Delphine Red Shirt. Photo by Rich Luhr
Witnessing
By Delphine Red Shirt
Lakota Country Times Columnist
lakotacountrytimes.com I remember when our house burned down on the reservation. All of the community stepped in to offer help. Teachers gave food, we had clothing and even temporary housing over a weekend. A few years later my uncle's house burned down in a similar way. It wasn't until decades later we learned that it was a relative, a veteran, who wanted us out, my uncle out, so that he and his family could take the land that both houses stood on. Since that relative has passed on but the story remains. How, as children we accept hardship, the way we see adults around us, do. I grew up on that land where our house once stood. I climbed those hills. Almost was talked into smoking by one of my cousins. Luckily my little brother got caught on a ledge and I raced away to save him, getting stuck on the ledge too. We were rescued by an older cousin. I write this for my mother because she's the reason I started writing for Indian Country today when it was in Indian Country. I write this to set the story straight that it wasn't bad luck that caused my mother’s house to burn, or my uncle's, as well. On the reservation justice is rarely served because inquiry is rare, often the victim is blamed, even when two houses of two elders burn within a mile of each other: same Tiospaye, same type of fire. No one ever really put two and two together. It was my old uncle who finally put two and two together. When he told my brother, my old uncle was crying. Everything he and his wife owned was in that old log cabin when it burned, including his regalia. When our house burned, I lost childhood photographs, photographs of my older sister who was like my mother who died years earlier. All of our photographs, brand new baby kittens, and other precious belongings like my mother’s sewing machine were all burned in a matter of hours because there were no fire trucks nearby. How neatly both houses were consumed to the ashes, only someone trained in setting fires, as a Korean veteran could do? That was what my old uncle told my brother. It set the story straight, men like my uncle don’t lie. Growing up on the reservation, those kinds of stories survive, and are told over and over. If my mother were alive, would she expect justice? Or my uncle? The person who may have set the fires, lived a long life on that land, and finally passed away, too. In the Lakota way, the circle continues, our relatives wait for us, at the end when we go the way of the flesh. In that instance, when their nephew came to the other side, what did they say to him? Most likely forgiveness and an embrace.
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So much on the reservation never really heals and that is the part that we need to help each other do. Sometimes, students where I teach call it “historic trauma” by mistake or they compare it to PTSD. Finally, one non-native student got it right, she called it “witnessing” how we need to witness trauma and hardship for each other, and to validate each other so we can start the healing process. And to ask the reservation, the state, the nation to do it for us as well. To have someone say, “yes, that did happen” regarding all the hardship we have gone through in our local communities, on the reservation, in the state, in the nation as Lakota people. Just like my old uncle, reliving his trauma, through his tears, he was asking to be heard, to be validated. So, I tell his story because it is my own, and every story on the reservation that talks about trauma needs to be heard, to be sifted through and witnessed so that those affected can be validated and healing can start. (Delphine Red Shirt can be reached at redshirtphd@gmail.com) Find the award-winning Lakota Country Times on the Internet, Facebook and Twitter and download the new Lakota Country Times app today.
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