Arkansas effort helps Lakota Sioux remember
Photo courtesy James Cook
The Chief Big Foot Memorial Ride remembers the massacre at Wounded Knee on Dec. 29, 1890.
BECCA MARTIN-BROWN
bmartin@nwadg.com
John Two-Hawks takes his Lakota Sioux heritage seriously. Being “Native” is ingrained in his life, in his music, in the teachings he shares with people around him.
But Two-Hawks grew up “off reservation.” And he knew nothing about riding a horse.
Still, he did not hesitate in 2013 when he was invited to ride in the eight-day, 135-mile Chief Big Foot Memorial Ride, which takes place in December in South Dakota, “a commemorative, ceremonial journey of sacrifice, suffering, healing and triumph for Lakota people and all who join us,” he says.
“It was the greatest honor of my life to even be invited,” says Two-Hawks, whose home is in Eureka Springs. “For someone who had been going to the [Pine Ridge] reservation for years and years and had achieved very little connection, it was like a door was opening. I was very excited about that — but also very scared. I knew how dangerous and difficult it would be. But my hope was that something of deep value would come from it, that somehow this journey was going to birth something that deep in my spirit I had longed for.
Photo courtesy Vickie Henson
Eureka Springs musician John Two-Hawks first rode in the Chief Big Foot Memorial Ride in 2013. On Saturday, he and wife Peggy Hill will host a fundraiser for the annual event.
“I could never have imagined just how much of a blessing to me personally the ride would be,” he goes on. “It was transformative, life changing, the most humbling and deeply personally revealing and powerful experience I’ve ever had in my life. There are moments you think your body can’t take another hoof fall, and you know you’ve still got miles to go. And you find something inside of you that you aren’t sure is there, and you keep going. And in the midst of that suffering you think about your ancestors and Chief Big Foot and his people and how much they must have suffered. They had no options. They didn’t have thermal clothing or a warm truck to get into. When you think of those things, it helps you keep going when you don’t think you can go any further.”
The memorial ride was started in 1986 and intended to last just four years, until the 100th anniversary of the massacre at Wounded Knee on Dec. 29, 1890. The annual event continues, Two-Hawks says, because “the wound is deep there, and healing that wound takes time.”
“This is a healing journey,” Percy White Plume, founder of the ride, writes on his Facebook page. “It gives people a chance to reflect, pray, draw close to Earth and to ancestors, connect with Horse Spirit, to travel alone and together, to enjoin into our true belonging. At the end of the ride: Ceremony. It restores community, it restores the sacred into our lives, and it is helping to heal our world.”
“The ride is a monumental undertaking, especially for a community with extremely limited economic resources,” says Peggy Hill, Two-Hawks’ wife. “They are the poorest people — but the most generous people. When I saw the way people responded to [the pipeline protest at] Standing Rock, I thought, ‘We ought to do a fundraiser’ because Eureka Springs is the most generous, beautiful place, and people care about things like this.”
The benefit is taking place from 5 to 9 p.m. Saturday at The Cookery (formerly Caribe) in Eureka Springs, with Indian tacos at 5 p.m., a program at 6 p.m., a free concert by Two-Hawks at 7 p.m., and White Plume will speak at 8 p.m. Admission is free, and dinner is $10. Hill says silent auction items include original art, a stay at the New Orleans Hotel and Native American jewelry from Taos, N.M.
Two-Hawks says he will go back into the below-zero weather and blowing snow this December, as he has every year, to put up corrals for horses, transport people and do whatever he can do to support the ride — but not on horseback.
“It is not wise for me to try to continue on the horse,” he says. “But one of the greatest honors of my life is being a Big Foot rider.”
FAQ
Chief Big Foot
Memorial Ride Benefit
WHEN — 5-9 p.m. Saturday
WHERE — The Cookery, formerly Caribe, in Eureka Springs
COST — Admission is free; dinner is $10
INFO — Email online@circlestudiosrecords.com
