Remembering Phil Baird

 

Phil Baird coming out of the gate astride Boots, a Pete Long Brake horse.

Wanblí Wichásha Wókiksuye
Remembering Phil Baird (Eagle Man)
By Dakota Wind

Wanblí Wicháshala tókhi éyaye hé? Thíyata oníchilapelo. Uŋmá echíyataŋhaŋ iyáye. Waŋná Chaŋkú Wanágxi maní. Chaŋkú Txó oówaŋyaŋg washté ománi. Tóksha akhé waŋchíyaŋkiŋ kte ló.

Where have you gone Eagle Man? They have called you home. You have gone on to the other side. Now you walk the Spirit Road. You walk on the beautiful Blue Road. I will see you again for certain.

Anyone who has met the late Dr. Phil Baird left their conversation with him with a deeper appreciation for horses, bison, education, and the Lakota Way of Life. A wonderful listener, the flow of conversation was never about him. Lekshí Phil cultivated mutual interests in art, music, the pursuit of higher education, and history most of all.

Lekshí loved family. He spoke of his daughters with soaring pride and held his grandchildren with such a great abiding affection his warmth was like a fire. Lekshí loved making relatives. If anyone knew him a winter or longer, he was happy to call one friend or family. His self-assuredness was not boastful. The respect he held for others was like the very Breath of Life he shared with horses, somehow wild, electric, sudden, and forever.

Lekshí loved horses. Everyday lekshí carried the same energy, excitement, and mystery as the day the first horse entered the circle and became part of the Lakota Way of Life. There are many variations about the first horse encounter, but all have one thing in common: a genuine respect for the mystery of creation. Lekshí carried that deep respect and understood that the bounty and prosperity of the Lakota Way of Life worked hand in glove with our relationship to the traditional homeland. He was a lifelong cowboy Indian. In service of his love for horses and history, Lekshí was a founding member and longtime president of the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame.

Lekshí loved bison. He was an undaunted advocate of land management and restoration. Lekshí believed that the health of the people was directly tied to the health and stewardship of the land. He recalled the promise of the bison to provide for all the needs of the people and believed in the inherent value of bison as a keystone species; the eternal bison cycle nurtured a healthy landscape and people. Lekshí had a dream of an educational bison management plan, a holistic and ambitious call to a modern yet natural way of life.

Lekshí was a strong voice for education. “School is always in session,” he frequently said. Lekshí was called to a lifetime as an educator. He held administration positions at both United Tribes Technical College and Sinte Gleska University. Lekshí had a shared history and leadership with the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC), the National Indian Education Association (NIEA), the National Congress of American Indians, and more.

On Monday, Sept. 25, 2023, the relatives built a fire on the other side and called Lekshí to return and take his place among them. He goes home to a vast open sky filled with unbounded light and joy. He waves his hat in the Enlightening Breath, a wind upon which all life returns, that has carried across creation since the first days. His voice joins a great song sending encouragement from the fires of heaven to the people below.

We may not see you in the here and now, but you are as close as our next breath, as close as our dreams, as close as shadow in the prairie grass, as close as reflection in the water.

Akhé waníyetu ú. Akhé kičhíč’iŋpi kte. Ohómni wótheȟike ečhéča takómni uŋmáčhetkiya yakpáptapi kta héčha. Mitȟákuye Owás’iŋ.

Again, the winter approaches. Again, they will carry each other. Although surrounded by adversity, nonetheless, may you safely emerge on the other side. All my relatives. 

The Code of the West, a Worthy Ideal

"Assiniboine hunting buffalo," by Paul Kane

The Code Of The West

Worthy Ideals To Practice

By Dakota Wind

THE GREAT PLAINS - The following is a commentary about the American West and the ideals of the west at the turn of 1900. Zane Grey wrote about life in the American west at the end of the nineteenth century. Though his observations about life on the frontier were largely based on his

Southwest experiences, his writings could easily have been about life anywhere in the American western frontier.

There are various interpretations of his “Code of the West,” an unwritten code that frontier men and women lived by. This unwritten code, of necessity, applied to all races and both sexes living in the frontier era. 

If one were to carefully examine the origin of the cowboy culture one finds an interesting twist. The rodeo comes from the Mexican vaqueros and early American cowboys and began as an extension of everyday life for the cowboy such as branding, roping, racing, and general riding.

Who made up the cowboy? According to Dee Brown's The American West, we see the cowboy population made up of about 1/3 white, 1/3 black, and the last 1/3 consisting of Mexicans and American Indians. Race had no impact on the job that needed to get done, but Hollywood and associated media have frozen the west as something between Cowboys and Indians, with cowboys almost exclusively being white. Were one to review the Bismarck Tribune of the 1870s and 1880s, one would find this to certainly be true, at least in Dakota Territory.

Certainly movies are about heroes, villains, and motivations. And movies, especially movies about the West, have served to perpetuate the West as being about the cowboy against the Indian. Media about the Little Big Horn have gone from good guy vs. bad guy, to romantic reluctant soldier vs. going-down-with-a-fight, stoic, heroic underdog.

One element remains missing from Raoul Walsh's They Died with their Boots On to Steven Spielberg's Into the West, and that is the simple fact that many American Indians were peaceful, and on their reservations; some were there by choice and others by force, though all practiced the unwritten code to some degree with their fellow frontiersman.

A general etiquette practiced amongst code followers was never to pester people about where they came from, what they did, or what their names were. Given the backgrounds of many people (social, political, religious, ethnic, legal, etc.) who had left much, if not everything behind to go west, it was best to hold one's peace.

There is nothing political, social, or racial about the code. It worked person to person then, and it works person to person today.

Below is an interpretation of the code from Dakota Livesay's Chronicle of the Old West:

1. Respect yourself and others.

2. Accept responsibility for your life.

3. Be positive and cheerful.

4. Be a person of your word.

5. Go the distance.

6. Be fair in all your dealings.

7. Be a good friend and neighbor.

Hopalong Cassidy's take on the code stressed humility, thrift, conservation, obedience to the law, and pride that one is born in America. Roy Rodgers mentions that one should protect the weak and offer assistance, a love for God, and American patriotism. Gene Autry includes all the above, and adds that a cowboy is free of racial and religious prejudice.

Zane Grey in his Lone Star Ranger's Creed argues that we should live by the rule of what is the best for the greatest number. A logic that fits the times he lived in, where Manifest Destiny was the most true, righteous, and logical choice of action to pursue to make our country better. However, Grey continues, “That sooner or later…somewhere…somehow…we must settle with the world and make payment for what we have taken.”