Appreciation of a grandmother: Beatrice Weasel Bear
by: Editors Report / Indian Country Today
Recent Sun Dance prayers in the Black Hills gathered the good minds of
strong dancers, both men and women, to concentrate on the wish for
less violence and less war - in our homes and in the world at large.
Lakota, Mohawk and allies - in ceremonies correspondent to World Peace
Prayer Day and as signaled by Arvol Looking Horse, Keeper of the
Sacred White Buffalo Calf Woman Pipe - rose up at twilight of the
Summer Solstice on June 21 for songs of spiritual renewal, offerings
of thanksgiving and appreciation to the women. The day and cycle of
creation opened and closed in its moment.
A Sun Dance pipe, loaded along with the original pipe at Green Grass,
was smoked by elders and Sun dancers in the Black Hills while Looking
Horse gathered many other circles of people in the Plains, at
Piedmont, S.D. Other years, he has prayed in Japan and the Middle East.
A ceremony of the Oyate (the people) led by the men's societies, the
Sun Dance of the Plains - and in particular this one, hosted by
Oglala-Lakota tiospayes once again this year in the Black Hills -
often flows from the authority and the certain knowledge of the
grandmothers.
In the Black Hills this June, the matriarch of a group of Oglala
families - tiospayes of the Afraid Of Bear, American Horse and Red
Cloud lineages of chiefs - called her sons and daughters, nephews,
nieces, in-laws and all her relatives to pray and dance. Beatrice
Weasel Bear, 79, danced again in the grueling sacrifice under the open
sky, even though she had meant to retire from active dancing this
year. In her moment of prayer, in a season of much close grief, she,
too, intoned for world peace, for peace in the mind and hearts of men.
Among her honors, Beatrice is a member of the International Council of
13 Indigenous Grandmothers, which gathers annually to make prayers for
the earth.
Midwife, public health nurse, traditional herbalist and healer,
ceremonial leader and grandmother of many great-grandchildren,
Beatrice led the women in the four days of rounds of many hours of
dancing under a searing, generous sun. Beatrice's Sun Dance
intercessor, Oglala elder Basil Brave Heart, aided by dance leaders
and helpers, officiated the week-long event and its intense four-day
ceremony.
It is the season of the Sun Dance in the northern and southern Plains.
Many extended families, bands and villages will hold ceremonies of
thanksgiving and appreciation this summer. Many will dance with the
sun and hear the ancient songs of praise for the cosmic family of Sun
and Earth and Moon, and all the circle of life, all the relations and
the healing: peace and hope and good prayers so needed by the people
in these violent times.
We assert this reality - and it is worth asserting the reality of
American Indian tribal spiritual contemplation because it is visible
to relatively few people in North America, yet it must be respected
and recognized along with all the real and pressing traditions of
spiritual observance among Native peoples.
The summer Sun Dance is a major expression in the cycle of many such
American indigenous expressions: respectful of creation and clearly
imbued with all the values of good behavior and good will for human
beings on the Earth, as enumerated by all major religious traditions.
On the summer solstice, in the Black Hills of the Northern Great
Plains, on a plateau high above the Cheyenne River, across from Hell's
Canyon - a place where prayers have been made for hundreds and
thousands of years - a ceremony was held by Indians, for Indians and
their allies.
Beatrice and the Oglala elders leading the Sun Dance upheld the vision
of her brothers and brothers in law - Larue Afraid Of Bear most
prominently among them - who had persisted over decades that Sun
dancing again in the Black Hills was the proper way to re-secure their
sacred lands into the Lakota spiritual fold. Larue and several of his
brothers, including Ernest Afraid Of Bear, and also elders and leaders
among the American Horse and Red Cloud clan, pondered Larue's vision
and backed him as he searched the hills for the desired place to hold
their tiospaye Sun Dance.
Larue found his place 12 years ago, in a canyon and wild horse
sanctuary saved from rapacious developers by an old cowboy author,
Dayton Hyde, who immediately connected with the Indian request and
opened the land and sites to the families. After four years of
cleansing and hundreds of sweat lodge ceremonies, the annual cycle of
dances began eight years ago. The first two four-year cycles closed
with this summer's dance.
The Slim Buttes people of this westernmost area of the Pine Ridge
Reservation put up singers, cooks, dancers, peace guardians and other
assistance for the eighth year of Beatrice's families' annual dance.
Relatives and friends from the four directions, as always, came to
share the prayers; families provided fire-keepers, cedar-men and
runners. Indian veterans' organizations from several posts put up
flags for four ancestor veterans killed in action. Empty chairs draped
in star quilts with photos of the honored warriors were set up at the
base of each pole. Dozens of Lakota relatives and allies put up two
whole camps: the dancers' camp and the ''downstairs'' or relatives'
camp. As always, the arbor was rebuilt, and cooking and feeding tents
were put up. Tipis and campers situated here and there inside and
outside the perimeter were erected and secured.
For four and more days, a regimen is followed. Many individual prayers
are made for healing and for the protection of family and other loved
ones. But the active search for peace, in the heart and the mind, is
the consciousness carried most in common by participants who each
endure their own measure of pain to uphold the ancient call to
ceremony made by the sponsoring families. ''No more war,'' says the
prayer, ''no more war.''
Like the pope in Rome, the high priest in Jerusalem or Billy Graham in
Washington, D.C., these prayers, held here and there in Indian
country, have serious intent. The high content and grassroots - thus
genuine - Indian spiritual traditions of the sacred pipe of the
Lakota, presently articulated by Looking Horse and many elders of
these ways - including the much appreciated grandmother, Beatrice and
her united tiospayes (which proudly planted 492 family gardens this
spring) - deserve great respect. The efforts of such elders merit all
the upholding that the Indian peoples can possibly give. In this case
they are allied with Billy Mills' program of Running Strong for
American Indian Youth.
The independent, distinctive and profoundly natural American Indian
spiritual traditions are one major foundation of Indian identity - a
center post and pillar of tribal sovereignty. Honor always the elders
and their ideas, for how else can these ancient ways be regenerated
for the healthy re-empowerment of all the people?
Link to Report
Source of Information:
Link to Message
Indigenous Peoples Literature
July Reports
Last updated on July 11, 2005