Sharing Our Stories of Survival: Native Women Surviving Violence (9 page)

When I am gone (to the spirit world), remember to always be good to your sisters because it is through them that I will be with you.

—ADELINE STELLA BROKEN LEG-LAPOINTE
(SPIRIT JOURNEY, FEBRUARY 3, 1999)

O
ne night as
Ina
(my mother) lay physically weakened and her spirit began sacred preparations for her spirit journey, she spoke those words to
misuŋkala,
my precious younger brothers. The power of her message influenced me much later because, as a mere mortal being, my emotions at that very moment were a hair’s width from panic! I felt a sense of myself as a small child that didn’t know what to do because her mother was leaving for a different world. I could neither stop her nor figure out a way that I could go with her without violating our ancient
taboo
on suicide.

Toward the end of
Ina’
s earthly journey, I spent a lot of time with her in hospitals and was thus blessed as a witness of spiritual phenomena that we Native people speak about only in privacy with our families. Whenever I recognized that
Ina
was traveling in the spirit world, I sat reverently and respectfully in the knowledge that our ancestors were talking with her and helping her to prepare for her journey. I paid close attention to her side of the conversations because I wanted to remember her words. I wanted to take quiet time later to pray and reflect upon the spiritual meaning of her sacred talk.

Ina’
s advice to my brothers was powerful in its simplicity. On the surface level, her words meant just what she stated, that my brothers should be good to their sisters after she left for the spirit world. But, there was far more to it than that. Every moment of time that my sisters and I spent with our mother was unique for each of us. We each interpreted these moments differently; we each came to our own understanding; we each carry a part of her teachings with us. The more I thought about it I began to understand it as a teaching from time
immemorial
that runs through the fabric of all Native women’s customs, traditions, and beliefs within the tribe.

Within my lifetime I learned through stories and subtle admonishments from my parents to the young boys and girls within our family and
ti o’spa ye
(extended families) about the sacredness of women and young girls in our tribal society. They taught by words and actions how an adolescent is no longer a child and must learn to behave respectfully toward his sisters and female cousins and vice versa. When this is learned and practiced within the family, it will show within our tribal society as a whole.

The older, more traditional-thinking Lakota talk about
Ehaŋni
(long-ago times), as I’m sure other tribal nations do in their own unique ways. As I understand
Ehaŋni
, these oral stories were told to teach and reinforce individual customs and societal standards among the people, as well as to teach listening skills and honesty in the retelling of these teachings. Women and men had their own ceremonies at different phases of their lives. Women were held in high esteem because we are the givers of life. Women were held up as sacred because for nine months we carry the spirit world within our bodies before a new spirit is born into this earthly life. We commune with and are bonded to that spirit before it makes its journey through the birth canal into this world.

Children are considered
Wakaŋ
(sacred) because they have newly arrived and are still mostly spirit. Two spirits that travel here together (twins) are even more of a gift. They are also considered a sacred burden and a teaching for the mother if she has been raised with the proper instructions in child rearing. Small children have not yet been corrupted by the burdens of the intellect, interpretations, or influences from other minds.

Some traditional elders, when they feel safe enough to do so, will still remind us, “keep a childlike quality about you.” That doesn’t mean that we should act like an infant into adulthood; it is meant to remind us that the innocence we see in the eyes of our children and grandchildren is the same kind of innocence that dwells within our very soul. The curiosity and awe with which a child responds to everything within the environment is how, as adults, we need to remain in our perception of the universe. In this way, we are tied to the remembrance in our daily comings and goings that the Creator gave us this quality as a compass to follow during our
sojourn
upon
Uŋci Maka
(Grandmother Earth). Our spirit is ancient; it remains the same throughout our time on earth. It is our physical bodies that grow and change and, eventually, return to the earth.

Preschool

What I share through my writing comes from my own life experiences. Since my birth as the first-born girl, all of my grandmothers and grandfathers were always nearby to provide encouragement and guidance. It came in the form of hugs;
Unci
(grandma) kisses; chokecherry patty treats; and stories about the stars, two-leggeds, four-leggeds, and
iktomi
(the trickster). Therefore, I hold these old-time
winnuh’ala
(real women) and
wicah’cala
(real men) in high esteem for their knowledge, wisdom, and gentle guidance.

As little children, my older brothers and I were free to explore our natural surroundings. We could ride in the wagon, run beside it, or jump on and off of it, as grandpa and
ah-te
(father) visited and smoked their Bull Durham roll-your-owns. All the while the ol’brown horse and the white one with one blue eye ambled their way down to the spring. The menfolk would fill up our two huge wooden barrels with water and we would have fun doing the same thing all the way back to our one-room house. We would take vegetables from the garden and pretend we were going on “expeditions” (wherever we got that word!), and spend all day on the prairies, or play down by the creek.

We lived a simple life far out in the country on the Rosebud Reservation with simple rules, loving attentive parents, grandparents, uncles, aunties, and cousins. Our little house was filled with a lot of visiting, games, humor, and laughter. The nights were intensely quiet, with only the sounds of the night creatures, and the sky seemed to always be heavy with stars. It was bliss for a child.

My father hunted and planted, always working hard at whatever job he held to provide for our family. In the winter he was the one to get up and put the wood in the cast-iron stove before we were awakened. There were those special times that I woke up early enough to watch him hook up the plow to grandpa’s brown horse, hook the reins around his waist and arm, put his weight onto the plow and clack his tongue as he and the ol’ brown horse worked together to turn over the soil. Wherever we lived, we always had a garden—not only for our family, but any family who needed potatoes, corn, vegetables, or melons.

My mother spent the days cooking, cleaning, and washing diapers and clothes in the tin tub that doubled as our bathtub. We played with our cousins while
Ina
picked chokecherries, buffalo berries, and plums. She also dug
timpsila
(wild turnips) with the womenfolk as they talked and laughed. She cooked special recipes of pheasant, prairie dog, deer, and other wild game. When we had the money, we ate store-bought food, too. I loved waking up to steaming hot oatmeal topped with commodity butter melting inside of fresh
aguyapi
(oven bread). We had no running water, electricity, or transportation, but that didn’t matter because we were happy and well-fed.

Sometimes our Ihanktonwan relatives from the Yankton Reservation traveled a long distance in cars to visit us. It was like they were from another world. I admired the cars, but I was more interested in listening to the conversations of the womenfolk. I especially loved to hear my Ihanktonwan
Kun’si
(Ihanktonwan grandmother) laugh and talk in their dialect, because that mixture sounded like a happy song.

I will always remember how our relatives loved to sing and pray together. Lakota was the only language spoken, except when our Dakota relatives came to visit. My Sicaŋgu
Uŋci
(Sicangu grandmother), my father’s aunt, was held in high esteem as a keeper of
wolakota
(the sacred teachings of the Lakota). Sometimes when she and I slept outside together, she told me about the stars and answered all my questions patiently until I fell asleep listening to her gentle voice. Our cultural and spiritual teachings were wrapped inside stories and legends that could be serious, humorous, exciting, and sometimes a bit scary. I believe that it made the teaching easier to remember.

My maternal grandfather was an herbal healer. He was old and quiet, with leather brown skin and pure white hair. Much of the time, he sat with his chair propped back against the house smoking leisurely, always watching the sky. Sometimes we would interrupt our play to sit and look at the sky with him. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but it was definitely calming and sometimes made me sleepy. He knew the changing of the weather, and it seemed he knew what was coming in the wind. Grandpa paid attention to the sky. These old ones feel what is in the wind because the sacred wind knows everything.

Sometimes I wonder if he knew what was coming in the wind for me. Maybe he did. Maybe he saw a storm coming. They say it’s always calm before a storm. When the thunder beings are coming, it stirs up fear among the people. When the howling and force of the wind subside, the trees straighten back up, the pelting of the rain lessens to a drizzle, and the beautiful rainbow arches across the sky. It is then that our fear subsides and we can smell the cleansed air and look to the earth to see new growth.

I didn’t see or feel the change coming in the wind. I was oblivious to any storm so long as I was beside my family inside our cozy, kerosene-lit house. Part of the change came when my paternal grandmother moved to a nearby
wasicu
(white man) town. She lived near a park on the main street and often arranged for me to stay with her at her new home. I traveled with her in her new green convertible car with a white canvas top. Grandma always sat in the backseat passenger side while someone drove her.

At grandma’s house there was a huge, tall chief-man who traveled around with a big drum and sang at
wacipis
(Lakota dances). He would come back to grandma’s with other men and women who looked sleepy and talked in loud voices. Sometimes they fell down and laughed about falling or just went to sleep where they fell and snored loudly. Sometimes grandma would wake me up with a finger to her lips and a “sh-h” to be quiet. She’d slip me out the window while I was still half asleep and lead me to some bushes away from the house. There she laid me back down to sleep on a bed she made on the ground. Soon after, I suppose through the moccasin telegraph, my parents found out and would show up at any hour of the day or night to take me back out to the country. After that, my grandma wasn’t allowed to take me back to her place to stay for a long time. Instead, she would come to the reservation to see me. I was the apple of grandma’s eye. She was a nondrinker, nonsmoker, noncusser, nontalker, and she was painfully shy!

One day, when I was about four years old, I was at my grandmother’s house in town. During the afternoon, grandma and her daughters quietly left for the store without telling me. They probably had to sneak away because I wanted to be by
Unci’s
side all the time. I loved the penny candy at the store and everyone knew that
Unci
couldn’t say no to me. Meanwhile, back at the house, I went inside to find grandma, but she wasn’t there. The next thing I remember, I was lying in the small room on the bed and big man stepuncle was lying behind me. I remember wondering where my pants were. I remember feeling excruciating pain. To this day I believe that
Wakaŋtanka
(the Great Holy) mercifully took my spirit from my body because my mind was gone. Big man stepuncle raped and sodomized my little four-year-old body when no one was around to protect me.

There was this little scared rabbit hiding in the bushes quivering from fright. Whenever the wind blew and rattled the leaves her eyes darted this way and that. She sat petrified and tried to wish the leaves into staying still because when the leaves moved she felt exposed to the world. Soon daylight faded to dusk, then into night, and no one could see her. Still she sat rooted in fear that the unseen enemy was waiting to kill or do her more harm. Finally, she could see grandma’s silhouette outside the kitchen door. She was peering into the night and wiping her hands with the bottom of her calico apron. Each time grandma came outside she came nearer.

When I could hear her whisper my name, I bolted on a dead run lest the evil that befell me should grab me before I reached the safety of grandma’s arms. For some reason, grandma put her apron over my head and led me inside as you would a spooked horse. On that day, in that moment of unbearable pain, my spirit journey on the good red road was detoured by a pedophile stepuncle. Through incestuous rape, this evil man forced a four-year-old girl onto the black road of alcohol, drugs, violence, suicidal ideations, suicide attempts, and a whole slough of other insane behaviors. Thus began my preschool education.

An Inside Look at War

On October 10, 1879, Colonel Richard Pratt opened the doors to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Before he opened the doors, he studied and developed his own methods to civilize and educate Indian “savages.” He tested his theories on imprisoned chiefs and warriors who were incarcerated in Marion, Florida. Pratt selected several of these leaders, cut their hair in the white man’s fashion of the day, bathed and shined them up, dressed them in new blue prison suits with shiny brass buttons, and shod them with new leather shoes. After Pratt outfitted his test subjects, he took them with him to Hampton Institute in Virginia to further test his theories on the socialization of Indian savages. Hampton Institute was a “Negro” industrial school where Colonel Pratt was newly employed (“Negro” being the term of the day). He wanted the heathen Indians to learn to be submissive and compliant. He wanted to prove that Indians could be civilized under the right conditions like the black man, so he used the Negro as a role model for Indians. After proving his experiment a success, Pratt began to develop Indian boarding schools.