At the Site of the Massacre

 

Sign at the sight of the Massacre

 

Tombstone in Wounded Knee

 

Fr. Eagle Bull by the mass grave at Wounded Knee

 

Day 51 Wounded Knee

 

Day 51 Wounded Knee

    I am very grateful to Fr. Harold Eagle Bull who gave me a place to stay at Church of the Messiah Episcopal Church in Wounded Knee.   This Church is the only one still standing after the uprising in 1973.  When I arrived he told me that I should not open the door during the night even if someone knocks.  Many of the inhabitants are addicted to crystal meth and had seen me arrive with my bright yellow cart and would view me as a funding source.  This led to a restless night.

    In the morning, Fr. Harold came over the chat with me as I dismantled my bike and removed copious amounts of mud from its inner recesses.  He informed me that the lovely hall in which I slept had been recently renovated in the hopes that people from around the country might come and see this place.

    The history of Wounded Knee is a painful subject to ponder.  I am grateful to Fr. Eagle Bull for bringing me to the mass grave of the victims of the 1890 massacre. Unless you have a local person bring you there, it is exceedingly difficult to find it.  It is surrounded by a chain link fence to protect it from vandals.  The remaining Lakota in the community maintain that the massacre was motivated primarily by the humiliation which Custer had experienced at Little Big Horn. 

     There is a plaque commemorating the names of all that could be remembered in the hopes that they will not be forgotten.  These names are can still be found on the mail boxes in the surrounding houses, though few people ever come here visit.  It is a painful experience to stand in that place. Fr. Harold told me that the current governor wants so eliminate references to Wounded Knee in the school history curriculum because it makes white people feel uncomfortable.

     As I getting ready to leave he blessed me in the Lakota language and anointed my feet for my journey.  I left that place changed.

Day 50 Pine Ridge to Wounded Knee

 Gloria Wounded Foot and her Son

Day 50 Pine Ridge to Wounded Knee

    I spent the better part of the morning in Pine Ridge writing some reflections and chatting with the homeless community who find refuge and friendship at the center for reconciliation.  Theirs is an anxious life made more so by the fact that the tribal council has stopped support of the shelter.  There were some who expressed envy over the freedom my bike and cart represented. 

      Although alcohol is prohibited on the reservation, there are half a dozen marijuana dispensaries.   The establishment next to the center was called “No Worries” and had a very attractive sign inviting all patrons.  To an anxious population, this is a very seductive advertisement.

     After lunch, I left Pine Ridge and started to bicycle to Wounded Knee (population 350).  Once again, my GPS, in its effort to keep me away from busy roads, led me through remote dirt paths which were covered in mud.  At one point along the way I had to push my bike for 3 miles through foot deep mud which is an exhausting undertaking.  Though the “bike friendly” route saved me 4 miles, it took an additional 3 hours to plough through those places I could not ride through.

     When I reached the pavement, I could see dark clouds gathering over my destination 5 miles ahead of me.  I could see an amazing light show of lightening which made feel very vulnerable in the absence of any shelter along the way.  As the rain began, I was blessed yet again by a kind soul which pulled over.  A truck driven by a Lakota woman and her son jumped out and asked me if I had a place to stay.  I informed her that I was going to staying at the Episcopal Church and she and her son loaded me and my bike into their truck as the skies opened up.

     She introduced herself as Gloria Wounded Foot.  She was the mother of 5 boys; 3 of whom were in prison, one in a psychiatric hospital, and her youngest (10 years old) was helping her on her errands.  She said that she has been in Wounded Knee her entire life and has never seen a cyclist in the region.  She invited me to her house for dinner.  I was covered with mud and felt I should try to keep my filth to myself and politely declined. 

     That night, I continued reading “The Solace of Fierce Landscapes”

          “…The desert as metaphor is that uncharted terrain beyond the edge of the seemingly secure and structured world in which we take such confidence, a world of affluence and order we cannot imagine ever ending.  Yet it does. And at the point where the world begins to crack, where brokenness and disorientation suddenly overtake us, there we step into the wide, silent plains of a desert we had never known existed.

     We cross its sands-unwelcomed, stripped of influence and reputation, the desert caring nothing for the worries and warped sense of self-importance dragged along behind us…The deepest mystery of love is never realized apart from the experience of having nothing to offer in return.  Only there does love reveal itself in unaccountable wonder.

      In that place we discover ourselves no longer alone.  In the wilderness, we meet other wizened souls who have weathered sun and heat, all of them healed of the same wound.  There is wildness in their eyes.  The hardly give a damn for the things they used to find so terribly important.  Scarcely fit for polite company they nonetheless love with a fierceness echoing the land through which they have passed….They are what the church has been summoned to be, a community of broken people, painfully honest, undomesticated, rid of the pretence and suffocating niceness to which ‘religion’ is so often prone.  They love, inexplicably and unflinchingly, because of having been loved themselves.”

    When we arrived at the church she helped me unload my filthy bike and gear and insisted I take her phone number.  I told her that I am taking pictures of the kind people I have met along the way and she agreed as long as I included her son.  She stood on her tiptoes, kissed my forehead, and left. 

The Fruits of Solitude

 

The Fruits of Solitude

     While cycling across South Dakota I have been reading “The Solace of Fierce Landscapes; Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality” by Belden C. Lane.  He writes of the contributions the desert monks have made to our understanding of the human condition.  Nearly everyone I have ever known has spent most of their lives seeking, enjoying, and deriving sustenance from living in the midst of comfort and security.  Lane, in his work, speaks of those who have learned something of themselves by intentionally entering a landscape of discomfort and insecurity.   Though his point of reference are deserts and mountains,  his observation also applies to cycling across the prairies of South Dakota. 

      He speaks of the value of “true indifference” which comes from harsh landscapes.  “False indifference” is the antithesis of compassion which is sought and found in an attempt to numb ourselves from the anxieties which bombard our lives.  He writes:

     “…False indifference is the scourge of domesticated Christianity, tired and worn out, readily accommodating itself to its culture, bowing the social pressures of the status quo.  It remains so tame as to fear nothing so much as the disdain of all sophisticated unbelief.  This is the indifference that allows the church to abandon its call to radical obedience to Christ in the world.  It becomes the driving force behind every injustice, allowing dominant cultural forms to remain unchallenged by people too indifferent to care.

      But indifference properly understood can become a source of profoundly liberating power.  Adopted a discipline of ignoring what is not important, in light of the truth of the gospel; it becomes a countercultural influence of great significance.  People who pay attention to what matters most in their lives, and who learn to ignore everything else, assume a freedom that is highly creative as well as potentially dangerous in contemporary society.  Having abandoned everything of insignificance, they have nothing to lose….were Christians (and others) to practice this stubborn desert discipline today; they would find a freedom that is refreshing and contagious to some, but also threatening and intolerable to others.  Unjust societal structures and people addicted to power will not tolerate being ignored.  They are profoundly threatened by those not subject to their influence, those no longer playing by the accepted rules.  To cease to be driven by the fear of what other people think is to become a threat to the world as we know it.  Only at great personal risk one becomes indifferent to the accepted standards and expectation of the dominant culture.”

    A dear friend recently texted me asking if I get bored peddling all day across the prairies.  Perhaps, but I have come to realize that boredom is not a bad thing.  Boredom can be generative and creative.  The elevated heart rate caused by cardio vascular exercise, combined with not having a computer screen in front of me for long periods of time, allows my mind to more clearly discern what is most important to me and develop a true indifference to the rest.

      Yesterday I stepped on a scale for the first time in a month.  I discovered to my astonishment that I have lost 12 pounds.  This is due not only to daily peddling, but also to the fact that my eating options are limited and I am not experiencing hunger.  It appears that cycling all day does not cause as much of an appetite for food as does sending emails, reading books, chairing meetings, organizing events, and making complex and often unsatisfying decisions.