JAY WINTER NIGHTWOLF IN SERVICE FOR THE "PEOPLE"

Grandfather says by * Tashunka Witko * [HQ]

Grandfather says this: “In life there is sadness as well as joy, losing as well as winning, falling as well as standing, hunger as well as plenty, bad as well as good. I do not say this to make you despair, but to teach you…that life is a journey sometimes walked in light and sometimes in shadow.” Grandfather says this...

"Many tribes owe the Sioux nation debts. It won't ease the extreme poverty, the cultural alienation of their young, or abate the alcoholism ravaging their nation. It won't wipe from anyone's memory, nor will their gang problem go away. But many tribes, thousands of white people seeking to bringing healing to themselves owe the Sioux nation a debt. Somehow despite the relentless campaigns of Americans, and the might of their armies, the duplicity of their missionaries, and the laws written to protect whites interests in land grabbing the Sioux somehow managed to preserve their traditions, and ceremonies. Their language stayed in tact, and despite the laws against us Native folk practicing our religion the Sioux nation surfaced in the 1960's sharing their’ medicines', their Sundance ceremony, the Pipe, and their story-power with the world. They allowed the nations, like the Piscataway whom the whites stripped of identity, and custom, to share the Lakota ways of the Sundance, and their Chanupa ceremonies, and blessed them allowing them to practice these ways.

Many people connect with the Indian ways because of this turn of events. Because white anthropologists (love 'em or hate 'em) recorded so much of Sioux life, and because the Sioux fought so hard against the Americans somewhere within the American thought-patterns poverty was allowed to crush this nation into the dirt. Their nobility is often sung about, and held high as an example of the noble Red Man, but the abject poverty, if you ever visit Pine Ridge, for example, will crush your good will. There are people like public radio personality, and activist, Jay Winter Nightwolf, Eastern Band Cherokee, Shoshone, who work to provide the Sioux nation with food, heat, and clothes every winter. It is colder than a witch’s tit in the Dakotas, and people starve and don’t make it through the winter. Many drive to the edge of town to buy liquor from a store a few dozen feet from the border with food money for their families!

There is an enormous cultural and spiritual debt to be paid the Sioux. But they need food, heat, education, housing like so many other nations. They need the treaty money the US government holds from them, and uses as they see fit. These are my words. I am Gregory E. Woods, “Dawn Wolf”, Keeper of Stories.

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