the Mdewakanton

There are several Dakota creation stories. There is a creation story that says the Dakota came into existence about the lakes at the head of the Rum River (near Mille Lacs Lake). Another related creation story says that after a flood some of the people entered into Mille Lacs Lake and lived underwater, and later emerged from the sacred lake as human beings into this world. The wisest of teachings came from the old white haired woman in the lakes, she was the mother of a sacred lake people.

Here's the Bde/Mde Wakan (Mille Lacs Lake) Dakota (Oceti Sakowin 'Seven Council Fires') creation story:

 

After the flood, some of the people lived under the water at Bde Tanka of Bde Wakan. One day a young boy and his sister were walking together. The boy looked up and saw mniyomni,  a blue whirlpool, above them and reached up for it. The whirlpool pulled him up to the surface and threw him out onto the shore. A beautiful place of trees and hills.

 

His sister followed the bubbles of the mniyomni, reached up, and was also thrown ashore. She followed her brother's footprints, eating roots and berries along the way, and picked up a small stone to suck in order to quench her thirst. Amazed at the beauty of the place, she was distracted and swallowed the stone. It traveled through her body and she gave birth to a first born child called Inyan Hoksida, Stone Boy. Inyan Hoksida grew fast and brought about many great things to the Dakota.

 

This is how the people walked out of the lake and became people who walk on the land again." "They are the Mdewakanton, 'those who were born of the waters!” - Oceti Sakowin 

 

Zitkala-Ša

Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) (Dakota Yankton woman: pronounced zitkála-ša, which translates to "Red Bird"),[, also known by the missionary-given name Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, was a Dakota writer, editor, musician, teacher and political activist. She wrote several works chronicling her youthful struggles with identity and pulls between the majority culture and her Native American heritage. Her later book...s in English brought traditional Native American stories to a widespread white readership for one of the first times. Even though She has passed, Her battle continues.

Zitkala-Ša was an active member of the Society of American Indians, whose magazine was the American Indian Magazine. From 1918 to 1919 Zitkala-Ša served as editor for the magazine, as well as contributing a great number of articles to it. These were her most explicitly political writings, covering topics such as the contribution of Native Americans to WWI, land allotment, and corruption within the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Many of her political writings have since been criticized as being too assimilationist in nature, calling for recognition of Native American culture and traditions while at the same time advocating citizenship rights that would bring Native Americans further and further into mainstream America.

Commissioned by the Boston publisher Ginn and Company, Old Indian Legends was a collection of stories gathered from various tribes and published in 1901. Directed primarily at children, the collection was an attempt both to preserve Native American traditions and stories in print and to garner respect and recognition for those traditions among the dominant white culture.

Zitkala-Ša had a fruitful writing career that can be seen as falling into two chronologically separated periods. The first period was from 1900 to 1904 and was composed mainly of legends collected from Native American culture and autobiographical narratives. She continued to write during the following years, but she did not publish. These unpublished writings, along with others including the libretto of the Sun Dance Opera, were collected and published as Dreams and Thunder: Stories, Poems, and the Sun Dance Opera by P. Jane Hafen in 2001.

The second period was from 1916 to 1924. This period was almost exclusively made up of political writings. In this period, Zitkala-Ša moved with her husband to Washington, D.C. and published some of her most influential writings, including American Indian Stories in 1921 with the Hayworth Publishing House. She co-authored Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians: An Orgy of Graft and Exploitation of the Five Civilized Tribes, Legalized Robbery (1923), an influential pamphlet, with Charles H. Fabens of the American Indian Defense Association and Matthew K. Sniffen of the Indian Rights Association. She also created the Indian Welfare Committee of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, working as a researcher for it through much of the 1920s.

Her articles in the Atlantic Monthly were published from 1900 to 1902. They included, "An Indian Teacher Among Indians" published in Volume 85 in 1900. Included in the same issue were "Impressions of an Indian Childhood" and "School Days of an Indian Girl". All of these works were autobiographical in nature, describing in great detail her early experiences both on the reservation and her later conflict with dominant American culture and its assimilationist influences.

Zitkala-Sa's other articles ran in Harper's Monthly. "Soft-Hearted Sioux" appeared in the March 1901 issue, Volume 102 and "The Trial Path" in the October 1901 issue, Volume 103. She also wrote "A Warrior's Daughter", published in 1902 in Volume 4 of Everybody's Magazine. These works also were largely autobiographical in nature, though there were some that told the stories of those she knew or taught in addition to her own personal story.

In 1902 she published another article in Atlantic Monthly, volume 90, entitled, "Why I Am a Pagan". It was a treatise on her personal spiritual beliefs in which she countered the trend of the time towards showing Native Americans as readily conforming to the Christianity forced on them in schools and public life.

Much of her work is characterized by its liminal nature: tensions between tradition and assimilation and between literature and politics which are particularly clear in her autobiographical works. In one of her most famous works, for example, American Indian Stories there is the obvious tension between her desire to provide a literary account of her life and to deliver a political message through the telling of the story. There is also the conflict which is the focus of the narrative itself between her desire to remain true to the traditions of the Yankton Dakota while as the same time being educated in an assimilationist manner. This tension, however, has been said to provide for much of the dynamism of her work.

Her works are still available today - almost 100 years after her passing. I am PROUD to call her an Ancestor... - Al Edwards

http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/gcarr/19cusww/ZS/rh.html



Zitkala-Ša was a Dakota writer, editor, musician, teacher & political activist (1876-1938)

 

DRAGON FLY Medicine

Dragonfly symbolism 

Among the Cheyenne and Dakota
by Peter J. Durkin
Whispering Wind, 1999

American Indians of the Northern plains often depicted animals with special powers on their clothing, shields, horses and tipis, in hopes of sharing some of their special qualities.  The dragonfly possessed multiple attributes that appealed to the people.  It's always a good omen when a dragonfly lands on a tipi cover; a sign that life giving water is nearby.  The dragonfly held wide meaning for the American Indians of the Plains, especially the Cheyenne and Dakota.  However, the Cheyenne did not consider dragonflies as insects.  In their classification of the cosmos they '"consider dragonflies and butterflies to be birds, both hatched from nymphs" (More, 178).  This article will offer a brief overview of dragonfly symbolism among the Cheyenne and Dakota.

Modern biology classifies dragonflies in the order Odanata which includes both damselflies and dragonflies, often nicknamed "mosquito hawk" because of their voracious appetite for mosquitoes and black flies.  Dragonflies have been traced on earth some 300 million years to the Carboniferous era, and "giant dragonflies with the wingspan of a hawk were dinosaurs' contemporaries" (Brody, 7).  The dragonfly possesses 360 vision, can take off at 35 miles per hour; they weave, hover, and can fly backwards.  Incredibly, each of their four wings can operate independently under direct muscular control.  This maneuverability has made the dragonfly a superb feeding machine.  "They are as close to being the perfect predator as anything on earth.  

When you're that good, there's no pressure to change" says Dr. Donald G. Huggins, an aquatic ecologist at the University of Kansas (Brody, 10).  There are more than 4,950 species throughout the world with about 450 species in the US and Canada (Arnett,76).  The blue dragonfly was considered an especially mysterious creature among the Cheyenne.  

Peter J. Powell reported that "The blue dragonflies, who come from the blue waters, symbolize protection from death.  So it is that blue dragonflies were painted upon the covers of shields or lodges, and on the bags and parfleche boxes in which sacred clothing or objects were kept" (Powell, 845).

Dragonflies, which are strong fliers, form circling swarms over aquatic ecosystems in their predatory search for smaller insects, especially mosquitoes.  These funnel shaped configurations or "whirlwinds" are important symbols in Cheyenne religion and "these swarms are helpful to the people, they often warned of approaching enemies or indicated a good direction in which to travel" (Powell, 845).

Individual warriors often adorned themselves with the dragonfly image.  "The image of the dragonfly was often used by warriors throughout the Plains because dragonflies are quick and are difficult to kill, and when they fly near the ground they create dust that makes them hard to see" (Maurer, 140).  Their horses were likewise painted with dragonflies, an image reflecting the avoidance of danger.  For example, one pictograph is described as follows:  "A yellow horse with clipped ears is painted with dragonflies, recognizable by the long needle-like bodies and double sets of wings.  A powerful creature who darts about and seems always to evade capture, the dragonfly is an appropriate emblem for a war pony" (Berlo, 196).  Indeed, the Dakota said the dragonfly possessed the ability to avoid all danger, the dragonfly "can not be hit by man or animal, neither can the thunder injure it" (Wissler, 261)..............

Knowledge of dragonflies or other species is regarded as "property" of men who have gained it and are qualified to discuss it.  Because of all these attributes, it is not surprising to see the dragonfly as a symbol on Ghost Dance apparel as well.  In the attempt to be protected, especially from bullets, the dragonfly would be worn "invoking for the wearer the associative power of the insects darting flight" (Maurer, 175).

While the dragonfly is enjoying an upsurge in modern-day interest, the record of respect it enjoyed among the American Indians of the Northern Plains, past and present, can be observed in a rich and diverse historical record of artifacts and ceremonies.

Reposted with permission Grandfather Cro