The Lakota Way of Strength and Courage by Joseph M. Marshall III

Author:Joseph M. Marshall III
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Body, Mind & Spirit/Spiritualism
ISBN: 9781604077476
Publisher: Sounds True
Published: 2009-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

HONORING PURPOSE

My grandparents and other elders in the community told me often, and gently, to remember the stories. None of them ever told me that I had to be a storyteller. I came to my own decision as a young adult after a persistent but hazy question finally came clear to me one day.

Who will pass on the stories?

I decided that I could do that—not for any grandiose reasons, ulterior motives, or recognition. I decided to pass on the stories because someone had to. That is not to say that I am the only Lakota passing on Lakota stories, because I am not.

It is critical that the core of our Lakota culture be preserved by any Lakota who has the knowledge, not primarily so that the world can receive it, but so that the information is available to the next Lakota generation.

It is imperative, however, that cultural knowledge and history be told by Lakota historians. This work is critical now because the mechanisms by which oral tradition perpetuated itself no longer function the way they once did. There is not an abundance of Keepers of the Winter Count or genuine storytellers, and there has not been for many generations. Therefore, contemporary Lakota (and Dakota and Nakota) writers, artists, singers, and dancers who preserve our history and culture in any way are now our Keepers of the Winter Count and storytellers. Most or all of those kinds of people probably consider preserving and sharing Lakota culture to be their destiny.

Destiny as a guide to purpose should not be ignored. Considering the circumstances on every reservation in South Dakota in the 1950s, many Lakota elders must have been more than a little concerned for the future Lakota culture, customs, traditions, religion, and language. The policy of assimilation was alive and, unfortunately, doing very well in all the government and parochial schools, as well as in many public schools. Missionaries were having their way and having a heyday “saving” Lakota souls. Lakota culture was slowly being diluted, decimated, prohibited, and replaced.

But the elders who were around during my childhood in the northern part of the Rosebud Reservation, and in and near Kyle on the Pine Ridge Reservation, were fighting back in their own way; they were telling stories to anyone who would listen, but especially to young people. They were telling stories to those of us who were of the next generation. As much as the boarding schools and churches tried to take our culture from us, those elders were doing their best to keep as much of it intact as possible. For the most part, they did not intentionally denigrate or ridicule the white culture, in spite of how they really felt. Instead, they told stories to present their own culture in a good and truthful light. In doing so, they taught us who we were. They taught us that it was a good thing to be Lakota, no matter what the whites were saying. They gave us a sense of identity.

There

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