No Fear-Native American Spirituality and Thoughts-A Tribute

MAY
Ana-sku'tee
Planting Month

We, the old settlers here in council
with the late emigrants, they are
perfectly friendly towards us...we
have full confidence they will receive
you with all friendship.
SEQUOYAH

May 1

A Country road in May hums with activity.
Bees comb the clover fields for nectar. Buttercups and
dayflowers open to the sun and a mockingbird sets out
to mimic every sound it has ever heard--even the
baby chick. Wild onions and pink verbena share space
and the buttery blooms of buffalo peas nod in spring
breezes. Only now the air has warmed to the sun and
the plants and leaves of oaks grow so much overnight
that the sky closes in like a cocoon. Now is the time
to slow down and enjoy the minute changes as they
come hourly, the scents, the roadsides filled with new
plants, and the green hills and valleys. They come
quickly, the di ga ne tli yv s di, changes, that sometimes
mature before we see the difference. If we are not
careful, our clouded thought and vision shut it out
until we have missed the best part.

This brings rest to my heart. I feel like a leaf after a
storm, when the wind is still.
PETALASHARO

By: Joyce Sequichie Hifler

Brad Cameron, Sister May 31-June 2

Packer Clinic K Falls

Michael Wakefield-

            Michael Wakefield grew up on a farm in Southern Minnesota entirely powered by horses.   They had 12 head of draft horses of different sizes for the many different jobs to be done; large 17 hand Shires for the plow and disc; smaller Belgians for the mower and hay rake and a nice leggy team of Percherons to haul the grain wagon to town.  By age nine Michael could harness and hitch a team of five to the grain binder and do a day's work.  He became interested in buggies and carriage driving in the 1970's and has since been studying and honing his craft; competing, teaching, training and breeding driving horses.  For the past 14 years Michael has driven the stagecoach for Wells Fargo Bank, and appears in parades all over the Northwest.  

-Re-schooling the Riding Horse to Drive in Demo Area 3.

Learn to evaluate your riding equine as a candidate for training to drive.  This session will be a step by step approach to training, based on 50+ years of experience training driving horses and mules.  Many riders and horses experience injuries or age related problems that limit riding. Often the horse will stand up to driving which is less demanding on the back and legs, and driving allows the horseman to enjoy his horse when riding has to be limited.

Elder's Meditation of the Day April 30

Elder's Meditation of the Day April 30
"Modern civilization has no understanding of sacred matters. Everything is backwards."
--Thomas Yellowtail, CROW
Modern civilization says, don't pray in school; don't pray at work; only go to church on Sunday. If you don't believe what I believe, you'll go to hell. Deviancy is normal. Our role models cheat, drink and run around; these are the people in the news. The news sells bad news; no one wants to hear good news. Kids are killing kids. Victims have little protection. Violence is normal. Leaders cheat and lie. Everything is backwards. We need to pray for spiritual intervention. We need to have guidance from the Creator to help us rebuild our families, our communities and ourselves. Today, I will pray for spiritual intervention from the Great Spirit.

Grandfather, we pray for your help in a pitiful way.

Elder's Meditation of the Day April 29

"The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power...The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing..."
--Luther Standing Bear, OGLALA SIOUX
Have you ever noticed the relationship between children and the soil? Watch how happily they are touching the dirt. The children play in it and eat it. If you are stressed, go to a spot on the Earth, sit down, put your fingers in the dirt, dig in it. Wash your hands in the soil. When you touch it, notice what it does to your hands. Our bodies love to touch the Earth. Sometimes we get too busy and forget these simple things. Maybe you'll even want to plant a garden or flowers. These things are mentally healthy.

Great Spirit, today, let me touch the Earth so the Earth can touch me.

Why they don't take the money.....

The money was set aside to compensate the Sioux tribes for the taking of the Black Hills in 1877 by the US government. The Black Hills were rich in minerals, including gold. Members of the Great Sioux Nation could pocket a large sum set aside by the government for taking the resource-rich Black Hills away from the tribes in 1877. But leaders say the sacred land was never, and still isn't, for sale.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObabZdcEXh4

Supporting South Dakota Reservations Page--Lakota of Pine Ridge

Over the past seven years I have made many stories, but one project has come to own me. That story is about the Oglala Lakota of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Many of you may have heard of the Lakota, or at least the larger group of tribes called the Sioux. Pine Ridge is located about 60 miles southeast of the Black Hills in South Dakota. It is sometimes referred to as Prisoner of War Camp Number 344, and it is where the Lakota now live. If you have ever heard of the Wounded Knee Massacre, the American Indian Movement, Leonard Peltier, or of the stand-off at Oglala, then you know that Pine Ridge is ground zero for Native issues in the United States.

In 1980, the longest-running court case in U.S. history, United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, was ruled upon by the Supreme Court. The court determined that, when the Sioux were resettled onto reservations and seven million acres of their land were opened up to prospectors and homesteaders, the terms of the second Fort Laramie treaty had been violated. The court stated that the Black Hills were illegally taken and that the initial offering price plus interest should be paid to the Sioux Nation. As payment for the Black Hills, the court awarded only 106 million dollars to the Sioux Nation. The Sioux refused the money with the rallying cry, "THE BLACK HILLS ARE NOT FOR SALE!"

In 2010, I took to the stage at TED Talks determined to give voice to those who had trusted me with their stories and given me a doorway into their world by allowing me to share their lives through my lens.

From TED it began to grow, snowballing until it landed on the doorstep of National Geographic magazine, where my Pine Ridge work and the real story of the Oglala Lakota was published as a 38-page cover story.

Pine Ridge was a project that I tried to escape many times. In the seven years that I have been returning to Pine Ridge, 30 people who were in someway part of my project have died unnatural deaths and, as for the rapes, I dare not ask as it would break my heart beyond repair. Despite my attempts to give up I am always lured back by an email from someone I know and a desire to go deeper because I knew the story had not been told. In time I found new communities beyond the gangsters and impoverished, and began to spend time with the spiritual communities. Beyond the seductive photographic surface of poverty and despair, beyond the caricature that was so easy to find in drunks and pow-wows. In my final act of print journalism on the reservation, National Geographic made sure I had the time and resources to find the heart in this story, everything I needed to do it right. I emerged on the other side of that long journey and found myself being called "brother" and "uncle" and sitting down to eat with the family I had built in those seven years. Mitakuye Oyasin, you are, “All my relations.”

Photojournalism CAN leave the pages of magazines! Full resolution versions of the work Shepard, Ernesto, and I made are available for download atwww.honorthetreaties.org so that YOU can choose when and where this issue is seen. The site also includes a library of every treaty made with Native tribes in the continental U.S. Photo by Aaron Huey

To see more of the photo essay visitwww.aaronhuey.com.
http://www.annenbergspaceforphotography.org/the-shot-blog/aaron-huey-his-defining-vision-pine-ridge-reservation