Monday, February 19, 2001
DANCING SUN
THE SPIRITS SHOW ME
Shortly after the dream I started sundancing.
I spoke to some elders and this was the path for me at this time.
I am not supposed to say anything about my sundancing days until I do my four years with the tree and the sun.
A generous and extremely spiritual Dakota woman from the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation guided me on the first leg of my
journey.
Chi Miigwetch to Louise Hall and the Hall family from Sioux Valley.
We travelled to visit the Arikara, Hidatsa and Mandan on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in western North Dakota.
I attended my first sundance as a singer. I learned the sundance songs. I watched in amazement at the four day ceremony.
I continued singing and looking at the dancers. We must build the lodge ourselves. The day for me to pierce would come.
I received a hand drum in a giveaway.
A Mandaree man guided us around the reservation. We saw buffalo roaming the grassy hills.
The buffalo calves looked so darn cute. We drove the grassy hills and came to a stop.
Another day we climb a butte. A powerful, spiritual place of emaculate serenity.
On top, we are told stories from this man.
A place for vision quest, centuries old.
I walk around and explore the scenery.
There are gopher holes every where and I must watch my step.
Walking toward the edge to peer over the cliff.
A HUGE snake slithers out of a gopher hole and I freeze.
Is it a rattle snake? I freeze in extreme fear.
It looks like a straight line blocking me from looking over the edge.
The immense reptile disappears into the next gopher hole, at least 6-7 feet from the first hole.
I did not see the tail and head at the same time. It was a huge snake.
A harmless, 8 foot gopher eating snake that looks like a diamond back.
Walking down the butte to the car, I notice that if I walked past the snake I could have fell over the cliff.
The edge of the cliff was eroding and any weight could have collapsed down the cliff.
Sitting on a bridge at the Little Missouri River. It looks like mountains all around me. I am in a canyon, valley or gorge.
The beginning of the Badlands.
A flock of about a hundred Great Blue Herons fly by me, following the river.
I have never seen so much herons that close to me. Did they know I was sitting there?
The first sundance I actually danced in was on the Sioux Valley Indian Reserve in Manitoba.
We must build the lodge ourselves. I was told that I was the one they waited for.
I had to put the paint on the sundance tree scars to help the healing.
Grueling days of self sacrifice and ceremonies. My first time 'running' the sweat lodge.
The third day when he broke down by the fire. Hitting the stump with his fists screaming "Why? Why? Why?"
A extremely powerful image of about the treatment of the Sioux by his European ancestors. We continue. The spirits hear him and he is blessed.
No piercing for first year sundancers
Dreaming of the type of piercing I should do. I see a sundance lodge. It was not the one in Sioux Valley nor Mandaree.
I find sundance keepers and start my search for the ones of the visions I have received.
Finding the exact one was important. My search ended on Fort Alexander Ojibway Indian Reserve in eastern Manitoba.
This is exactly what I have been shown. I offer my tobacco to the sundance keeper.
I return the following summer to dance.
We must build the sundance lodge.
I would like to say chi-miigwetch to the late Ron Swampy for guiding me through this 'time.'
After careful deliberation, it is agreed that I 'pull and break'.
Where a person is pierced, pulls four times away from the tree and then breaks
by running backwards away until the piercing sticks rip from the skin.
My piercing sticks are made from the chokecherry tree that I made myself.
I am laid down on the buffalo robe and cut with an eagle claw.
I pierce on my chest on the third day. Many dreams and visions would come to me in the days ahead.
The second and third years of piercing was also on my chest.
Sundancing is a powerful awakening into Native American culture. It is alive and gaining strength every day.
It is generally accepted that the sun dance is a Sioux thing.
I have been told a story about long, long ago when the Mediwin Society had the sundance as part of the Mediwin cermony.
It was offered to the plains tribes as a gift and that one day the sundance would return to the Mediwin Society.
This has already started with Ojibway becoming Sundance Keepers.
In another remarkable story. Long ago when the Ojibway and Sioux were at war, Ojibway would kill the
Sioux warrior and take the women as wives and children and assimilate them into Ojibway society. Many times the Ojibway would let one Sioux man live and return to his people to bear witness and tell his brothers about what the Ojibway had done to them.
Sioux children would grow and marry Ojibway people. The offspring would be part Ojibway and part Sioux,
but would speak Ojibway and receive gifts the Sioux was to receive from the spirits.
It is my understanding that there are three communities today that have received many of these Sioux children:
Roseau River in Manitoba, Lac la Croix and Assabaska (Big Grassy River and Onigaming) in Ontario.
This would explain some of my dreams about the sundance. I grew up and knew nothing about this ceremony.
Fasting and dancing for days is a personal sacrifice. Rewards for such extremities come in many ways.
Each person is different. What you put into it will determine what you get out of it. One must give unconditionally.
A person must prepare months, even years before entering the sun dance lodge.
Giveaways are done by all fourth year sundancers. My personal journey had me doing giveaways every time I pierced.
I enjoyed gathering medicine such as sweet grass, sage, cedar, bitter-root, making rattles, medicine bags,
eagle whistles, gathering eagle feathers, buffalo skulls, antlers, smudge bowls, gathering blankets,
towels and cigerettes for my giveaway.
I think of what I would like to be given in a giveaway ceremony and then I gather them and give it away.
Dreams and visions come to me on a daily and nightly basis now. I am forever grateful for the life
I was given and the 'time' I am alive.
The sacred clown or 'Windigokan' is an important part of the sun or rain dance. He or she is usually a backwards person.
Honoring the windigokan with offering of gifts and tobacco on thier path will ensure that your prayers are answered.
Windigokans are every day people who are dreamt into the sacred clown society by themselves or another persons dream.
Some clowns will distract you, poke fun of you, hit you, steal from you, mock you.....
just consider yourself blessed if one bothers you.
The sun dance is a part of me. I am part of the sun dance.
At a 'shake tent' ceremony, I am handed a shell by the spirits. It is told that I must enter the Mediwin Lodge.
But, I must finish the sun dance first.
I follow my dreams and visions and do my best to honor the spirits that I work for.
With out them I have died along time ago. It is that 'life' or 'beematiziwin' that we must work for.
I encourage all who follow my stories to do their best to remember their dreams and do their best to make their
dreams a reality.
Your dreams belong to you. A personal gift from Kishay Monitou / Great Spirit. No one else.
Remember them and hold on to them. Be ever so grateful for the dreams and visions you receive by offering tobacco
to the spirits in appreciation.
There is good and bad in everything. You can choose to see or interpret your dreams in a good way or a bad way.
It is all up to you. I do my best to FIND the good way in all my dreams. Dreams are the seed of thought and are followed by action, choose carefully.
I remember my dreams by lying in bed after I awake and concentrating on remembering them.
After five minutes of being awake, the dreams will leave your mind and they will be harder to remember. If things go correctly, even if you forget them, they return during the waking time and they are referred to as "dejavu"
You can find some one to interpret your dreams, that is fine. Somewhere down the road you will have to make a
decison whether or not you want to interpret them yourself. After years of dreaming, I still have a hard time
interpreting some dreams,
so I go find an interpretor or go and ask at a shake tent. The chiiskan (shake tent) will tell you the truth.
'...I was floating in the air and I realized that I was looking down at the earth.
I was connected a tree with a rope. I was like a kite.
Every now and then I would fall to the earth.
I would wait to hit the ground, but I did not.
Like a magnet I gravitated toward the tree.
I grab the tree then let go and flew back up into the sky...'
We are told to walk quietly.
I am listening to the wind and looking at the river far, far below.
It looks like a lake but it a reservoir.
The Sioux man looks at me and motions to look closer.
I approach to see a board on the edge of the cliff.
He lifts the board slowly and quietly.
It is a golden eagle sitting in her nest, below the board on the top edge of the cliff.
That was so beautiful.
A white man from the United States was a 'helper'.
Part of the delegation from Oklahoma?
A dream tells me to 'drag buffalo skulls'.
My fourth piercing, my last, is done by pulling four buffalo skulls from chokecherry sticks peirced in my upper back.
I run some twenty feet and they break. I am done my four piercing. I did it.