Chapter 5 - continued (page 2)

That's all I could get out of anyone about the recent historic collision in Washington
D.C. during Richard Nixon's landslide re-election, in which a coalition of dozens of
Native organizations and tribes had ransacked the Dept. of Interior's BIA building after
demanding decent housing for their elders, including a certain Frank Fools Crow. The
women needed to get some supplies or something at the store in Kyle so we piled
government-issue "commodities" in the back trunk on top of a small arsenal - of 5 lb.
bricks of Velveeta cheese, sacks of rice and powdered milk, cans of godawful beef that
looked and smelled like dog food - and then we had to get something else from someone
up another side road, and giant pot-holes in the "highway" threatened to throw us all over
and into a "borrow ditch" several times as I imagined something vital breaking at a
crucial moment and spinning me off into oblivion, and mostly it was all in lakota and I
couldn't keep up too well. We were out of our element, me and Karen (buried somewhere
in the backseat), and we weren't. The car was almost everything. The gumbo was flying
off the tires and flopping all over hell like heavy red tar, threatening to get us hopelessly
stuck in one second forever if we veered but a foor or two off the pavement. The stuff
wasn't regular mud, it was a quagmire like Vietnam in those scenic backlands
unscenically pimpled with terrible hootches without plumbing or electricity, telephones
or cars, jobs or food or clean drinking water. To be thrust suddenly into the middle of that
muck was scary and sobering, but it beat the hell out of working.
Wakan Tanka pointed me down another even more miserable gravel trail, but at least
it wasn't over impassable gumbo but only ordinary mud and potholes that were so big you
couldn't really call them potholes - they were more like their own small hills, entities of
dirt and rock independent unto themselves, inclines where one semblance of the left side
of the trail was several feet higher than the right tire-lane so that no genius of axlerods
and differential springs could ever have absorbed the un-4-wheel-drive distortions of our
adventure.
Sam leaned up on the back of the seat next to me, "It's better to go off across the
field," he said sympathetically.
"Oh?" I looked out naively across the field, which looked to consist of soft mud,
sagebrush, weeds, and trash blowing in on the wind.
"Drive in the middle," Kenny suggested, "is what he meant. You haven't been in the
country before."
"Uh ... the middle?"
Fools Crow and a couple of Grammas and kids in the front seat with me pointed
impatiently for me to swing over a little to the right with my left front tire between the
monumental ruts of the regular trail and my right off on what could only be
euphemistically called the shoulder. It looked foolhardy to me and that they were just
playfully yanking my tenderfoot greenhorn chain, and it was a violation of all my best
instincts, but I was too ashamed of not knowing how to drive in the country so, after
deciphering their inscrutability that they may not have been joking, I left all reason and
let the wheel drift slowly, carefully, foolishly slowly and carefully, to the right, off the
(obsolete, dying) road and up on a more solid and less well-traveled footing, immediately
more level and secure. Everyone nodded approvingly of my new-found skill and we kept
rolling along for what seemed miles and miles farther and further back in the arid half-
mud of rolling hills with a few trees, a few cows, no fences, no 'No Trespassing' signs, no
gas stations or telephone lines or machinery. Finally, around a nondescript bend, we came
on a greener valley where we could see tipis beside a few houses, a lot of vehicles, and
smoke. A small badly-carpentered shack was by the side of the road and two big guys
watched us suspiciously as I pulled to a stop beside them. Tunkasila waved at them and
their suspicion of me and this unknown car immediately changed as they recognized him.
"Hau."
"Ho." They looked at me. "Colorado, hey?"
"Yeah," I replied, realizing they were referring to my green and white license plates
with snow-capped mountains outlined in the semi-artistic designs so beloved by so many
sovereign States. I also noticed they had rifles propped against the wall inside the shack
next to chairs and coffee cups.
They waved me on.
How green was the valley, it seemed even in winter like an enchanted Shangri-la,
where we stopped by the main house next to a dozen rusty Vans, camper pickups, and
cars no newer than mine, and women were cooking at a long table made of plywood
boards laid haphazardly on a few carpenter benches and jury-rigged props next to a big
woodfire on the ground in a circle of rocks. I turned off the engine and it gurgled irritably
a few times and we both let out a sigh of relief that we had at least arrived somewhere.
Everybody piled out and I was delighted to see my chassis raise a foot off the ground.
Whether we were any the worse for wear I couldn't tell, but it was a cold, cloudy
afternoon by then, threatening snow, and I could tell we had indeed arrived somewhere I
could have only theretofore imagined in my best history books of guerrilla camps in Cuba
or prehistoric caves on which were painted mammoth hunters spearing exotic prey. That's
how stupid I was with curiosity and excitement.
"Severt Young Bear," said hello to me, a brilliant military strategist I would learn was
one of the great thinkers and timeless examples to the Movement over the years. This was
his camp. "Welcome."
"Thank you."
He and a lot of other extraordinary men and women watched me, shaking hands
politely. "Birgil Kills Straight."
"Oscar Bear Runner."
"Ellen Moves Camp."
"Pedro Bissonnette."
And many others joined us for coffee, and Karen jumped in eagerly to chop wood and
join the women whom she came to love dearly. She didn't come to love the men dearly,
who didn't jump in to cook or allow the women in any of the traditional war councils, and
who drove her away eventually with their sexist importunities.
"Dennis has been on TV again," Severt explained to us politely as we crowded into his
tiny house around a color TV set (I still don't know how he had a TV and electricity and a
phone when I saw no lines leading to his house, but the miracle probably accounted for
the popularity of his pretty campsite and leadership position as much as anything else).
"Banks," the clean white anchorman sneered objectively, "has demanded further action."
Then he switched to another story about how the "Indian protests" were hurting tourist
revenues in the Black Hills resorts and businesses around Mount Rushmore.
 "They've got the media foaming at the mouth," Oscar smiled, a handsome and friendly
guy of a prominent family from the Porcupine District only a few miles across the hills,
which was only about ten miles up the ridge from Wounded Knee. I still wasn't sure
where the hell I was, but I would learn in the gunbattles in the weeks and years to come.
"We'll have dinner after the Inipi sweat lodge, Grampa," Severt said to Fools Crow,
who nodded approvingly and sat in one of the few easy chairs in there, and conversed
seriously in lakota with the other elders Frank Kills Enemy, Fire Thunder, Good Voice
Flute, Chips, Charges At, Ribman, Black Fox, and Paul Red Star.
I wandered back outside and wondered about the bonfires I saw off across the field
near a line of willow bushes that might have been hugging a little stream. But I couldn't
be sure. There were several young men with very long hair hanging loosely down their
backs tending the fires and moving big rocks around on pitchforks, next to some small
willow frames of the first Inipi Lodges I ever saw. It would be several years before I was
invited to sit in those dark and boiling hot lodges, to smoke traditional Pipes with elders,
and pray. It was starting to snow and Leola and Pedro and Sam came over to join me and
Karen warming ourselves at the cookfire. "Grampa has asked if you can go back down to
denver and bring some more people up here?"
"Oh?"
"Yeah. We can contact some relatives for you, who want to join us, but they don't
have any wheels."
"I'm ... about out of gas money."
"That's cool, Bro. They'll have some."
I nodded, disappointed because I wanted to stay there where it already felt very good
and natural to me. "Sure. Whatever I can do to help."
"Right on," and they shook hands gratefully with us. Pedro especially was a very cool
guy, short, with short black hair, but whom I learned was really the main organizer and
heart of the Movement on Pine Ridge.
"Karen?" I asked, if she was going back with me, but her face was paler than usual
even in her tanned outdoorswoman shine, as she had been reading a local newspaper
Byron Desersa had been putting out on the reservation.
"What? Oh ... yes. I have to get back to find a job anyway. Hey, you know, uh ... I'm
just reading here .. was it? What ... it says ...uh ... It says Raymond Yellow Thunder was
killed in Gordon Nebraska?"
"Yes," Leola nodded, a very beautiful woman.
"That was his name?"
Leola nodded.
"What?" I almost gasped.
"Yeah," Karen whispered, "it says right here."
"Raymond Yellow Thunder."
"The rednecks beat him to death," Sam added, his face lit by the yellow flames as it
had already gotten dark very fast and it was starting to snow heavily.
"To death?"
"When?"
"Oh, last year. He was my cousin. We went down there and kicked their fucking asses.
They put poor Ray in the trunk of their car after beating the shit out of him outside a
country-western dance, burned him with cigarette butts and pissed on him, then threw
him on the sidewalk where he was found dead the next morning covered in blood and
piss and frozen."
"God."
"It happens all the time," Pedro said quietly.
"AIM went down there in force and raised holy hell, until they put the racist fucks in
jail who did it."
"But they got out," Leola said, "with no bail, nothing. They're not going to do
anything to them. Gordon is the worst border town of them all."
"We saw him this morning," I said. They looked at me. "In Wounded Knee this
morning. We stopped there on our way here and he came over to us and introduced
himself as Raymond Yellow Thunder."
"Yes," Karen affirmed, "that's what he said."
Sam and Leola and Pedro immediately believed us, and so did Mrs. Good Voice Flute
making biscuits in a skillet over the fire, next to us. "What did he look like?"
"Big guy, about thirty."
"Big strawberry nose?" Sam grinned, and so did the women. Pedro was extremely
solemn and serious, thoughtful.
"Yeah."
"He'd had a few pints of Thunderbird by then," Sam laughed. "Yeah, that's Ray."
Leola nodded thoughtfully after a while. "Yeah. Tunkasila knew it too. That's how he
was expecting you guys." She was looking at us.
"Us?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah," Mrs. Good Voice Flute agreed surely, "he knew it."
We didn't know what to say. We'd been joking with a ghost about custer and buying
cheap souvenirs with him, and giving him some money for whatever he needed. "What
did he say? He had to take his daughter to Pine Ridge, or something."
Mrs. Good Voice Flute realized, "Yeah, that would be April. Ray's little girl April. He
was thinking of her. It's a good thing you guys came along."
We watched the elders head over to the inipi fires in the long cold winter night to
come, as a north wind picked up and made us shiver with a lot more than fear of the
unknown or even wonder and awe of the unknown. The sensations were bombarding us
until they accumulated like mysteries we wouldn't comprehend for a lifetime; like the
snow sizzling on the logs and in the frying pan.
"Maybe we should get going before this gets worse?"
"That might be a good idea."
"Or maybe we should wait it out until morning when it might be better."
"I don't know," Sam ruminated thoughtfully, "but there might be cops out and you
could slip through more easily, in the storm."
"Unless they're all up in Rapid City surrounding Dennis and Russell."
"Yeah."
"Could be."
"It might."
The decision was left up to me, obviously, as the horseman of the group. I didn't want
to go, and yet I did. On the road I liked to think, and there was already enough to think
about for one day. But I hated driving in blizzards. "So it's to the point where I can
choose to die in a blizzard or in a hail of gunfire!"
We laughed, and Mrs. Good Voice Flute said, "Either way, you're in the A.I.M. now!"
"Well," I sighed, "maybe we better do 'er. This looks like it could pile up fast and we'd
be stuck in here for a week."
"Yeah, that's probly right."
"I dunno. It could clear up."
"It might."
"And it might not."
Leola laughed, and I was a little bit in love with her already, "I thought you Indins
were 'sposed to have instincts about these things? Special powers."
"Me," said Mrs. G.V.F., "I check the weather on the radio."
"A lot of good that'll do ya."
"Well," I sighed again reluctantly.
"Yeah," the others agreed.
"She's piling up fast."
"It's hard to tell."
I zipped up my cheap denim jacket tighter and pulled my 49-cent cap down over my
ears and tightened my gloves over my fingers, and hitched up my baggy blue jeans.
"Scouts have to go through wind, hail, or sleet. Or maybe that's the Pony Express."
Karen frowned, "Yeah, I guess ... "
"Take some frybread," Mrs. G.V.F. offered, and went to get a papersack on the cook
table where the other women were covering up the food with blankets until the men got
back from their church services, lit by kerosene lanterns.
"I'll ride with you to the next security," Pedro said conscientiously. "It's only a short
hop over there, a lot closer than the long way you came in."
"We came in the long way?"
"The highway's just right over there."
"Oh ... good."
"When you come back you'll have to come in the long way though," he explained,
"where you'll have a better chance of avoiding the pigs and vigilantes that are already
prowling around."
Ellen came over with a shy young woman and two girls about 8 and 4. "Can you take
my daughter and her girls with you?" I guess the word had already gotten around
somehow that we were leaving.
"Sure."
"You'll be safer down there at Auntie's," she said to them, and kissed them goodbye.
Then to me, "Thanks, pilamaya."
"They know where to go, in denver? I mean, where to drop them off?"
"Yes."
Karen got the sack of hot greasy frybread staining the paperbag and we ate the
delicious dessert like sugar-donuts on the short way to the last guardpost of Severt Young
Bear's Camp. Leola had pulled me aside before I got in the driver's seat, "Bring
ammunition too. Lots of it. All kinds of shells, shotgun, anything you can get. Angie will
know you're coming. I'll call her." I had an uncontrollable urge to kiss her, but I
restrained myself.
 "Okay. You guys take care of yourselves." Her beauty and power were working some
kind of voodoo spell on me.
"You too."
The elders had all gone in the sweat lodges but we didn't stand on any farewell
ceremonies. I had my orders. Pedro said, as he got out in the blinding storm, at another
security shack where 3 or 4 other young men were huddling in the dark, "This storm is
great. The pigs'll never see you. Here's my sister's address and phone number in denver."
"When do you want us back?" I shouted in the wind.
"As soon as you can! Something's coming down, but I don't know what! The elders
are praying on it now. Toksa, Kolas!"
"Toksa!" the carload of females shouted back.
"Hau!"
"Ho!"

Militarily, several hundred AIMs came in to Wounded Knee a few days after that, on
February 27,1973, and immediately got themselves hopelessly surrounded by a vastly
superior force of US army, navy, air force, and FBI, BIA tribal police, US Marshalls,
local vigilantes and the "Goons" of the reactionary tribal president Dick Wilson, down in
that valley surrounded by high hills where the enemy could easily strangle them off in
fixed entrenchments and wipe 'em out.
Symbolically, they were the heroic underdogs taking custer's Last Stand to its opposite
absurdity in the eyes of a lot of bleary-eyed TV watchers around the world for the next 71
crazy and bloody days, when the media had a field day trying vainly to make sense of the
whole "Cause" and to pretend they cared, out in those alien fields so far from their
luxurious offices in new york and los angeles.
Politically, it was in terms of Dan Rather of the CBS Evening News ducking the
bullets, on location, just as he had done so many times in Vietnam, screaming into the
camera into the faces of those millions of shocked and uncomprehending Countrymen,
"There is the sound of heavy gunfire."