that she begins with and then continues
with a short linguistic study of various Lakota words and their
relationship to the earth (Maka), and includes some astronomical and
archaeological data. It is not until she has done all of this that she
places these symbols within their proper context of the Lakota
ohunkaka, infusing them with meaning and making these symbols
accessible to not only the cultural cathexis of the Lakota people, but
also the non-Lakota audience who will decide the fate of this bill. In
this way, the ohunkaka fulfills it purpose and it links reality and
narrative action by showing how specifically Lakota cognitive features
apply to fictional conflicts and their resolutions."
Therefore what I will detail in the next few pages is the way in which
Ms. Black Elk's version of the Stone Boy story defines "the
relationships between constancy and change [to] reflect fundamental
social processes and interactional models"--basically, how she tailors
the lexicon of Lakota symbology to fit the needs of a particular
political position. In doing this, she not only had to work within
that lexicon, or circle of symbolic interaction, but without that
circle and carry that meaning across cultural boundaries in order to
make it intelligible to a European cultural milieu.
To examine this I have included in my paper a chart (page i - v),
listing the variations in the story across five versions spanning in
time nearly 100 years. I have ordered them (one through five) in the
manner in which they are most greatly divergent from Ms. Black Elk's
telling of the story. They are in many ways similar in their intent,
that is the pursuit of timelessness, but are at the same time the
products of their times.
(continued on next article)
--- Jacqueline.F.Keeler@Dartmouth.edu