Lakota Woman

Organizations supporting minorities have a tendency to put their main efforts into backing leaders with what is called “name recognition.”

The thing to keep in mind is that laws are framed by those who happen to be in power and for the purpose of keeping them in power.

Woman went into her moon time and as she was walking a drop of her moon blood fell to the earth. Rabbit saw it. He started to play with this tiny blood clot, kicking it around with his foot, and through the power of Tkuskanskan, the quickening, moving spirit, the blood clot firmed up and turned into We-Ota-Wichasha—Blood Clot Boy—the First Man.

Some of our medicine men always say that one must view the world through the eye in one’s heart rather than just trust the eyes in one’s head. “Look at the real reality beneath the sham realities of things and gadgets,” Leonard always tells me. “Look through the eye in your heart. That’s the meaning of Indian religion.”

As Crow Dog expressed it: “We don’t want to fight the white man, but only the white man’s system.”

The men who had brought us whiskey and the smallpox had come with the cross in one hand and the gun in the other.

“You hate those most whom you have injured most.”

They just wanted to hop in the sack with us. Then they’d be friends. If you didn’t cooperate then they were no longer interested in you as a person.

It is not that a woman during her “moontime” is considered unclean, but she is looked upon as being “too powerful.” According to our old traditions a woman during her period possesses a strange force which could render a healing ceremony ineffective. For this reason it is expected that we stay away from all rituals while menstruating. One old man once told me, “Woman on her moon is so strong that if she spits on a rattlesnake, that snake dies.” To tell the truth I never felt particularly powerful while being “on my moon.”

works subtly on your mind until you start to think that if they keep on arresting you anyway you should at least give them a good reason for it.