Woman Walks Ahead, A Film Review

"This does not look like Standing Rock," he said. "...Standing Rock is supposed to look like New Mexico...," she replied.

Woman Walks Ahead, A Film Review

Can One Scene Redeem A Movie?

By Dakota Wind

Woman Walks Ahead. Directed by Susanna White. Produced by Edward Zwick, Marshall Herskovitz, Erika Olde, Rick Solomon, and Andrea Calderwood. Written by Steven Knight. Music by George Fenton. Starring Jessica Chastain, Michael Greyeyes, Chaske Spencer, Sam Rockwell, and others. U.S.A. & U.K.: Black Bicycle Entertainment, Bedford Falls Productions, and Potboiler Productions. June 29, 2018. Film. 101 Minutes.

Some films are beautifully crafted narratives based on real-life people or circumstances. Others struggle in their telling to make a story bigger than it was. Still more only have one redeeming quality to them. Woman Walks Ahead has one powerful message in a beautifully constructed scene that contains a minimal presence of the film’s female protagonist.

Before the film began, I was milling around in the atrium of the Grand Theater, a locally owned theater in Bismarck, ND, with an old friend talking about life and church. We got there about half an hour early to get good seats. About fifteen minutes into our wait, a young native man comes up to me and shakes my hand. I introduce myself in Lakȟóta and ask him his name. Lo, he offers a confident reply and we exchange pleasantries. A quiet opened around us as we engaged in our language. I told him that I’m not a fluent speaker and that he spoke very well. He nodded his head before rejoining his mother. They went on to see “Deadpool 2.”

Sam Rockwell, pictured above, as Col. Groves on a mission to justify killing Indians and redeem himself, but can't escape white male paternalism, plays a perfect guilty asshole who hasn't slept since the Killdeer fight of 1863. His Lakhota is alright too. 

I knew I wasn’t going to see a historically accurate film. There are plenty of articles drifting in the internet atmosphere challenging the artistry of Susanna White and a rambling self-serving narrative by Steven Knight that pretty much cover my concerns, but I have one overwhelming question.

Why film the movie in New Mexico? There are a few shots where the landscape might pass for Standing Rock, but anyone who has made the pilgrimage to Sitting Bull’s camp knows the rolling hills and sinuous banks of the Grand River are shaded overwhelmingly by cottonwood. The story is as removed from historical fact as it is in location.

New Mexico and its mountains are beautiful, but a beautiful mountain sunset in the southwest is not the same on the vast open prairie steppe. The prairie features unique flat-topped plateaus, an open sky with bright sunlight unhindered only by passing clouds, and a constant wind that has been here since creation. Thítȟuŋwaŋ, or Teton, means “They Who Dwell On The Plains.” White removed the people from the land that made them.

Susanna White (above) goes for emotional truth, not historical truth. The emotional truth that existed between Sitting Bull and Weldon simply did not exist.

Agent McLaughlin (pronounced mick-LOFF-lin by the community and by the Major’s descendants) would have been better served by perpetual cowboy Sam Elliot, at least he’s got the mustache for it. Knight didn’t know whether to write the Major as an apologist or paternalist, and it shows. McLaughlin learned Dakhota from his wife; Hinds’s Major is as confused about hearing Lakhota as Knight’s apparent research about the time and setting of the actual story, and neither should be.

Sam Rockwell’s Colonel Silas Groves is the perfect asshole whose arc represents something of a mix between white guilt and white redemption. Groves tells Chastain’s Weldon of the Indian depredation as justification for the country’s punitive campaign against the red man, and just barely touches on the exchange of escalating violence on the frontier (the 1863 Killdeer Mountain conflict is mentioned in which Sitting Bull mentions seeing Groves there, who was on campaign against the Lakhota who had nothing to do with the events in Minnesota, but for Groves, an Indian is an Indian).

Where's the snow that Knight's script mentioned in Sitting Bull's recollecton? It was not snowing, as it was the middle of summer. 

The 1863 Killdeer Mountain conflict took place in late July, the Moon of Ripe Chokecherries, making it nigh improbable that there was snowfall, and though it could snow in July, there is none mentioned at all in the oral tradition. Maybe in England it snows in July, but not on the Great Plains, but snowfall, even in retrospect in a rambling narrative makes for good telling.

There is a lot to deconstruct and inquire about this film, but it has one powerful redeeming scene. Agent McLaughlin sat with his wife/translator and General George Crook to hear testimony about whether the tribe should sign the Dawes Treaty, which in fact was not a treaty but a congressional act, to break up the Great Sioux Nation into small reservations. These smaller reservations were originally part of official US Indian policy called “concentration,” and were prison camps, the legacy of which enrolled members of federally recognized tribes are assigned enrollment numbers (prison numbers in the concentration policy days).

Sitting Bull, played by Michael Greyeyes (Plains Cree), delivers a powerful oratory about Makȟóčhe (Grandmother Earth) and how the Lakȟóta cannot sell it, “not even this much,” he said as he reached down for a handful of earth and held it before the agent. Some films redeem themselves with the perfect music, others with cinematography. This moment is this film's redemption. 

Stone Man's pictographic testimony of the conflict at Sitting Bull's camp the morning he was killed on the Grand River. Soldiers' guns and cannon fired onto Spotted Elk's (Big Foot's) band of Mnikowozu as they fled. 

The film concludes with the arrest and death of Sitting Bull. Artistic licensing aside, there was just too much missing for me to appreciate this scene as the director intended (a dramatic close up of Welden in the snow in distress over the loss of Sitting Bull). There was a conflict there between the police and the people camped there at Sitting Bull’s home. Soldiers stood atop the bluff of the south bank of the Grand River and fired gun and shell at the camp. Sitting Bull’s death was not by a sniper, but by BIA police officer Bull Head after he was shot; Bull Head shot Sitting Bull twice, once in the side, then in the head.

Sitting Bull was shot and killed by the BIA Indian Police up close, not by sniper. 

Welden’s painting is on display at the ND State Heritage Center and Museum, torn by one of the BIA police officers, but it is not the same as the painting as depicted in Woman Walks Ahead. Sitting Bull was painted “old” because he was old.

Weldon's painting of Sitting Bull on display at the ND Heritage Center and State Museum. The tear in the painting came from one of the BIA police officers. 

There was no romantic love between Sitting Bull and Weldon, but she did things for him that were expected of wives while she lived there: cooked and fed him, chopped wood, and tended his fire. I remember hearing that Sitting Bull asked her just to be his wife since she was doing the things wives do, but there was no romantic attachment. The on-screen chemistry between Weldon and Sitting Bull is chaste and distant, but the introduction of that chemistry is introduced by White and Knight.

See the movie, then visit the North Dakota Heritage Center and Museum to see the real Weldon painting. Adjacent to Weldon’s painting is Stone Man’s pictographic testimony of the conflict that ensued as Sitting Bull was arrested. Both images are worth taking in. 

Origins Of The Cannonball Stones

A cannonball concretion near Sentinel Butte, ND. Photo by ND State.
Origin Of The Cannonball
How The Stone Is Formed
By Dakota Wind
Cannonball, N.D. (TFS) – Mníšoše (the “Water A-stir;” Missouri River) is perhaps as old as 80 million years. Before the Quaternary Ice Age, the river ran north and drained into Hudson Bay. Following that ice age, the river altered its course and flowed east and south. The Lakȟóta worldview perspective observes that over time, rivers and mountains change. The Lakȟóta worldview embraces change. Everything changes.

One of the Mníšoše tributaries, Íŋyaŋ IyÁ Wakpá (Talking Stone River; Cannonball River) is a natural landmark, known by the first nations for thousands of years, and later by explorers and traders like the Corps of Discovery, traders, and military expeditions.

The Cannonball River is known by many names. The Húŋkpapȟa and Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna call it Íŋyaŋ IyÁ Wakpá, or Íŋyaŋwakaǧapi Wakpá (Stone Production [“Cannonball”] River), respectively. The Cheyenne call this same river É’ome’tá’á’e’t, in reference to the cannonball concretions. The Hidatsa know the Cannonball River as Aashihdia, which means Big River. The Mandan Indians, whose earliest historical record goes back to the Cannonball River, call it Pasąhxte’, meaning Big River.

The Mníšoše was known to the Thítȟuŋwaŋ (Dwellers On The Plains; Lakȟóta) as a dangerous river with a deadly undercurrent. Where tributaries converged with the Mníšoše, great wamníyomni (whirlpools) formed in the river. When the first nations crossed the Mníšoše they did so upstream of the wamníyomni. 

A Mandan Village by Karl Bodmer. In the image, Mandan women cross the Missouri River to tend to their gardens on the flood plain of the opposite shore. 

There are two explanations that explain the origin of the cannonball concretions. One mystical, a lesson in holding dear the mystery of creation; the other geological, telling us that these stones have a long history reaching back to a time before humans. In both explanations water is the key to their formation.

According to Jon Eagle Sr., Tribal Historic Preservation Officer of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, the wamníyomni at the confluence of the Mníšoše and Íŋyaŋ IyÁ Wakpá, where the energy of one river converged with the energy of another, is where the cannonball concretions were formed. The energy of the wamníyomni created the stones. Eagle contends that after the construction of Oáhe (Something-To-Stand-On; a “Foundation”) Dam, after the creation of Lake Oáhe, the wamníyomni at the confluence of Íŋyaŋ IyÁ Wakpá and Mníšoše, stopped producing the spherical cannonball stones.

Dr. Ray Wood sums up the disappearance of the cannonball concretions in his Prologue To Lewis And Clark, “the banks and valley of this stream once were home to uncounted spherical sandstone concretions that ranged from a few inches to several feet in diameter. Some of them indeed were the size of cannonballs. Today they have been carried away by curio hunters in such numbers that they are very rare.” 

Bluemle explains how the Missouri River once drained into Hudson Bay. Visit his amazing website explaining the geological history of the Great Plains: johnbluemle.com. 

John Bluemle Ph.D. (former State Geologist for the state of North Dakota) explains the cannonball stones’ process through cementation. The cannonball stones “form as a result of the selective deposition from water of cementing materials in the pores of the sediment,” and, “All the geologic formations in western North Dakota contain concretions and nodules of many sizes and shapes.” Bluemle states in his work The Face Of North Dakota, that “some concretions are nearly spherical, some long and tubular, and others have irregular shapes.” As the landscape erodes around the cemented concretions, the cannonball is revealed.

The cannonball is so important to the identity of North Dakota, that the North Dakota Heritage Center and State Museum features several cannonball concretions outside its east entrance.

Dakota Wind is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. He is currently a university student working on a degree in History with a focus on American Indian and Western History. He maintains the history website The First Scout.

Survey Report Says Nothing To See Here

Leslie Nielsen's "Lt. Frank Drebin" from the 1988 comedy classic, "The Naked Gun." In this scene, Drebin tells people, "Move along. There's nothing to see here. Please disperse."
Survey Report Doesn't Say Much
"Move Along. There's Nothing To See Here."
By Dakota Wind 
Bismarck, N.D. (TFS) - Last November I submitted letters and copies of bibliographical information and primary resource documents to several agencies regarding the Class III survey report submitted to the North Dakota State Historic Preservation Office in January 2016. 

The contrast of information excluded from the report is far greater than what the report actually contains. The report minimizes the cultural, historical, and military occupations of a significant landmark on the Missouri River: the Cannonball River. 

Here are one dozen distinct events (a detailed explanation and complete bibliography can found in at "Remembering A River:" 

The Big River Village, a Huff phase Mandan Indian occupation as early as 1400 C.E. The site that has been disturbed by the drill pad on the north bank of the Cannonball River is known to the Mandan as "Big River Village," and to the State Historical Society of North Dakota as the "North Cannonball Village." 

The 1762-1763 Sičháŋǧu (Burnt Thigh; Brulé) and Cheyenne Fight, an inter-tribal conflict in which the Cheyenne retaliated and set fire to the prairie which caught and burned their enemy giving them the designation Sičháŋǧu. 

English explorer John Evans, who mapped the Missouri River from St. Louis to Knife River in 1796, includes the Cannonball River as the "Bomb River," in reference to the cannonballs.

The inter-tribal between the Mandan, Hidatsa, Húŋkpapȟa and Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna that began at the mouth of the Cannonball River concluded at the mouth of the Heart River in 1803. 

The Corps of Discovery Expedition remarked on the "La Bullet" River and took a cannonball concretion, Oct. 18, 1804. 

Botanist John Bradbury collected flax from the Cannonball River in 1811. A significant difference in the flax samples necessitated a second trip to the Cannonball River in 1819 for additional collection. 

War of 1812 tensions resulted in conflict on the Missouri River between the Arikara, Cheyenne, and the American Fur Company. There was a conflict at the mouth of the Cannonball River in 1812. 

A devasting flood in 1825 on the Missouri River floodplain resulted in the drowning deaths of over one hundred Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna men, women, elders, and children, and several hundred of their horses. All were buried on a hill across the river from the north bank Big River Village. This hill is sometimes submerged in Lake Oáhe, and is now located roughly halfway across the span of the present lake. 

Prince Maximillian von Wied-Neuwied spent probably the most time at the Cannonball River, describing what he saw, more than any other explorer or trader to date, and noted significant geological findings there in 1833. 

In 1837, the Húŋkpapȟa camp was struck by an epidemic of smallpox there on the flood plain, the west side of the Missouri River, at the Cannonball River confluence. 

After constructing Fort Rice in the summer of 1864, Gen. Alfred Sully began his punitive campaign against the "Sioux" at the mouth of the Cannonball River, July 29, 1864. 

The historic Cannonball Ranch, established at the same time as Fort Rice, was instrumental in developing the ranching traditions and western lifestyle on the Northern Great Plains. This historic ranch was inducted into the ND Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1999.

None of this is mentioned in the Class III survey report. Reports are supposed to be exhaustive: "An intensive inventory is a systematic, detailed field inspection done by, or under the direction of professional architectural historians, historians, archeologists, and/or other appropriate specialists." 

The ND SHPO has updated their Cultural Resources Identification, Recording and Evaluation page to reflect their process. "A location of five or fewer artifacts and identified by the archaeologist(s) as representing an area of very limited past activity may be recorded as an isolated find." The Class III Survey Report submitted by Energy Transfer flags over forty artifacts recorded by the survey team in the mouth of the Cannonball area alone.

ND SHPO continues: A location of five or fewer artifacts and identified by the archaeologist(s) as representing an area of very limited past activity may be recorded as an isolated find. The map detailing the Dakota Access Pipeline's route where the pipeline is to cross under Lake Oáhe flags fifty artifacts on both sides of the river. I can not publish an image of the map because it may result in "disturbance of the resource."

Site leads refer to resources that lack sufficient information to fully record and complete all necessary data fields on the North Dakota Cultural Resources Survey (NDCRS) site forms. Examples of site leads include: (1) locations recorded from various historic documents, (2) locations reported by a landowner or other non-professional, (3) a location with five or fewer surface visible artifacts which, in the professional judgment of the archaeologist(s), is likely to be a limited surface expression of a former occupation area where most of the artifacts are still buried, and/or (4) locations recorded by a cultural resource specialist outside of their project area(s), and thus not fully recorded. Clearly the Cannonball River is more than a "site lead," with over a dozen native and non-native primary resource documents, and at least two Ph.D.'s who've written about the Cannonball in their works, one a world-renowned archaeologist, and the other won a Pulitzer Prize in 2016 about the Mandan and their earliest record of that historic nation at the Cannonball River. 

These two Ph.D's have found enough material, physical and historical, and most importantly, significant, enough to include data and construct narrative about the Cannonball River Village sites. It's for the ND SHPO to say, "Move along. There's nothing to see here. Please disperse." 

The preliminary evaluation of all cultural resources identified within the study area should be made in sufficient detail to provide an understanding of the historical values that they represent...Only the lead agency and North Dakota State Historic Preservation Office, through consultation, can provide a final determination of eligibility (DOE) on cultural resources in North Dakota. 

The class III survey report has raised no flags. The events mentioned above can be found in various resources at the ND State Archives, ND State Library, the Stanley Ahler collection at the ND SHPO, on the ND Studies website, and as books for sale at the ND Heritage Center and State Museum Gift Store. 

Dakota Wind is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. He is currently a university student working on a degree in History with a focus on American Indian and Western History. He maintains the history website The First Scout.

A Changing Landscape, How To Pronounce Oahe

Oahe Reservoir Area, Missouri River, North & South Dakota, NPS.

A Changing Landscape
Displacement And Site Names
By Dakota Wind
Cannonball, N.D. (TFS) – The only time the Mníšoše (Water-Astir; Missouri River) should not flow, is after Wazíya (The Power Of The North) has blown his cold wind across the land and has frozen the waterways. That is the natural cycle of the earth.

In 1872, Thomas Riggs, an Indian missionary, arrived in Dakota Territory and established Hope Mission. Two years later, Riggs moved the mission to Peoria Bottoms and referred to this new mission as the Oahe Indian Mission. The mission school served students from Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, and Rosebud until it closed in 1914. (Note: see glossary to learn how to pronounce "Oahe".)

Riggs’ name for the Oahe Indian Mission, was inspired by his father, Stephen Riggs, also a missionary and author of A Dakota-English Dictionary. A possible explanation for Riggs’ naming of his mission was that the meaning of Oahe is similar to the naming of Simon to Peter, who is renamed in Matthew 16:18: “…and on this Rock will I build my church.” The Dakota word for Foundation is Oáhe, meaning, “Something To Stand On.”

Oahe Indian Mission at Peoria Bottom, Dakota Territory. NPS

A likelier possibility for Riggs’ mission name may come from the fact that his mission was established at a well-used steamboat landing on the floodplain of the Missouri River at Peoria Bottom, S.D. The steamboat landings were called: Wátapȟeta Oáhe (lit. “Boat-Fire Something-To-Stand/Land On”).

The Mníšoše was a whirling river, dangerous to those who didn’t know it or respect its waters. It swirled where tributaries converged with it, and river crossings were made upstream of the whirlpools. The river ran brown because of all the sediment picked up by the stirrings. Steamboat traffic referred to the river as the “Big Muddy.” Water drawn from the river had to settle a day before using it. 

Herd of bison on the Missouri River by Karl Bodmer. 

The first nations who lived along the river were well aware of the annual spring floods. The sedentary tribes built their villages above the flood plain and farmed the rich bottomlands. The spring floods were difficult to anticipate too. The tragic flood of 1825, at the point opposite of the mouth of Íŋyaŋ Iyá Wakpá (“Talking Stone River”), also called Íŋyaŋwakaǧapi Wakpá (“Stone-Makes-For-Itself River”), or the Cannonball River, is a testament to the unpredictability of the river. 1825 is remembered by the Húŋkpapȟa as Mní wičhát’tÁ, or “Many Died By Drowning.”

The location of the flood was known after as Étu Pȟá Šuŋg t’Á, or “Dead Horse Head Point,” in memory of all the horses that drowned in a line there. Their deceased loved ones and their dead horses were interred where the camp was located, which was on a rise in the Mníšoše valley, opposite of the Cannonball River. That rise would later become an island which is sometimes submerged under the waters of Lake Oahe. 

Ronald Campbell at Pierre, S.D., where the Missouri River once ran free, July 1958. 

In 1948, the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) began construction of the Oahe Dam and finished in 1959. The Oahe Indian Mission was moved to an area above the projected floodplain overlooking the dam, and the dam took its name from the mission. During those eleven years, salvage archaeology surveys were conducted where the lake was projected to submerge them.

The dams were constructed with an eye towards flooding reservation bottomlands. The only tribal consultation the USACE did with first nations was to inform tribes dams were going to be built to control the annual flooding and to offer tribes a one-time payment for the federal land grab. There was no negotiation. In fact, the first nations didn't even have some of the most basic rights as Americans. Pipelines and power lines were put in place without tribal consultation. The first nations had no political voice in the process.

In a discussion with Lekší Kevin Locke, Lake Oahe, has a darker connotation. When the flood came, it rose and receded, then rose more with each passing year. During the rising flood, buildings that were left behind on the bottomlands gradually fell apart leaving only the foundations, or Oáhe. 

A stone similar to this Standing Rock was placed on a pedestal in Fort Yates, N.D.

Back at the mouth of Íŋyaŋ Iyá Wakpá, there lived a Húŋkpapȟa man called Čhaŋtópȟeta (“Fireheart”). Agent McLaughlin selected Čhaŋtópȟeta to bring Íŋyaŋ Wosláta, the actual Standing Rock, into Fort Yates, the agency headquarters, so that it would serve as some kind of memorial. Instead, Čhaŋtópȟeta brought in a regular stone to fool the wašíču.

During the reservation era, the creek that converges with Iŋyáŋ Iyá Wakpá near the Mníšoše confluence was named Čhaŋtópȟeta Wakpála, or “Fireheart Creek,” after the man.

The first nations have stood in defiance of extinction and continuous dispossession of land, water, and sky. The settler has taken hold of Makȟóčhe Wašté (The Beautiful Country) and renamed the landscape and waters. This process is called oblivion, an intentional generational process of forgetting the landscape as the indigenous knew it, and replacing it until it is utterly forgotten. Some places still keep their names as the indigenous called them, mispronounced and bastardized, these contemporary place names are spoken. 

The ancestal homeland of the Yanktonai lay east of the Missouri River. Taken in Cannonball, N.D.

Regarding the rampant mispronunciation of traditional landscape names, Lekší Louie Garcia says this, “These news guys go out of their way to get the correct pronunciation of all these world leaders and places, but when it comes to our Native [sic] names- anything goes. I hope you and other Lakota speakers will start a campaign to correctly pronounce Oáhe.”

The late Rev. Innocent Good House (Húŋkpapȟa), an Episcopal minister for several years on the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation recalled the Mníšoše of his youth, “An Indian believes the waters of a river should flow.” The river and lake are blue today. In summer they sparkle in the summer sun and in winter gleam like a knife's edge. There are recreation opportunities on the lake, but the living memory of the whirling river is nearly gone. 

Any development on the Mníšoše are land grabs and come at the expense of the first nations. The USACE were bold aggressors in the 1950’s, and are insincere on their promises at the present time. 

Dakota Wind is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. He is currently a university student working on a degree in History with a focus on American Indian and Western History. He maintains the history website The First Scout.
____________________

GLOSSARY of Lakȟóta terms and names:
(* indicates a glottal accent)Čhaŋtópȟeta (chahn-TOH-ph*ay-tah): “Fireheart.” Never “CAN-toh-pet-ah.”

Čhaŋtópȟeta Wakpála (chahn-TOH-ph*ay-tah wahk-PAH-lah): “Fireheart Creek.”

Étu Pȟá Šuŋg t’Á (ay-TOO PH*AH shoong t’AH): “Dead Horse Head Point.”

Húŋkpapȟa (HOONK-pahp-h*ah). “Head Of The Camp Circle.” Hunkpapa. Never “HUNK-pah-pah.”

Íŋyaŋ Iyá Wakpá (EEN-yahn ee-YAH wahk-PAH): “Talking Stone River.” Cannonball River.

Íŋyaŋwakaǧapi Wakpá (EEN-yahn-wah-kah-g*ah-pee wahk-PAH): “Stone Makes For Itself [as in “production”] River.” Cannonball River.

Íŋyaŋ Wosláta (EEN-yahn wohs-LAH-tah): “Rock Standing-Upright.” Standing Rock.

Lekší (lek-SHEE): “Uncle.”

Makȟóčhe Wašté (mah-KH*O-chay wash-TAY): “The Beautiful Country.” This is the Lakȟóta way of saying “North America,” or “The Great Plains.” Contemporary Lakȟóta are rather inclined to use Khéya Wíta, “Turtle Island,” for North America.

Mníšoše (mih-NEE-sho-shay): “The Water-Astir.” The Missouri River.

Mní wičhát’tÁ (mih-NEE wee-CHAHT TAH): “Water They-Died.” They drowned.

Oáhe (oh AH-hay): “Something To Stand On.” Foundation. Never “O-wah-hee.”

Wašíču (wah-SHEE-chu): “A non-native person or people.” Anglo.

Wátapȟeta Oáhe (WAH-tah-p*ay-tah oh-AH-hay): “Fire Boat Foundation.” Steamboat Landing.

Wazíya (wah-ZEE-yah): “Power Of The North.” The North Wind.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cerny, Jan. Lakota Sioux Missions, South Dakota. Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia, 2005.

Riggs, Stephen, ed. A Dakota-English Dictionary. 1890 Reprint ed. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1992.

Garcia, Louie. Oahe., February 8, 2017.

High Dog. The High Dog Winter Count. n.p., 1911. Muslin cotton. State Historical Society of North Dakota.

National Park Service. “Oahe Reservoir: Archeology, Geology, History.” September 2008. Accessed February 9, 2017. https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/lecl/oahe-reservoir/sec2.htm.

Locke, Kevin. Something To Stand On. August 2013.

Balmer, Randall. “Torpedo The Dams - And Free The Rivers.” December 15, 2012. Accessed February 9, 2017. http://www.vnews.com/Archives/2015/12/column-balmer-dam-vn-120515.

Remembering A River

A view of the Cannonball River looking west. 

Remembering A River

Significant Mentions In Historic Resources

By Dakota Wind 
Updated on Nov. 12, 2016
Updated on Dec. 11, 2016
Updated on Feb. 13, 2017
Updated on Feb. 1, 2018

Cannonball, ND – The Lakȟóta people keep their collective memory alive in pictographic records called winter counts. One such winter count, the Brown Hat Winter Count, reaches back to what ethnologists and historians might call “myth-history,” to circa 901. This history reaches back hundreds of years and recalls the arrival of the horse in 1692, the first horse stealing raid in 1706, inter-tribal conflict, contact with traders, smallpox, starfalls, eclipses, comets, sun dances, white bison hunts, conflicts with soldiers, treaties, the arrival of settlers, the boarding school and reservation era, and survival.

If the Cannonball River were excluded from primary resources like journals, maps, and winter counts, our North Dakota history would be poorer for it. There is a continuous cultural occupation of this Missouri River tributary reaching back to circa 1300 through the tribal histories of the Mandan, Arikara, Cheyenne, Yanktonai Dakota, and Hunkpapa Lakota.

Following my viewing of the Class III survey report, I contacted the Chief Archaeologist at the North Dakota State Historic Preservation Society about several things that were missing. Mr. Picha's replied, "Dakota, Thank you. Mentions also appear in J. H. Howard's (1979) British Museum Winter Count. Sincerely, Paul." Mr. Picha acknowledges the missing information by mentioning yet another primary resource document. 

I scheduled a viewing of the Dakota Access Pipeline Class III survey report with the North Dakota State Historic Preservation Office at 4:00 PM on March 1, 2016. The report is in three thick volumes, and there was no possible way that I could view the entire thing in one sitting, however, I narrowed my search to the Cannonball River and Beaver Creek. According to the authors of this report, they admitted to no tribal consultation. They don’t have to, because the pipeline does not physically cross the reservation border. The report doesn’t mention much in the way of history and culture. What is mentioned, can’t be shared, because it may lead to the destruction of the resource.

The Lakota world view perspective places south as the orienting direction. Here is the Missouri River, the Cannonball River on the right (west), and two Missouri tributaries on the left (east) (Beaver Creek, top; Long Lake Creek, bottom).

What it doesn’t say needs to be shared. The report does not mention the flood of 1825 opposite of the mouth of the Cannonball River - thirty lodges, or about 150-180 people drowned. There was no mention of The Charger’s last camp on Beaver Creek either. The Charger was a major historic figure in the War of 1812, he fought in three conflicts in Ohio, met President Van Buren, met King George III, led as many as 700 Dakȟóta-Lakȟóta under Col. Leavenworth’s command of the Missouri Legion in 1823 in the first ever US military campaign on Plains Indians against the Arikara. A major historic figure? A former US president and an English king certainly thought so.

The Charger (inset) and the location of his last winter camp on Beaver Creek where he died the winter of 1839-1840. 

These few things were brought to the attention an individual at the ND SHPO on March 1, 2016, along with where he could find this information. The following day, that individual responded that this info is also be found in the British Museum Winter Count, in London, England.

The north and south banks of the Cannonball River are rife with physical evidence of historic and cultural occupations of people who are still here. This physical evidence of village remains and midden mounds are complemented by surviving oral tradition; there are various mentions in historic journals from English resources (i.e. John Evans) to American resources (i.e. Manuel Lisa, Corps of Discovery, etc.). As to whether or not the historic occupations of the Arikara, Cheyenne, and Mandan Indians ever interred their deceased in the vicinity of the Cannonball River mouth, it is absolutely preposterous to say that there are no burial grounds nearby – to say so would be to suggest that no one ever died in any of the cultural occupations. Alfred Bowers’ Mandan informants told him that their ancestors buried their deceased “in earlier times.”

The Sitting Rabbit Map of the Missouri River. The Cannonball River is listed on this map as "Big River." 

The Sitting Rabbit map of the Missouri River, from the North Dakota-South Dakota border to the North Dakota-Montana border, was commissioned by Orin Libby in 1906. At the time, Libby was the Secretary of the State Historical Society of North Dakota (SHSND). Libby sought out Sitting Rabbit, a Mandan Indian man, to capture the geography of the Missouri River as they knew it. Sitting Rabbit didn’t disappoint in his efforts. In fact, the Mandan Indian villages at the mouth of the Cannonball River, both the north and south bank villages, are called the Big River Villages. The Mandan Indian name of the Cannonball River is the Big River. This precious map is still in the collections of the SHSND. The SHSND has graciously uploaded this map for public viewing on their ND Studies website.

A Cheyenne (left) meets a Lakota (right) on the hunt. The Cheyenne makes the sign for "Finger Cutter" to the Lakota. The graphic is by French artist Jean Marcellin.

According to Col. A.B. Welch's "Seven Fires," Sometime around 1750, the Šahíyela (Red Talkers; Cheyenne) were compelled by the Lakȟóta to cross the Missouri River at the mouth of the Cannonball River. The Šahíyela were hard pressed to make peace with the Lakȟóta or be exterminated, so they embraced their old foe and became allies. A great inter-tribal adoption, cemented by marriages, was arranged. But not all the Lakȟóta were keen to make an ally of a former enemy. 

The origin of the Sičáŋǧu began with a conflict at the Cannonball River.

The Brown Hat Winter Count (aka Baptiste Good Winter Count; Sičáŋǧu, “Brulé”) in the winter count collections at the National Museum of The American Indian in Washington DC, has been made available in its entirety online. This winter count recalls 1762-1763 as the “people were burnt winter.” The entry details a great prairie fire that caught up to their village. Many people and horses were killed in this fire. Survivors themselves were burnt about their legs and made it through this trial by jumping into Long Lake. This band of Lakȟóta had fought the Cheyenne in the Cannonball area. The Cheyenne had retaliated by crossing the Missouri River at the mouth of the Cannonball River and tracking the Lakȟóta along Long Lake Creek, where they set fire to the plains. The late Albert White Hat Sr. (Rosebud; Sičáŋǧu), recalled the oral tradition of the Sičáŋǧu as taking place in the Bismarck region. The conflict which resulted in the formation of the Sičáŋǧu began at the mouth of the Cannonball River. The identity of one of the tribes of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (The Seven Council Fires; “The Great Sioux Nation”) tied to this location is significant.

John Evans composed this map of his journey up the Missouri River. Roughly half the Corps of Discovery's expedition was already mapped before they came. 

The Beinecke Library Map, at Yale, CT, the only evidence of John Evans travels (his journals may have been destroyed or lost) provides the only testimony of his journey on the Upper Missouri River. This map was referenced and annotated by the Corps of Discovery. Evans recorded on his map a series of streams, many unknown to him by name; one of the outstanding streams he recorded was the “Bomb River,” or the Cannonball River.

The Corps of Discovery mention the Cannonball River as “La Bullet” on October 18, 1804. Referencing Evans’ map, Captain William Clark walked that evening in search of the remarkable places mentioned by Evans, but couldn’t find them, though by then, the Corps’ campsite was north of the mouth of the Cannonball River. Co-Captain Meriwether Lewis noted on this same date that the cannonball concretions were “of excellent grit for Grindstones,” and had his men select one to “answer for an anker.”

The Pictographic Bison Robe details a huge inter-tribal conflict on the Northern Plains.

The Pictographic Bison Robe, at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, MA, details the intertribal conflicts amongst the Arikara, Mandan, Hidstsa, Hunkpapa Lakota, and Yanktonai Dakota in the Heart River and Cannonball River area along the Missouri River during the 1790s. This same robe details one of many conflicts between the tribes of the Upper Missouri River which concluded in the 1803 Battle of Heart River, which saw the expansion of the Huŋkphapȟa territory. This conflict is remembered in the Drifting Goose Winter Count (aka John K. Bear Winter Count) as Tȟa Čháŋte Wakpá ed okíčhize, or “There was a battle at Heart River.” The expansion of Huŋkphápȟa territory is significant. This territorial boundary is recognized in the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty.

Ensign Nathaniel Pryor, a sergeant of the Corps of Discovery during the expedition, recorded on September 9, 1807, that the Arikara and Mandan were at war. The Mandan had killed two Arikara at the mouth of the Cannonball River. Testimony of the conflict at Cannonball River was delivered to Pryor at the Grand River by the Lakȟóta. Pryor’s previous experience with the Arikara and Lakȟóta made him aware that the best policy was to place every confidence in their word; they had no reason to lie.

Manuel Lisa, a fur trader of the American Fur Company, recorded that tensions were high on the Northern Plains among tribes who were pro-English trade, those who were pro-American trade, and American Fur Company trappers in the fall of 1812. The Crow and Lakȟóta had killed American trappers, the Hidatsa had stolen American Fur Company horses, the Arikara had indiscriminately killed trappers be they English or American, and the Cheyenne had robbed and whipped American Fur Company trappers on the Cannonball River.

The native blue flax fascinated Bradbury. 

Botanist John Bradbury made a journey to the Cannonball River in 1811. Bradbury noted late in the day on June 20, the “valley of Cannon-ball River, bounded on each side by a range of small hills, visible as far as the eye can reach; and as they appear to diminish regularly, in the proportion of their distance, they produce a singular and pleasing effect. The Cannon-ball River was muddy at this time; but whether it is constantly so or not, I could not learn. It is here about one hundred and sixty yards wide, but so shallow that we crossed it without swimming. We camped on a very fine prairie, near the river, affording grass in abundance, nearly a yard high. The alluvion of the river is about a mile in breadth from bluff to bluff, and is very beautiful, being prairie, interspersed with groves of trees, and ornamented with beautiful plants, now in flower.” Among Bradbury’s findings was a species of flax he identified as linum perenne. The Lakȟóta know the native blue flax as Čhaŋȟlóğaŋ Nabláǧa (“Hollow-Stem To-Blossom-From-Within”) and employ the seed in their food stock.

Bradbury returned again to the Cannonball River on July 7, 1819, for the express purpose of procuring additional botany specimens.

The location of the 1825 spring flood (Mní wičhát’tÉ) and the name in memorial (Étu Pȟá Šuŋg t’Á) afterward. 

The location and story of the 1825 flood is remembered in the pictographic record. Pictured above is the 1825 entry on the Medicine Bear Winter Count. 

The location and story of same flood is recorded on the Chandler-Pohrt Winter Count for the same year, 1825.

The Blue Thunder Winter Count, the No Two Horns Winter Count, and the High Dog Winter Count, all of which are in the collections at the State Historical Society of North Dakota - the High Dog Winter Count is on display in the Early Peoples Gallery - all recall a devastating flood in the spring of 1825. The High Dog Winter Count remembers the flood as Mní wičhát’tÁ, or “Many died by drowning.” The Blue Thunder Winter Count remembers the flood as Mní wičhát’tÉ, or “Many died by drowning.” According to the High Dog Winter Count, this fatal winter camp was opposite of the mouth of the Cannonball River, and the site is remembered as Étu Pȟá Šuŋg t’Á, or “Dead Horse Head Point.” The Steamboat/Thin Elk Winter Count, in the collections of the Buechel Museum at the St. Francis Indian School on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, records that it was thirty lodges of Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna Dakȟóta who drowned in the Horsehead Bottom flood. This flood story and location is also remembered in the Medicine Bear Winter Count at the Hood Museum at Darthmouth College, Hanover, NH. This information is repeated for the same year in the Chandler-Pohrt Winter Count which is located at the Detroit Museum of Arts, Detroit, MI.

Prince Maximilian von Wied-Neuwied travelled into the interior of North America during the summer of 1833. Wied-Neuwied has written probably the most about the Cannonball River than any previous or post visitors. An excerpt is shared here: “On the north side of the mouth, there was a steep, yellow clay wall; and on the southern, a flat, covered with poplars and willows. This river has its name from the singular regular sand-stone balls which are found in its banks, and in those of the Missouri in its vicinity. They are of various sizes, from that of a musket ball to that of a large bomb, and lie irregularly on the bank, or in the strata, from which they often project to half their thickness when the river has washed away the earth; they fall down, and are found in great numbers on the bank. Many of them are rather elliptical, others are more flattened, and others flat on one side, and rather convex on the other. Of the perfectly spherical balls, I observed some two feet in diameter.”

An entry from the Long Soldier Winter Count for 1835-36. A copy is available for viewing at the Sitting Bull College Library. 

The Long Soldier Winter Count entry for 1835-36 recorded an Arikara camp on the Cannonball River. The Húŋkphapȟa Lakȟóta went to the Arikara camp to trade for wagmíza (corn). The Arikara, not wanting the Lakȟóta around, perhaps owing to the part the Lakȟóta played in the Arikara War of 1823, killed six of the Lakȟóta. 

A beautiful photo of the Rock Wren by Glenn Bartley. See and hear more of this bird on the Audubon page for the Rock Wren. 

John James Audubon visited the Cannonball River on June 5, 1943, and wrote of "the very remarkable bluffs." According to Audubon, the Cannonball River was formerly a good place for beaver. He saw Iǧúǧaothila (Rock Wren) on the bluffs, a prairie fire, and noted that the water tasted good.

General Sully rendered this image of the Whitestone Hill conflict. The hills were dotted with creamy white stone, glacial deposits from the last ice age, and could be seen glittering from the distant flat horizon. 

In September of 1863, General Alfred Sully lead an assault on the Siouan encampment at Whitestone Hill as part of the punitive campaigns organized by General Pope to make Americans feel safe following the 1862 Minnesota Dakota Conflict, and to open the frontier for settlement - in particular, to open the frontier for veterans returning from the Civil War. Sully's command killed as many as 200 (mostly women and children) and took 256 prisoners (mostly women and children). Survivors, those who escaped, turned west and crossed the Missouri River at the Cannonball confluence. 

Long Soldier mentions a conflict at the Cannonball River between the Lakȟóta and Hóhe.

A second entry on the Long Soldier Winter Count cites a conflict at the Cannonball River between the Lakȟóta and Hóhe (Assiniboine) in 1862-63. Twenty Assiniboine came on the warpath, there was a battle there, and they hid behind the cannonball concretions. The circle tells us that the Assiniboine were surrounded and fired upon. The fox image which overlays the Assiniboine tells us they fought with guile.

Capt. Seth Eastman painted this scene of Fort Rice, Dakota Territory.

On July 29, 1864, after spending two weeks hastily constructing Fort Rice, General Sully took his command of 2200 soldiers, which included a detachment of Winnebago Indian scouts, and ascended the Cannonball River on the south bank, his punitive campaign on the Isáŋyathi Dakȟóta anew. Known or unknown, Sully also marched against the Thítȟuŋwaŋ Lakȟóta (Húŋkpapȟa, Itázipčho, Sihásapa, and Mnikȟóžu), and Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna Dakȟóta, two Siouan groups who had nothing to do with the 1862 Minnesota Dakota Conflict. Sully received a dispatch from Fort Rice at midnight on July 22 that the Dakȟóta were on the Knife River. The next day Sully’s command crossed the Cannonball River near present-day communities of Porcupine and Shields, ND.

Gall was bayoneted by a soldier at Fort Berthold. 

A third entry from the Long Soldier Winter Count indicates that the Húŋkpapȟa were camped at the Cannonball River in 1866-67. Gall was taken by soldiers that winter to Fort Berthold where they stabbed him. Gall was left for dead and the camp moved on. What makes this tale remarkable is that Gall walked to the Húŋkpapȟa camp at the Cannonball River and recovered. 

In 1878, the Huŋkphápȟa chief, Ištá SápA (“Black Eye/s”), met with William Wade, a cattle rancher on the Cannonball River, and shared this about the terrible 1825 flood: “...we camped on this bottom land just below here...it was the Wolf Month [February] and it had been warm for a long time. One night the water started coming in over the ground from the river and before we could get to higher ground we were surrounded by water and ice chunks. Our only chance was to get to high ground before we would all be covered up with water. We tried to carry our tepees and supplies but finally had to leave them and many of the women were drowned trying to save their children. Most all our old people drowned and many others. Most all our horses went under and you can still see their heads (skulls) laying [sic] along at the foot of the hills after so many, many years. Two Bears (Mato Nopa) a Yankton chief [sic], saved the lives of several women and children by carrying them from camp to the higher ground.”

William Wade’s daughter, Mamie, met her share of pre-reservation Dakȟóta and Lakȟóta people. Among them was Annie Skye. Skye relayed to the younger Wade that smallpox struck the Lakȟóta in 1837. They were camped at the mouth of the Cannonball River when “out of a clear blue sky smallpox hit them. After the death of several of their number, who were put to rest up on platforms suspended in trees, they decided to move away from this infested locality.”

Dr. Harriett Skye, Annie Skye’s granddaughter, offers a contemporary perspective on current events near the Cannonball River: “I believe that as long as they remain peaceful and unarmed, and each day they are there, is a win. This kind of action confuses those who would come in with their guns and armor because their intent is to kill. They arrested people who were praying, but the powers that be know that the world is watching, but more importantly, know that our Ancestors are watching because they fought and died so we could be here. This struggle is everyone’s struggle to maintain our clean water. Water is life.” Dr. Skye was inducted into the North Dakota Heritage Center’s Native American Hall of Honor in September, 2016.

Dr. Fenn's "Encounters At The Heart Of The World." Get yourself a copy.

Dr. Elizabeth Fenn, Pulitzer Prize winning author of “Encounters at The Heart of The World: A History of The Mandan People,” writes that the Huff phase - located between the Cannonball River and Heart River in a time frame from about circa 1300 to about 1450 - was when and where the Mandan became the Mandan. They developed the Okipa ceremony in this location during this time. The South Cannonball site was unprotected, that is, there were no palisade walls, nor defensive moats surrounding their village there. The fortifications at the North Cannonball site may well represent a key transformation in plains village life, as drought caused strife in the Missouri River valley. This may have been cause for the Mandan to move closer together - and build fortifications - for safety. But we need archaeological study to sort these things out.

By the time Mandans moved north from the Cannonball area to Huff and the Heart River, they had embraced the key trait that made them Mandan: the Okipa ceremony, with its multi-day reenactment of their own rich history. The Cannonball area, according to Fenn, represents “the oldest Mandan cultural horizon.”

One of Deloria's thought-provoking works. Another one is "Custer Died For Your Sins." 

The late Vine Deloria Jr. essayed that for many Americans, “the first and most familiar kind of sacred lands are places to which we attribute sanctity because the location is a site where, within our own history, something of great importance has taken place. Unfortunately, many of these places are related to instances of human violence. Every society needs these kinds of sacred places because they help to instill a sense of social cohesion in the people and remind them of the passage of generations that have brought them to the present. A society that cannot remember and honor its past is in peril of losing its soul. Indians, because of our considerably longer tenure on this continent, have many more sacred places than do non-Indians.”

“A second category of sacred lands has a deeper, more profound sense of the sacred. It can be illustrated in…[when] Joshua led the Hebrews across the River Jordan into the Holy Land. After crossing, Joshua selected one man from each of the Twelve tribes and told him to find a large stone. The twelve stones were then placed together in a monument to mark the spot where the people had camped after having crossed the river successfully. In the crossing of the River Jordan, the sacred or higher powers have appeared in the lives of human beings...the essence of the event is that the sacred has become a part of our existence.”

“It is not likely that non-Indians have had many of these kinds of religious experiences, particularly because most churches and synagogues have special rituals that are designed to cleanse the buildings so that their services can be held there untainted by the natural world. Non-Indians simply have not been on this continent very long; their families have rarely settled in one place for any period of time so that no profound relationship with the environment has been possible.”

Deloria concluded: “The third kind of sacred lands are places of overwhelming holiness where the Higher Powers, on their own initiative, have revealed Themselves to human beings. We can illustrate this point in the Old Testament narrative. Moses spent time herding sheep on Mount Horeb. One day to his amazement [he] saw a bush burning with fire but not being consumed by it. Approaching this spot, Moses was startled when the Lord spoke to him. ‘Put off thy shoes, for the place where thou standest is holy ground.’ This tradition tells us that there are places of unquestionable, inherent sacredness on this earth, sites that are holy in and of themselves. These holy places are locations where people have always gone to communicate and commune with higher powers.”

Wood's book details the Huff Phase of the Mandan Indians, which also includes some narrative of the North Cannonball site. An aerial view of this site is within these pages.

Dr. Ray Wood, renowned expert in Plains Indian cultural and archaeological sites on the Upper Missouri River and whose first-hand field experience goes back before the dams of the 1950s, interprets the data from John Evans 1796 map in regard to the Cannonball River locality that what Evans recorded as “Jupiter’s Fort” is without a doubt a prehistoric Mandan village. According to Wood’s findings regarding the North Cannonball site, “Not only was it a defensive setting, but the village was also fortified by a curving ditch that isolated a level upland spur from the adjoining upland. The village today is badly disturbed by plowing, but from the air one can clearly see the fortification ditch and the numerous bastions protruding from it. Little wonder that Evans referred to it as a fort…” In his “Prologue To Lewis & Clark: The Mackay And Evans Expeditions,” Dr. Wood essays the number of remarkable Indian village sites north of the Cannonball River. Remarkable. Extraordinary. Outstanding. Significant.

The ND SHPO conducted a follow-up survey west of HWY 1806 and found that no significant sites were destroyed. The physical evidence, or lack thereof, cannot be disputed. According to the chief archaeologist’s published note, he and his associates were looking west of HWY 1806, perhaps because Mr. Tim Mentz conducted his own survey and called attention there with his findings. The North Cannonball site, and the mouth of the Cannonball River, the confluence of history and culture, is east of HWY 1806.

The Cannonball Ranch was a main stop in North Dakota's history. 

In 1999, the Cannonball Ranch was inducted into the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame. It’s one of the oldest ranches in North Dakota. According the ND Cowboy of Fame, the ranch served as a gathering point as early as 1865. The ranch included a hotel, a general store, a ferry crossing, a steamboat landing and fueling station, a military telegraph station for Fort Rice, and a stage line to the Black Hills in the 1870’s and 1880s. The ranch also included two houses, a barn, a blacksmith shop, a bunk-house, an ice house, a laundry, and tennis court.

The North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame’s strict criteria for eligibility to be recognized is that a ranch must have been “instrumental in creating or developing the ranching business, traditions, and lifestyles of North Dakota’s western heritage and livestock industry.”

In 2010, Walmart planned to construct a supercenter near Wilderness Battlefield (a Civil War battle ground) and people invested in the history of that site grew concerned. Eventually, enough people held that ground as sacred and historical that plans for the supercenter were dropped in January 2011. Coincidentally, Walmart and state officials had argued that nothing significant occurred on that site. 

The sum of the north bank of the Cannonball River with a million years of geological history, 700 years of continual occupation, inter-tribal conflict, smallpox, botany, trade, steamboat traffic, US military history, and early ranching, have made that location significant.

Mr. Leroy Curly (Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe) developed a Lakota alphabet in the 1980's. I employed this alphabet executed in a brush script using acrylic on watercolor. 

Spiritual pilgrimages were conducted on the plateaus of the “Hummit.” There would be little to no traces of these vision quests, and there shouldn’t be. People went to pray, not leave evidence. In September of 2016, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Rt. Rev. Curry, made a pilgrimage of his own to the Cannonball. He listened and prayed with the community there. Curry’s visit calls to mind Psalm 99:9, “Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at his holy hill; for the Lord our God is Holy.” The mystery of creation can be seen there today as the early peoples beheld it.

The Cannonball River, and specifically the North Cannonball site, and its importance to the first nations, to North Dakota, must take into account its religious or spiritual significance, its role in inter-tribal conflicts, its role in the 1837 smallpox epidemic which struck the Húŋkpapȟa, its role as the starting point in Gen. Sully’s 1864 punitive campaign, and the historic Cannonball Ranch.

The Cannonball River, and all its attributes is important to all North Dakota citizens, to new citizens, and most importantly of all, the future. Let us put our minds together, to educate ourselves and one another about the things we hold dear, to resolve to respect our story, our histories, and our sites of significance.

Keúŋkeyapi. That’s what they said.