When “sanity” is anything but sane?

When you realize you’re hopelessly trapped?

When your mother is dying and your soul has been stolen?

What to do?

I know of no species of plant, bird, or animal that were exterminated until the coming of the white man. For some years after the buffalo disappeared there still remained huge herds of antelope, but the hunter’s work was no sooner done in the destruction of the buffalo than his attention was attracted toward the deer. They are plentiful now only where protected. The white man considered natural animal life just as he did the natural man life upon this continent, as ‘pests.’ Plants which  the Indian found beneficial were also ‘pests.’ There is no word in the Lakota vocabulary with the English meaning of this word.

There was a great difference in the attitude taken by the Indian and the Caucasian toward nature, and this difference made of one a conservationist and of the other a non-conservationist of life. The Indian, as well as all other creatures that were given birth and grew, were sustained by the common mother — earth. He was therefore kin to all living things and he gave to all creatures equal rights with himself. Everything of earth was loved and reverenced. The philosophy of the Caucasian was, ‘Things of the earth, earthy’ — to be belittled and despised. Bestowing upon himself the position and title of a superior creature, others in the scheme were,in the natural order of things, of inferior position and title; and this attitude dominated his actions toward all things. The worth and right to live were his, thus he heartlessly destroyed. Forests were mowed down, the buffalo exterminated, the beaver driven to extinction and his wonderfully constructed dams dynamited, allowing flood waters to wreak further havoc, and the very birds of the air silenced. Great grassy plains that sweetened the air have been upturned; springs, streams, and lakes that have lived longer ago than my boyhood have dried, and a whole people harassed to degradation and death. The white man has come to be the symbol of extinction for all things natural to this continent. Between him and the animal there is no rapport and they have learned to flee from his approach, for they cannot live on the same ground.

The Lakota was a man of humility, never forgetting his insignificance in the sight  of Wakan Tanka. He was humble without cringing, and meek without loss of spirit. He always faced the Powers in prayer; he never groveled on the earth, but with face lifted to the sky spoke straight to his Mystery. There was no holier than himself whom he might importune to speak for him. The Great Mystery was here, there, and everywhere, and the Lakota had but to lift his voice and it would be heard.

-Luther Standing Bear

Let me tell you a story of early days: Meat was once low in the village and a number of hunters went out to bring in some buffalo which were, at that particular time, scarce. Only three animals were found to be divided among every person in the camp. Even the hunters who could have availed themselves of a feast did not do so, and though the portions were small, everyone was served.

Now, hunger is a hard thing to bear, but not so hard when all are sharing the same want in the same degree; but it is doubly hard to bear when all about is plenty which the hungry dare not touch. Sentences imposed upon those who, through hunger, take for their staving bodies, are to me inconceivably cruel, even to my now altered and accustomed viewpoint. For one man with full stomach to heap more misery upon one with an empty stomach is savage beyond compare. Perhaps I sense the degradation all the more, having tasted the sweetness of the life of my forefathers.

-Luther Standing Bear

-Luther Standing Bear

The reputation of the Lakotas as fighting men spread among the white people, though not even with them was warfare sought until realization came to the people of the plains that they must fight or disappear as had the buffalo. Then their cause became a righteous one for the preservation of the race. For this the Lakotas have been put down in history as the ‘most warlike of all tribes.’ It was the French who called us the ‘Sioux,’ or ‘Enemy People,’ and other references have been made tot he tribe such as the “Mighty Sioux’ and the ‘Fighting Sioux.’

-Luther Standing Bear

All this was in accordance with the Lakota belief that man did not occupy a special place in the eyes of Wakan Tanka, the Grandfather of us all. I was only a part of everything that was called the world. I can now see that humaneness is not a thing which can be ordered by law. It is an ideal to be lived.

-Luther Standing Bear