the “Dakota Daughters” performance took place at West River History Conference in effort to “spread the word on healing racism and building a shared inclusive future.” Photo by Talli Nauman / Native Sun News Today

National

Reconciliation and Wounded Knee

Thursday, November 14, 2019

By Talli Nauman

Native Sun News Today

Health & Environment Editor

nativesunnews.today

DEADWOOD – The theme of intercultural reconciliation took center stage here at the 37th gathering of the West River History Conference October 12, as Gov. Kristi Noem proclaimed this date in 2019 as James Aplan Day.

The City of Deadwood Historic Preservation Department raised a flag to dedicate a pole in the late Great Plains historian’s name, and the audience watched the performance of “Dakota Daughters.”

The five-act stage play, subtitled “Wounded Knee … Three Lives, Three Women, Three Stories”, was enacted in the Olympic Ballroom of the 1898 Victorian-style Martin & Mason Hotel, where the conference was held.

The Wounded Knee Massacre took place just about 100 miles southeast of here in 1890, inspiring each of the four women who collaborate on the play to research and write her part in the historical interpretation of the events leading up to the tragedy for which the U.S. Congress eventually expressed “deep regret.”

In program notes, the collaborators explain, “Our goal is to help spread the word on healing racism and building a shared inclusive future.”

Oglala Lakota performer Geraldine Goes in Center from Wamblee plays the role of Sitting Bull’s daughter Kimemela, who travels with him to Canada and to Standing Rock in search of safety, before ending up at Wounded Knee on a visit to her Uncle Spotted Elk.

Meanwhile, Chadron State College teacher Lillian Witt portrays Sadie Babcock who moves with her husband and children from Texas to Lakota Territory to start up a cattle operation on “free land” held out by the federal government.

At the same time, Mattie Elmira, played by Black Hills State University graduate Joyce Jefferson, is reveling in newfound freedom from slavery and following her fiancé’s exploits as a post-Civil War Buffalo Soldier, which eventually leads her west to become Sadie’s live-in housekeeper.

The letters from her fiancé and the news in Sadie’s outdated periodicals spooks them with stories about the Battle of the Little Big Horn, the Black Hills gold rush, cattle rustling, the Ghost Dance, and finally the horror of the massacre in which Kimemela’s daughter is killed.

The episodes culminate in a song and prayer, “a blessing and image of reconciliation,” as the creators describe it.

Narrated by former Native Sun News Today contributor Kat Holmgren, “Dakota Daughters” raises awareness by illustrating the vastly divergent points from which Western History Conference goers have come together on what the playbill describes as “the timeless land.”