Dakota Journalist

I am attending a Dakota History Serious of lectures which revisits the Dakota Conflict and the events surround the conflict.  The latest lecture I attended was a more spiritual one.  It was presented very thoughtfully and brought out several points that were salient to my work on GOM.  Glen Wasicuna is the Director of Dakota Studies at a tribal college in Shakopee.

The main points were, first that the Creator gave the Dakota three sacred things: the feather, pipe and language.  All were to be used as vehicles to worship Him: one feather, one pipe and the Dakota language. He went on to show how the people have changed these sacred objects.  Today people have many feathers and dance for entertainment.  He did not elaborate on the pipe, other than to say that the people have strayed from its original purpose.  One example he did give was that the pipe was like the Bible, communication from and between God.  What if people were to put the pages of the Bible on and dance?  OUCH.  Lastly, the Dakota language.  He said that he used to think it was a difficult language to learn, but now he doesn't think so.  Instead he has come to the conclusion that until one reconciles with their own history, individually and collectively, and until one is ready to become clean then the language will be easy to learn.  That is to say until the Dakota people are ready to face their brutal history, not find fault but to understand it, and then they will have a desire to learn the language and it will be easy for them to learn it.

This message really hit home.  My thesis team members want to me understand Ho-Chunk history first and then get busy and learn the language.  Maybe this is what they were telling me...

The last take home point for me was this, Glen thanked people in the audience if they ever wrote about the Dakota people. He said, "Bless you for writing about us.  Now it is our turn to write about our history.  It is our history to tell."  AMEN!!!  Haven't I been saying this all along???  I even got so bold and told this to THREE HO-CHUNK ELDERS, in a very respectful way, that we need not ever apologize for our oral tradition and history.  It is ours to tell.  If we with hold it from the young people ( I am included in this) it will be lost, forever.

Glen felt as I do, that the language, the culture, the people, the traditions will be "all right and they won't be lost" so long there are elders willing to share it and there are young people willing to learn about their history and "become clean" and live as the Creator intended.