The Music that survived Genocide

"They won't shoot me." I tell myself over and over. "If they shoot me, they lose." I try to make their eyes out. The national guard soldiers are easy to pick out from the cops, something like 71 different municipalities sent police to Standing Rock. None of their eyes are visible behind the riot gear.

Today they have arrived in the largest force I've seen yet, and now they hold live weapons in their gloved hands. There are fewer of us than last week, and I do not know if there will be anything left to defend after today. I blink my tears away, or try to, as they freeze my eyelashes anyhow. The wind cuts right through me, but I am no colder for it.

This crazy photo was taken in the time before they started bringing assault rifles in hand when they met us. The men in tan are Morton County Police, who technically have no legal jurisdiction here. We are on Sovreign land, treaty land. The ones who lurk in black behind them are national guard, they have rubber bullets, and they freely blast them off.

This photo, among many other incredible shots, was taken by No Spiritual Surrender and posted on FB. He has stated several times there that it is okay to share his work, and so I do so with utmost gratitude.

Today, I'm not going to tell you the story of my time in North Dakota, which spanned many months, and found me wintering in a tipi. I can't talk to you about the eco-village. The wild psyops and breaches of the law I witnessed. The invasion that came to sweep us away. I'm just not ready to, yet.

I want to talk to you about Indigenous Resistance. Residential schools stole many Native children, cutting their braids and beating them when they spoke the language they knew. English, Christianity, and colonial ways were forced on these children. Outside, tribes were manipulated and attacked in a variety of ways to give up their spirituality- their lifeblood.

Unci maka yuhaniya po

^{Grandmother Earth is strong}

Mni wiconi wakan yelo

^{water is sacred/ water is life}

Dapl lila sica yelo

^{dapl is very bad}

Oyate bleheciya po

^{The People are brave/ Relations have courage!}
This song is one of many that shaped my life forever. It is not high quality, and many will not hear the beauty in it.. but I could not describe the music that I carry in my heart without an example.

There was a time that Indigenous peoples had no legal protection, they went to sweat lodge in secret. They hid the practices that brought them harmony with the earth. They rebelled in the little ways they could, and it was dangerous.

To sing, to dance, to celebrate life- this is a cornerstone of the Lakota way. When the Sioux found all the buffalo slaughtered and left to rot in the fields, their only path to avoid starvation was acceptance of treaties that would sap their freedom...

Sitting Bull, among many others, preformed the "Ghost Dance", a dedicated act of resistance through movement. A dance to summon prosperity back to the people. He is credited with its occurrence shortly before the Wounded Knee Massacre, because of who he was. Sadly, his name will also always be associated with the dance, because he died from injuries while preforming it.

"If we die, we die defending our rights." -Sitting Bull

I watch as old men who lived in these schools as kids sing to the youth who support the movement, I see women who were forcibly sterilized in these institutions smile at the small first nations children, who dance about to the hand drums. I watch many nations come together and sing "Mni Wiconi" in Lakota, in support. Mitakuye Oyasin- all my relations.

^{Photo by qimono on Pixabay}
I lived in North Dakota for almost 18 months total, and someday I want to share my firsthand account of what it's like to go to war with an oil company, what direct actions in the face of militarized police forces looked like from behind my goggles.

Today I am happy to share with you the great pleasure I had of living on a reservation, not because it is a fun place to be... but because in the face of everything, Indigenous people fight on. To see that, to learn from the Sioux, was one of the greatest gifts I have ever been given.

To hear battle cries, prayers, and songs of strength from all over the world was incredible. Many people came to visit, and although it was problematic (another thing for another day), it was also beautiful. Truly mind blowing, was watching Indigenous people from other tribes, who had traveled across the county to stand with the Lakota.

Pow Wow music which vibrates in your chest, the smell of sweet grass on the air. Women in ribbon skirts dancing in ceremonial formations, channeling power to those beyond who clash with the police in a haze of mace, and the smoke from bursts of rubber bullets.



I had the immense honor of being invited to a few ceremonies, which of course I only observed in reverence from a polite distance. All except one. Near the end of my time in the great planes, I was invited to participate in sweat lodge. It is very rare that a white person is invited to an authentic lodge- if there is a price to pay, or you can smoke weed before you go in, that isn't it.

I got a few looks as I joined the group, one elderly man in particular looked at me for an uncomfortable amount of time, yet his unwavering gaze felt like a conversation. After a while, he pulled a hide bundle from his belongings. He began to speak softy to me, forcing me to come closer.

I am the first in my family to carry Chanupa, (a sacred pipe) he tells me. As he packs the pipe with tobacco and other herbs, he tells me a tale. Slowly, it's as if he adds each string of tobacco to the collection mindfully, building it with his words.

Fear and abuse in childhood, the secret whispers of he and his siblings in the night to remember. To hold on to who they are, to not forget the faces of their family

^{Photo by KRiemer on Pixabay}
As he tells me what it means for him to be here, what it means for this space to exist... I think of how the fight never ended, it just changed for Indigenous peoples. He is proof that there are those who still carry medicine here, in spite of it all.

As he speaks, heated rocks are piled into the center of a tightly encased dome next to us. Soon, we will each crawl in, and there will be four windows. Four chants to the ancestors, phases of prayer, levels of heat. I know that I want to go in first or last- to be closest to the door.

I decide to test myself, and go in third, not incredibly deep in the dome, yet thick in the swell of heat that sucks the air from my chest within seconds. As we fill the space, drums begin to beat.

I try to steady my mind, and focus on prayer. Each breath hurts, I clutch a wet T-shirt in my lap. I know I can place it over my head for relief- yes your own breath feels cooler than the air in Inipi (sweat lodge)... but it is far too soon to start using my help. This is only the ignition..



The singers' voices rip pieces of me away brutally, as I writhe in the pain that cleanses my body. By window two, I have doubled over, to breathe with my face against the almost cool feeling of the dirt floor. They say Inipi is a rebirth, I understand that now.

I can remember how it hurt, how every fiber of my being yelled that I needed to escape whatever was happening. "You are dying" my racing heart pleaded, "We need relief!" my heaving lungs screeched. "This is the source" My soul whispers so loud I hear nothing else, until...

The horrific tones of those who sing this evening, so monstrous that they have to be the most gorgeous thing I've heard. Something not meant for human ears, which channels in, filling me with fear that comes up to a peak. Seething as it grows, right to the cusp of absorbing me... and then the peak has passed, and I am in the beat of drums again.

I consider it one of the top five most amazing experiences I've had in my life, I remember it in a strange way. As if a fever dream, and the memory of the first time you feel in love combined... I suppose it is a bit like that. A memory that left a permanent music in me.


This is my submission for The Ink Well's 3rd non-fiction prompt. It was cathartic and brilliant to think over the times in my life that have made hand drum music so special to me... I am grateful to Hive to have a place to share that 😁💚