The Ghost Dance
“The sage is burning. Ghost dancing in the night. Drums are
beating strangely. Spirits in the firelight. No one knows the answers. Deep
inside the soul the dancers know the meaning for the time is now to go. The
sounds of silence scares me. As the rivers rush the shore, I stand upon the
banks now I shall be idle no more. The sage is still burning ghost dancers in the
night. Drums are beating loudly as we plan to stand, and fight.”
GHOST DANCE
I feel that memory and the hope of that revival of the soul
in the face of doom inevitable on the horizon over a century ago. The end of
the Ghost Dance and Ghost dancers deeply saddened their fighting spirit.
Against the backdrop, at the time, of American's military might the feeling of
the Sioux and other tribes had to be beyond description and endurance. The
tribes buckled and from underneath the boot of the conqueror what made sense?
They must have asked, "Do we live, die, or re-build? If
we re-build how and what do we, first, rebuild within ourselves?"
As I was told when I visited Pine Ridge some years ago, only
about 1/10th of the People practice the traditions. The American
influence is strong among the once mighty Sioux, and these realities, as anyone
on this post knows, ripples into our lives. Outside of this nation is a
community of Native peoples not living on a reservation, but in cities, and
rural communities in North, Central and South America. All of those tribes are
reassessing and rebuilding. At different times each year, and various ways we
come together during sacred ceremonies, prayer times, and social events, or
watching television in our homes.
We are the People our ancestors dreamed about in their
prayers. Our lives are the answers to their prayers. How do we live as an
answer to prayers? © Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
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