Welcome to Native American Studies – SOCI 1100 4A

1. Welcome to Native American Studies – SOCI 1100 4A Fall, 2011 Room 239 Fort Omaha Bldg. #10

2. Agenda Day 12 • Extra credit opportunity • http://abcnews.go.com/2020/video/hidden-america-children-plains-14708439?tab=9482931&section=1206833 • Ghost Dance • Lost Bird • White Clay • Begin OcetiSakowin • Go over Assignments

3. Ghost Dance • Paiute shaman called Wovoka • Wovoka was called the Messiah and he prophesied that the dead would soon join the living in a world in which the Indians could live in the old way surrounded by plentiful game. • A tidal wave of new soil would cover the earth, bury the whites, and restore the prairie. • To hasten the event, the Indians were to dance the Ghost Dance.

4. Ghost Dance • Many dancers wore brightly colored shirts emblazoned with images of eagles and buffaloes. • These "Ghost Shirts" they believed would protect them from the bluecoats' bullets. • During the fall of 1890, the Ghost Dance spread through the Sioux villages of the Dakota reservations, revitalizing the Indians and bringing fear to the whites.

5. White Fear of the Prophesy • A desperate Indian Agent at Pine Ridge wired his superiors in Washington, "Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy....We need protection and we need it now. The leaders should be arrested and confined at some military post until the matter is quieted, and this should be done now." • The order went out to arrest Chief Sitting Bull at the Standing Rock Reservation. Sitting Bull was killed in the attempt on December 15. • Chief Big Foot was next on the list.

6. Ghost Dance Actual picture versus Artist’s portrayal

7. The ritual dance unified Indian people, even tribes with a tradition of conflict. The solidarity of these groups frightened government officials, whose worst fears were realized years earlier when the Arapahoes, Cheyennes and Sioux came together to defeat Custer. • Perhaps the government was also frightened of the dance’s spiritual power. According to a historian of that time, James Mooney, during one investigation of the ritual dance, U.S. troops reported seeing approximately 125 people at the beginning of the dance, and twice that number at the end, with no one new coming into the circle.

8. When he heard of Sitting Bull's death, Big Foot led his people south to seek protection at the Pine Ridge Reservation. The army intercepted the band on December 28 and brought them to the edge of the Wounded Knee to camp. • The next morning the chief, racked with pneumonia and dying, sat among his warriors and powwowed with the army officers. Suddenly the sound of a shot pierced the early morning gloom. Within seconds the charged atmosphere erupted as Indian braves scurried to retrieve their discarded rifles and troopers fired volley after volley into the Sioux camp. From the heights above, the army's Hotchkiss guns raked the Indian teepees with grapeshot.

9. Big Foot (Sitanka), a Miniconjou Sioux of Cheyenne River Reservation, South Dakota; half-length, seated, wearing white shirt. Big Foot dead and frozen in snow the day after the Massacre

10. When the smoke cleared and the shooting stopped, approximately 300 Sioux were dead, Big Foot among them. Twenty-five soldiers lost their lives. As the remaining troopers began the grim task of removing the dead, a blizzard swept in from the North. A few days later they returned to complete the job. Scattered fighting continued, but the massacre at Wounded Knee effectively squelched the Ghost Dance movement and ended the Indian Wars.

12. Cemetery at Wounded Knee

13. Wounded Knee Battlefield Today

14. Lost Bird of Wounded Knee • In the spring or summer of 1890, Lost Bird was born somewhere on the prairies of South Dakota. Fate took her to Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation on Dec. 29, 1890. • The woman who likely was the child’s mother was among the wounded on the Battlefield. • But as she was dying, she and her baby found some scanty shelter from the bitter cold and wind in the bank of a creek. • Four days after the massacre, a rescue party found the infant, miraculously alive, protected by the woman’s frozen body.

15. Lost Bird was adopted by Gen. Leonard Colby and, without her knowledge or consent, his suffragist wife, Clara Bewick Colby. (see Genocide Convention) • The baby’s original name died on the killing field, along with her chance to grow up in her own culture. She became. literally and figuratively, ZintkalaNuni, the Lost Bird. • However, Zintka’s childhood was marred by her exposure to racism, possible abuse from adoptive relatives and the indifference of her father. • Poverty entered into the mix when Gen. Colby abandoned his wife for the child’s nursemaid/governess and failed to provide adequate support for Clara Colby and Zintka.

16. The increasingly restless child endured miserable stays with relatives and at boarding schools and became harder and harder for her mother to control. • At age 17, Zintka was sent back to her father and his new wife in Beatrice, Neb. • The result was disastrous. A few months later, Gen. Colby placed his now-pregnant daughter in a stark and severe reformatory. Her son was stillborn, but the girl remained in the facility for a year.

17. By 1916, Zintka was living in abject poverty. She and her then-husband, who suffered from illness, were trying to make a living in vaudeville. She had had two more children. One died, probably that year, and Zintka gave the other to an Indian woman who was better able to care for him. • Zintka fell ill on Feb. 9, 1920, as an influenza epidemic swept across the nation. On Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day, she died.

18. Lost Bird finally came home in 1991, in an effort spurred in part by author Renee Sansom Flood, author of "Lost Bird of Wounded Knee: Spirit of the Lakota." Her grave was found in California and her remains were returned to South Dakota and buried at the grave site at Wounded Knee. Her tragic story led to the organization of the Lost Bird Society, which helps Native Americans who were adopted outside their culture find their roots. http://www.sdpb.org/Lostbird/summary.asp

19. Does genocide continue? Infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring physical destruction

20. Continued Exploitation? • Whiteclay, NE: population 14 people • 4 off sale liquor stores that sell 4.5 million cans of beer a year (approx. 12,500 cans per day). • Whiteclay borders the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home of the Oglala Lakota • 4 predatory liquor dealers make millions of dollars each year off of the Oglala's and the social costs of their business are experienced on the Pine Ridge side of the border.

21. Unquestionable Injustice • the town of Whiteclay has no legal place for these 12,500 cans of beer to be consumed • You can't drink the beer at any of the off sale liquor stores. • You can't drink it in your car or on the street. • You certainly can't drink alcohol let alone possess it on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. • Despite evidence of daily illegalities there has been almost no police intervention. • The state government of Nebraska enjoys the excess taxes from Whiteclay and yet claims to not have the funds to adequately police the area.

22. The Hidden Massacre of Whiteclay is a YouTube video that was created by the students of Omaha Creighton Prep. • http://www.sociologysource.com/home/tag/institutional-discrimination • http://battleforwhiteclay.org/ • http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/knee.htm

23. More about the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota • Oceti Sakowin • http://watch.sdpb.org/video/1472853204/

24. Assignment • Week 4 and Weeks 5 – 6 assignments due next Thursday, 10/20, if not sooner. Hard copy or email • Extra credit 20/20 program – write response (1 – 2 paragraphs) and email by 10/18