As an American citizen I fully support the religious freedom of the oyate blessed by the White Buffalo Calf Woman. More importantly, as an outsider of this faith, I have witnessed moral wholesomeness from its many members and gladly state this fact.
As Arvol Looking Horse wrote, “the Lakota/Dakota/Nakota oyate (people) were given seven sacred rites of healing by a Spirit Woman, Pte San Win (White Buffalo Calf Woman).” This covenant was made with a specific community of people placed by the Creator in the land of the buffalo and validated by “public miraculous wonders.”
Mr. Looking Horse states that his community’s religious knowledge covers a long historical period and didn’t originate with him. He felt a duty to write a letter that was unnecessarily forced upon him by the external misconduct of covetous and exploitive people involved in religious mockery and persecution.
What saddens me greatly was his need to stray from ancient tradition to protect Sacred Knowledge in two communication areas. First, by using a non-indigenous written format in an oral tradition culture; and second, by using an alien language to convey Sacred Knowledge bound into the unique cultural nuances imbued in the language of the culture. The need to depart from ancient tradition highlights the troubling times that we now live in.
Some zealot traditionalists will reproach Mr. Looking Horse for writing his article and perhaps other activities that were never required of his predecessors. It is their right to have personal opinions, but it is not a traditional value to create a written, visual and/or audible debate permanently preserved.
The old adage, “Praise in public and criticize in private” has great merit and history in the Indian community. To do otherwise is to provide the tools to divide the Indian community’s unity necessary to resolve its tremendously evolving and multiplying challenges.
Were previous debates and disagreements conducted in the language and method of the White Buffalo Calf Woman or in an alien language and non-indigenous medium? This community’s internal challenges belong on the land of the buffalo.
My Native ways come from my adopted mission Indian mother and other elders. I can’t imagine mission padres opening church doors for a debate among indigenous believers and especially for Native Californians to freely discuss their covenant relationship with the Creator in the padres’ language.
Please bring peace to the Lakota/Dakota/Nakota oyate by taking Mr. Looking Horse’s article and recording on archival quality paper. Make these words a part of your religious literature and if you are Christian please place these words in your Bible.
Read it once a year and each time you experience words of oyate Sacred Knowledge, you will progress closer to the Creator and another nation of God’s people. Be prepared for a slow and long process towards gradually enriching your relationship with the Creator and with another nation that contains people acceptable to God.
– Denis Luce
Santa Rosa, Calif.
