Peace …comes within the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the Universe and all its powers, and when they realize that…the center of the Universe… is really everywhere, it is within each of us.
—Black Elk, Oglala Lakota, 1947
Very valuable – must watch:
Winona LaDuke, is an Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe) enrolled member of the Mississippi Band of Anishinaabeg and is the mother of three children. Winona is the Program Director of Honor the Earth and Founding Director of White Earth Land Recovery Project.
Leading Honor the Earth she provides vision and leadership for the organization’s Regranting Program and its Strategic Initiatives. In addition, she has worked for two decades on the land issues of the White Earth Reservation, including litigation, over land rights in the 1980’s. In 1989, she received the Reebok Human Rights Award, with which in part she began the White Earth Land Recovery Project.
In 1994, Winona was nominated by Time Magazine as one of America’s fifty most promising leaders under forty years of age, and has also been awarded the Thomas Merton Award in 1996, the Ann Bancroft Award, Ms. Woman of the Year Award (with the Indigo Girls in 1997), the Global Green Award, and numerous other honors. A graduate of Harvard and Antioch Universities, she has written extensively on Native American and environmental issues.
Her books include: Last Standing Woman (fiction), All Our Relations (non-fiction), In the Sugarbush (Children’s), and The Winona LaDuke Reader.
To show respect to all of her work, I post this article about Winona LaDuke under the Best Of category.
For more information, visit: http://nativeharvest.com.
Watch the Oceti Sakowin: The People of the Seven Council Fires documentary now online for free
Summary
Running time: 59 minutes (Watch Now Online)
Watch the trailer for the documentary entitled “Oceti Sakowin: The People of the Seven Council Fires” below.
Find the documentary “Oceti Sakowin:The People Of The Seven Council Fires” on PBS, Find pictures and listen to music:
http://www.aptv.org/schedule/nolaschedule.asp?NOLA1=OCET
This is part 4 of the series of articles entitled “The People of the Seven Council Fires – Documentary Summary“. Find part one here, part two here, part three here.
This article is about Family and the new way of life the Oyate were forced into.
Relationships are very important to the Oyate. If you were an Oyate you can make new relatives, by adopting someone as a relative, as a mother, son, sister or brother.
The social structure is one of an extended family.
The men assume the role of the protector, provider and leadership.
Women maintain the household. Women are viewed as nurturers & educators.
Women educate the children until a certain age, when boys go with men mentors and women stay under the womens’ mentorship
Grandmothers are usually the educators of the young
Women owned the house and tipi
The Lakota were men of peace, lived in balance with creation and addressed all creation as relatives, they were relatives with the white buffalo
The Lakota was the last of tribes to resit the US military, odds and numbers were against them and eventually they worse faced with a new way of life.
Treaties were made and broken. Land was taken. People were forced into farming, and into boarding schools that were basically functioning in a Catholic school system. Further, families broken apart and separated, men and women and children separated.
Their roles were taken away. The women could no longer teach and nurture their children who were taken away from them; the men had no buffalo to hunt and mentoring to give.
The rationale for the boarding schools was, as Carlisle founder Richard Henry Pratt often said, to “kill the Indian and save the man.” But the actual reason was economic: By taking away the children, the U.S. government was able to take away and maintain control of the Indian land base.
Alcohol & drugs came into their lives when reservations started; the buffalo was replaced by rations as part of a government ration system.
The Oral tradition ended; now Cathlic nuns taught children and provided the children protection, someone else was providing for the children.
It was against the law to be Lakota from 1880 to 1978 !!!
In the 1950’s 100% of the Lakota denied their indiannes and they did not speak in Lakota.
28 support poles around the sundance arbor
This is part 3 of the series of articles entitled “The People of the Seven Council Fires – Documentary Summary“. Find part one here, part two here.
This article talks about numbers. Numbers are sacred to the Oyate people.
The numbers 7 and 4 are sacred thus are integrated in everything.
Seven (7) is used for social units or the structures of things
Four (4) is used in ritual
4 multiplied by 7 = 28.
The number twenty Eight (28) combines both ritual and social. The Oyate have 28 sundance lodges (or 28 support poles around the sundance arbor – sorry I’m a little confused about this particular one), 28 divisions in circle, and the months have 28 days (since they are lunar months)
The number 7 can be broken into 1, 2 and 4 , giving each of these numbers some significance.
Stay tuned for part 4 which will talk about Family
This series of articles are categories under “Religion / Atheism” and are tagged with “Ancient”.
End of part 3
Note: These articles were written in recognition and in high respect to those who inhabited these lands before me, to those who coexisted and protect the land, and to their spirituality, culture and legacy. My small contribution to bringing the truth out about what happened to the original inhabitants of North America.
I watched a documentary last Sunday that captivated my full attention and educated me while solidifying the respect I had for the Native Americans and their ancient ways of life. The documentary was titled “Oceti Sakowin: The People of the Seven Council Fires”. The documentary presented information that I found very valuable I had to reach for my laptop and start taking notes. Here, I will summarize the documentary in my own words from my notes.
Calf Woman and the Sacred Pipe
This documentary discussed the history and lifestyle of the Oyate. The Oyate were the people who inhabited the upper Midwest region. The word Oyate translates to “the people”. Those were “the people” of the land before Columbus stumbled upon what is known now as America.
We all know that Columbus did not discover America. So, what about the people who lived here, were they really the lawless savages the Europeans painted them as? Simply, the answer is absolutely not.
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