Carol Iron Rope Herrera, Becky Chief Eagle, and Amanda Takes War Bonnet of The Stone Boy Women's Society support the work of the Men's Oyate.
Gus Yellow Hair, Dallas Chief Eagle and Racen Raines meet with many other men who come to share their grief and trauma in order to be healed.
From pain to healing
By Christina Rose
Native Sun News Associate Editor BATESLAND — After 150 years of wars, oppression, boarding schools, alcoholism, abuse and trauma, The Men’s Oyate is calling men to the buffalo hide to talk about feelings they have kept inside. Dallas Chief Eagle, who takes a leadership role in the group, said the program has been going on in some way for many years. “Granpa Frank Fools Crow blessed this Mankind project designed specifically for men. They’ve been doing lodges for the last 28 years. He, Mel Lone Hill and other men, some now deceased, took part in the Mankind project in the 1990s.” On the website, the Mankind Project is based in Denver, Colo., and calls itself the “Men’s community for the 21st Century” where the program helps men become “emotionally mature, accountable, and compassionate male role models that our communities so desperately need.” The group made scholarships available to Chief Eagle and a few others to attend the program. Chief Eagle and the Men’s Oyate took what they learned in Denver and brought those skills back to the reservations. Describing the work they are doing, Chief Eagle said, “We have this technology to go into outer space but our people have to go into inner space. We believe we have to go through a healing process and the way we go through that is talking about the contents of our lives,” Chief Eagle said. According to Chief Eagle, generations of men have grown up without any emotional support. “Now we are able to get together and attend to these emotions. I am now more real than I used to be. I am more honest. I’m not as angry as I used to be, not as frustrated.” The group formalized about 18 months ago, and those involved say it is still in its infancy. “But people are taking to it. We are all about healing and I can’t find anyone who has a problem with that,” Chief Eagle said. The Men’s Oyate is located in a beautiful farm-like setting in Batesland. Amidst a corral of horses and miles of corn fields, a large white barn holds bunks for guests and a wide open space within. There is a buffalo hide on the floor and chairs all around. It is here that men gather to discuss whatever pain and trauma they feel has held them back. “If there are parts of yourself that’s been traumatized, you are not functioning in the best way; you are partly dysfunctional,” Chief Eagle said. “To go inside oneself to what has been oppressed, denied, maybe really scared as a child growing up...we have generations of people like that.” One of the goals of the Men’s Oyate is to become the men their women need them to be. Becky Chief Eagle has been married to Dallas for three years and they have been together for four. She said, “I have seen mahasani do a 360 degree turn. I fell in love with Dallas because we could communicate, but in the last 18 months he has really opened up and shared a lot. It strengthened us. He helped my son and I help his daughters, and now he is not afraid to tell you he loves you.” So far, 11 men have gone to two Denver retreats and they have held two retreats in Batesland. “We call them Akicita Retreats; it’s where you learn to become a provider and a nurturer,” Chief Eagle said. “We caravanned down to Denver with Racen Raines and Gus Yellow Hair in the first group. We went through this process where we each got to take one piece of their life doing that carpet work and when you get done you become sold on the idea. That’s healing taking place. So we continued that process here,” Chief Eagle said. Chief Eagle said they have become a very united circle of men and they continue to bring others in. Men learn how to communicate “eye to eye, heart to heart” and are encouraged to talk about whatever happened in their past. “To try to come to terms with those wounds so they become our strengths,” Chief Eagle said. “We can use all of ourselves.” “You really shed a lot of tears because you get to tell what is bothering you,” said Chief Eagle, who described much of the work as spiritual which allows communications between this world and the next. “We see it time and time again, we talk to our fathers, we get to have those conversations, and we believe our relatives did that long time ago but we don’t do that anymore.” “If we are gonna do the Wiping of the Tears, then let’s find out where those tears came from; the grief, the wounds, we must have a discussion about that. I have noticed in some of our ceremonies we go through symbols and prayers but what is missing is the conversation,” he said. “It’s obvious that men have a conditioning to put up a solid exterior,” said Racen Raines, Lakota recently returned from California. “And that works to an extent and has throughout Lakota history in terms of surviving but not thriving.” Raines described the work as a recalling or rediscovering of ancestral wisdom which is where “the real value, the wealth of knowledge is at” and he said this process is tapping into it. “It’s cutting through the stereotypes and categories and getting into the Wolakota.” According to Raines, it is not an easy process, but, “What Dallas is talking about is layers upon layers. There is a lot of technique to the process, so you become comfortable enough with men in the sacred circle. You get into the depth of that conversation with yourself and with those men in that circle, and that is why it is called a sacred space.” Gus Yellow Hair, another member of the group, said the Lakota people once had this spiritual way of life. “They grew up good fathers, good brothers and good grandpas, good uncles. That way of life was sacred and as we became more colonized, those ways were taken away from us. That time we were banned from our ceremonial way of life, how to be, how to be responsible not only to yourself, but to your tiwahe, tiospaye, your nation, so that is what we are lacking now.” Addressing those who served in the military and came back with “syndromes and trauma,” Chief Eagle said no one attended to those wounds. “My father, he cut the Japanese heads off, he learned how to practice genocide. Another man had to do mass burials over there, like they did at Wounded Knee. He came back with that, and that isn’t what Akicita did a long time ago. We have to accept what is confronting us in this moment of time. A lot of veterans come into our group and we are talking about some of these things.” The group sometimes brings in outside speakers and holds their own retreats. Aaron Ortega, who has worked with indigenous people and groups around the country, both as a learner and a teacher, said, “The work the Men’s Oyate are doing is really authentic, it’s the real deal.” Explaining the process further, Ortega said, “If you get a circle of men together, each are carrying their own medicine and skill set. Together they can better serve the people they are tending. The participants come to heal through honest and respectful inquiry. We all have questions but we all live the answers, even if they are not the short answers.” Ortega, whose roots are Mayan, Apache and Pacific Islander, said developing this kind of work has become a lifetime commitment for him. “I had a teacher who said, what would it be like if you could tell the truth about yourself until you felt good?” “The real accomplishment in life is the art of being a warrior,” Ortega said. “Because that is the only way to balance the wonder and the terror of being human. Being the warrior is the only way to go into our brokenness and come out with an open heart. Everything from indigenous has always been from the heart.” The brochure for the Men’s Oyate reads, “Changing the lives of men from emotional poverty into emotional billionaires with the feelings, actions, and behaviors our ancestors modeled.” The group is interested in hearing from other indigenous groups that are doing similar work and is interested in hosting retreats with additional speakers and teachers. To contact Dallas Chief Eagle, call 605-685-1135 or 605-407-0677. (Contact Christina Rose at Christinarose.sd@gmail.com) Copyright permission by Native Sun News
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