Winter Counts

by David Heska Wanbli Weiden

So tribal courts could only charge misdemeanor crimes—little stuff, like shoplifting or disorderly conduct. The tribal police had to refer all felonies to the federal investigators. But the feds usually declined to prosecute most of them. They’d follow through on some, usually high-profile cases or violent crimes. But standard sex assault cases, thefts, assault and battery—these crimes were usually ignored. And the bad men knew this. It was open season for raping any Native woman, so long as the rape occurred on Indian land.

Back in the time before Columbus, there were only Indians here, no skyscrapers, no automobiles, no streets. Of course, we didn’t use the words Indian or Native American then; we were just people. We didn’t know we were supposedly drunks or lazy or savages. I wondered what it was like to live without that weight on your shoulders, the weight of the murdered ancestors, the stolen land, the abused children, the burden every Native person carries.

“I see a lot of Indian wannabes come here, they think we worship the earth, they want to sing our songs and do our dances. But Wolakota means not only honoring the land but protecting the people, too. The hippies and the wasicu longhairs who come here, they don’t get that part, that our people are sacred too, not just the land and the water.”

THERE IS NO WORD for goodbye in Lakota. That’s what my mother used to tell me. Sure, there were words like toksa, which meant “later,” that were used by people as a modern substitute. She’d told me that the Lakota people didn’t use a term for farewell because of the idea that we are forever connected. To say goodbye would mean the circle was broken.