One of my first memories of going home to Cheyenne River-Eagle Butte, South Dakota was pulling up at my Fathers Mothers home, Grandmother Fielders house, and asking, Who lives in this shack, and my Father replied...Your Grandmother!
As a 3 year old child, we say what we think, respond to what we see...that is the beauty of a child, their innocence to situations outside their understanding.
My Father, Calvin Dupree, Tetuwan Minneconjou Lakota, later in his life, Professor of Native Studies at the U of Lethbridge, in Lethbridge, Alberta, spent most of our 1958 South Dakota Dupree family vacation with his hand firmly placed over my mouth to keep me from blurting out the obvious, the dire situation my Lakota people still live in to this day, 53 years after my first visit to our Cheyenne River Reservation.
I had, as this 3 year old child, no understanding of what it was to live with burned out cars, garbage everywhere, lawlessness, drunkardness, sexual & physical abuse, lack of education, poor access & quality of food, a lack of industry, the complete & utter despair that most of my fellow Lakota children experience daily.
Though there are a few exceptions, they are however today very, very few & far between within the confines of reservation life & their 3rd World existance.
There is also the stigma then & today of being an outsider among your own Lakota people, a half-breed, not a full-blood Lakota, if your Lakota family had the chance & desire to get away from all the abuses, & have a better life for you, than what they had with Rez school experiences of molestations & punishments by the church employees, the teachers, Fathers & Sisters, who were given the task of defeathering the Indian in you, your parents, and their parents before you.
To assemulate all of you & your Lakota brothers & sisters into American Society, with their (lack) morals & values, everything so very much different than your own way of being.
Your Sacred Tetuwan Lakota language was forbidden, if you were caught retaining it & speaking it, you were severly punished, along with any Lakota faith you had, or were taught by your Lakota Spiritual Elders or Grandparents.
I took all the good from my Tetuwan people, and left behind all the bad.
The Lakota people who follow the black road of AIM today, who say my own Tetuwan people do not recognize me as one of their own, do not.... because it does not serve them to do so, from their false teachings they were taught by their false leaders of AIM, who took over our Tetuwan Nation, culture & spirituality, when we Tetuwans still had honor & dignity of our Ancestors & Elders, basically before AIM came into our lives.
All the corruption & lies our Tetuwan people tell & do today, is nothing like the true Tetuwans I remember & were mentored by, like Frank Fools Crow, John Fire Lame Deer, my Uncle Chauncey Dupris, Phil Lane Sr and Beatrice Medicine, Katy Fools Crow & Grandmother Fielder.
Grandmother Fielder, who lived in the house that I thought was a shack, when I first saw it as a three year old, & spoke of what I saw.
It did not matter what they lived in, how much money they had, what they drove, it was who they were & what they represented, their truth & honor, nothing like we are left with as Tetuwan Lakota people today.
I promised I would honor the memory, values, & teachings of these good true Tetuwan people, & this I will continue to do...
They were who we really are, not as who we are represented as today by Academia, AIM, or Arvol Looking Horse, the corrupt Tribal elected, none of these people are who we were, when we were chosen to carry the gift of the Cannunpa Wakan by Creator & his daughter, Whope, who became White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman with her time on Mother Earth, & with us as a people.
I pray everyday with the Cannunpa Wakan she taught the Chiefs to make, that somehow we again find as a Nation of People, our way back onto the Good Red Road.
Looking Back Woman-HakiktaWin-Suzanne Dupree
April 7, 2011
As a 3 year old child, we say what we think, respond to what we see...that is the beauty of a child, their innocence to situations outside their understanding.
My Father, Calvin Dupree, Tetuwan Minneconjou Lakota, later in his life, Professor of Native Studies at the U of Lethbridge, in Lethbridge, Alberta, spent most of our 1958 South Dakota Dupree family vacation with his hand firmly placed over my mouth to keep me from blurting out the obvious, the dire situation my Lakota people still live in to this day, 53 years after my first visit to our Cheyenne River Reservation.
I had, as this 3 year old child, no understanding of what it was to live with burned out cars, garbage everywhere, lawlessness, drunkardness, sexual & physical abuse, lack of education, poor access & quality of food, a lack of industry, the complete & utter despair that most of my fellow Lakota children experience daily.
Though there are a few exceptions, they are however today very, very few & far between within the confines of reservation life & their 3rd World existance.
There is also the stigma then & today of being an outsider among your own Lakota people, a half-breed, not a full-blood Lakota, if your Lakota family had the chance & desire to get away from all the abuses, & have a better life for you, than what they had with Rez school experiences of molestations & punishments by the church employees, the teachers, Fathers & Sisters, who were given the task of defeathering the Indian in you, your parents, and their parents before you.
To assemulate all of you & your Lakota brothers & sisters into American Society, with their (lack) morals & values, everything so very much different than your own way of being.
Your Sacred Tetuwan Lakota language was forbidden, if you were caught retaining it & speaking it, you were severly punished, along with any Lakota faith you had, or were taught by your Lakota Spiritual Elders or Grandparents.
I took all the good from my Tetuwan people, and left behind all the bad.
The Lakota people who follow the black road of AIM today, who say my own Tetuwan people do not recognize me as one of their own, do not.... because it does not serve them to do so, from their false teachings they were taught by their false leaders of AIM, who took over our Tetuwan Nation, culture & spirituality, when we Tetuwans still had honor & dignity of our Ancestors & Elders, basically before AIM came into our lives.
All the corruption & lies our Tetuwan people tell & do today, is nothing like the true Tetuwans I remember & were mentored by, like Frank Fools Crow, John Fire Lame Deer, my Uncle Chauncey Dupris, Phil Lane Sr and Beatrice Medicine, Katy Fools Crow & Grandmother Fielder.
Grandmother Fielder, who lived in the house that I thought was a shack, when I first saw it as a three year old, & spoke of what I saw.
It did not matter what they lived in, how much money they had, what they drove, it was who they were & what they represented, their truth & honor, nothing like we are left with as Tetuwan Lakota people today.
I promised I would honor the memory, values, & teachings of these good true Tetuwan people, & this I will continue to do...
They were who we really are, not as who we are represented as today by Academia, AIM, or Arvol Looking Horse, the corrupt Tribal elected, none of these people are who we were, when we were chosen to carry the gift of the Cannunpa Wakan by Creator & his daughter, Whope, who became White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman with her time on Mother Earth, & with us as a people.
I pray everyday with the Cannunpa Wakan she taught the Chiefs to make, that somehow we again find as a Nation of People, our way back onto the Good Red Road.
Looking Back Woman-HakiktaWin-Suzanne Dupree
April 7, 2011
