Notes from Indian Country
By Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji – Stands Up For Them)
Native Sun News Today Editor Emeritus
nativesunnews.today In April of 1921 Vaudevillian entertainer Al Jolson stood on the stage in Jolson’s 59th Street Theatre in New York City in blackface in the production of the Broadway musical Bombo, and he sang, “Though April showers may come your way, they bring the flowers that bloom in May.” At that time April became the month of hope and dreams. But before Jolson’s song of April, the month took some ominous turns. On April 20, 1889, Adolph Hitler was born and between his life and death, millions would die in World War 2. More than 6 million Jews would die in the concentration camps in what Hitler proclaimed as the Final Solution. On April 15, 1912, the luxury liner Titanic struck an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean and sank taking 1,517 passengers to the bottom with it. It was in April 1968 when Robert F. Kennedy made his historic visit to Red Cloud Indian School on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, just a few months before he was assassinated in California. On April 19, 1995 an Army veteran named Timothy McVeigh calmly walked away from the Ryder Truck he had parked in front of the Alfred Murrah federal building and the truck exploded nearly destroying the building and taking the lives of 168 people. And on April 20, 1999, Hitler’s birthday, two high school boys, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, walked into the classrooms at Columbine High School and took the lives of 12 students, one teacher and then turned the guns on themselves. In all 15 people died that day. Something else happened on April 4, 1981, that helps me to round out things that happened in that month that held different meanings. On April 4 a group of Native Americans from the American Indian Movement occupied a small plot of land called Victoria Creek Canyon and changed the name to Yellow Thunder Camp in honor of Raymond Yellow Thunder, the Lakota man killed in Gordon, Nebraska by locals. On the evening that AIM took over the grounds at Yellow Thunder Camp the skies above Rapid City took on colors of red, pink and purple that I have never seen before or since. The entire sky above this city lit up for nearly 30 minutes. Members of AIM looked upon this as a sign that Wakan Tanka (Great Spirit) was with them. That same evening in a hospital bed at the Rapid City Regional Hospital, a tiny Lakota woman named Lupe Giago breathed her last breath. When I looked out of the windows at the hospital and saw the brilliant hues of colors in the skies I thought, “There goes the spirit of my mother.”
Read the rest of the story on the Native Sun News Today website: April can be a month of sadness and tragedy (Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, was born, raised and educated on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in the Class of 1991. His career in journalism spans more than 35 years. He can be reached at najournalist1@gmail.com) Copyright permission Native Sun News
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