Im Original veränderbare Word

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SUN-DANCE IN THE BLACK HILLS
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Old pride is stirring at the poorest place in America, where the massacre of
Wounded Knee too place 100 years ago this week
Wounded Knee is a prairie crossroads, surrounded by low, treescattered hills. To one side stands a small cemetery, with a ragged white
flag hanging at the gate. Inside there is a mass grave and a memorial
which reads, in part: "Many innocent women and children who knew no
wrong died here." By the road there is a green and white sign, messily
painted, which originally said "Battle of Wounded Knee." Someone has
bolted a metal plate over the word "battle," replacing it with the word
"massacre."
On a winter's afternoon the shallow valley has the stillness, the
ghostly presence, whether real or imagined, of a Belsen, a Drogheda or a
Katyn Forest. One hundred years ago this week, on 29 December, 1890,
at least 153 - maybe as many as 300 - Lakota (Sioux) Indians were
killed here by the US Seventh Cavalry. Mainly women, children and old
men, they had surrendered the previous night under a flag of truce.
Wounded Knee was the last armed "conflict" between the American
Indians and the US Army. In the same year, the federal census
discovered that there was no open prairie between the white settlers
moving from the east and those spreading from the west. The frontier
was no more. The West was won, and lost.
The day after the massacre, Nicholas Black Elk, a young man destined to be a great Lakota
religious leader, was among the first to arrive on the ghastly frozen scene. Forty years later, in
the book Black Elk Speaks , he declared: "When I look back now from this high hill of my old
age, I can see the butchered women and children, lying heaped and scattered all along the
crooked gulch ... I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and that was buried
in a blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream ... The nation's hoop is
broken and scattered. There is no centre any longer, and the sacred tree is dead."
To the Lakota, the Wounded Knee centenary this week is an occasion for remembrance, but
also, more importantly, a celebration of a new beginning. According to tribal prophesies, this is
the year when the Sacred Hoop will be mended and the "beautiful dream" revived.
The Sacred Hoop is "the circle of life" within which the Lakota exist. Literally, it is the
horizon encircling the great sweep of the northern plains - with the Black Hills, the centre of the
universe, standing like a tent pole in the centre. But the Sacred Hoop is also the cycle of the
seasons, the flow of the generations, the world's (once) infinite capacity to re-create itself, and
the continuity of Lakota culture and traditions.
Black Elk believed that the Sacred Hoop was destroyed at Wounded Knee, and the old Lakota
world with it. But he, and other Lakota holy men, predicted that the tribe would suffer for six
generations only. Then the Lakota
culture, language and prosperity would
flourish again.
Jim Garrett, 42, a member of the Minneconju band of Lakota, and a lecturer on tribal
traditions, says: "The seventh generation is here. Some people count back through their relatives
and say, hey, we're not the seventh generation - not all of us, anyway. But the important thing is
that the spirit of the seventh generation is here. The regeneration is happening."
Here on the Pine Ridge reservation, home of 18,000 Lakota of the Oglala band, there has been
a startling revival in the last five years of Lakota language, music, and especially religion. The
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sun-dance, once a corrupted relic, is now celebrated again as the core of Lakota ritual (including
the tearing of the dancers' flesh and the eating of choked and boiled puppy dogs).
At the same time, the reservation's educational institutions, several now under Lakota control
for the first time, are reinforcing tribal culture and exploring ways of bringing the Sioux into the
computer age. On most Indian reservations there is a tragic gulf between the nobility of Indian
philosophy and the brutal reality of child abuse, incest, drunkenness and suicide. Indians, and
many whites, believe that this is the result of brutal attempts, right up to the Sixties, to obliterate
Indian religion and culture. Freedom of worship for Indians in the Land of the Free was formally
restored only in 1978, by Jimmy Carter.
For decades Indians were expected to speak and think like white people, but were not allowed
to share in the entrepreneurial and risk-based religion of the majority culture. Indian reservations
became little islands in the great capitalist ocean; separated from the white world by a "buckskin
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curtain,"
maintained by the Bureau
of Indian
Affairs in Washington. Copyright www.park-koerner.de
The 1990 federal census shows that American Indians, once reduced to barely 500,000, are
now two million strong, and the fastest growing minority in the US. In many reservations, Indian
leaders are searching for ways to reassert the sovereignty of Indian tribes - the nation-within-anation status - established by the early treaties and confirmed by the US Supreme Court.
Sometimes, as in the violent confrontations over gambling halls on the Mohawk reservation in
New York State in May, the results have been painful and destructive. But other Indian leaders
are determined to find a place for the first Americans in the twenty-first century, as something
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more
than a piece of history's flotsam.
They see the American Indian tribes - over 100 of them - as being, as much as the Latvians
and Estonians, suppressed nations which must be allowed to assert their nationalities again
before they can take their place in the interdependent modern world.- END OF PART ONE -
by John Lichfield, The Independent on Sunday 23 December 1990
ANNOTATIONS:
Belsen:
Bergen-Belsen, a Nazi concentration camp
Drogheda:
Irish town, in 1649 it fell and Cromwell's arm was responsible for a
terrible massacre; 4 miles from the mouth of the River Boyne
Katyn:
in WWII there was a massacre of Polish officers there
truce:
agreement between enemies to stop fighting; the time for which hostile
activitiesCopyright
stop.  www.park-koerner.de
cease-fire agreement
gulch:
(US) deep narrow rocky valley
hoop:
circular band of wood or metal &c; what holds a barrel together
centenary:
anniversary after 100 years
sweep:
(geogr.) long unbroken stretch of road, river ... or of sloping land
obliterate:
to rub or wipe out
entrepreneurial:
referring to the world of business
to reassert:
to make others understand again
flotsam:
parts of wrecked ships or cargo found floating in the sea; they are called
 jetsam when washed to the shore
citizens of Lithuania ( eastern end of the Baltic Sea
Latvians:
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Estonians:
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neighbours
of the www.park-koerner.de
Latvians
QUESTIONS ON PART ONE:
1. What does Wounded Knee look like 100 years after the massacre?
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2. Sum
up what the Indians
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haveCopyright
had to suffer
from the white man.
3. What does the Sacred Hoop mean for the Lakota Indians today?
4. Which part could/should the Indians play within the USA?
- CONTINUED
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Wednesday night - girls' basketball night - at Little
Wound High School at Kyle, one of eight small
communities on the Pine Ridge reservation. This could be
a high school in any American small town: the
cheerleaders in short tunics, the large crowd of parents and
local people. One obvious difference can be found in the
stunningly beautiful names of the players: Crystal
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Whirlwind Horse, Holly Poor Copyright
Bear, Stephanie
Standing
Soldier. The crowd stands for the national anthem, which is
not The Star-Spangled Banner. A 12-year-old boy in
spectacles sings the Lakota Flag Song, in a harsh, haunting
tremolo.
Basketball is the passion on the reservation. In agility,
strength, speed, quickness of thought, and lack of physical contact, it resembles traditional Indian
games. The standard of play is high. Pine Ridge teams often supply the state champions. Little
Wound High School is something of a showpiece, the first on the reservation to be "contracted"
to local control, out of the direct influence of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. John Haas, an Oglala,
is the school principal. He wears jeans and a blue baseball hat labelled "Mustangs," the name of
all the school's sports teams. In his office the following day, he says the school aims to instil the
four Lakota traditional virtues: respect, wisdom, generosity, and courage. "How do we move into
the twenty-first century talking about generosity when this country is based on acquiring and
consuming?" He doesn't answer his own question but jumps up and says: "Come on. Let's take a
walk."
The school, Indian-designed, is built in a whirl of circles, rather than the traditional box. All
classroom doors are open. The curriculum blends a standard US education with Lakota values.
One classroom has a map pinned up entitled "The Mediterranean World in 264 BC"; another has
prints of Indian warriors. The home economics class has microwaves, but also wood stoves. In
the computer lab, the school is developing computer-assisted versions of traditional Lakota
designs. Beadwork, the basis of most Lakota art, transfers readily to the computer screen.
"Computers are going to be the best leaving present we can give our kids," Haas says. "This is an
educational tool, if you like, but it's also something more than that: it's an assertion of our belief
that you can come to terms with the
modern world and remain a Lakota."
Stacey Phelps, 17, half Lakota, half white, is a star pupil at Little Wound. He considers
himself Lakota, and modern. "I read about what happened to the Lakota and what we used to be,
and it makes me proud and it makes me mad. I get upset at it. But it's in the past. You can't do
anything about it." Would he go back to the 1860s? "I've thought about it. Sometimes I think I
would. We were a free people, and a great people. But I'll be honest. There's lots of things I'd
miss. I'm a Lakota, but I'm also a teenager. I like it all: the movies, VCRs, cars, clothes ..."
Since it began stressing Lakota values, Little Wound High School has reduced the drop-out
rate - 80 per cent in some Indian schools - to 15 per cent. Haas says drugs and drink are his
greatest problem. His ambition, almost achieved, is to eliminate them among the staff.
- END OF PART TWO by John Lichfield, The Independent on Sunday 23 December 1990
ANNOTATIONS:
tunics:
beadwork:
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tight fitting jackets, parts of a uniform
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beadsCopyright
are smallwww.park-koerner.de
hard pieces (glass, wood, plastic
&) with
a hole each,
for threading with others on a string
strong statement claiming the truth of s.th.
assertion:
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QUESTIONS
ON PART
TWO:Copyright www.park-koerner.de
1. How does Little Wound High School work? What makes it attractive?
2. Describe the journalist's attitude towards Lakota education.
- CONTINUED
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It is usual to describe American Indian life in the late twentieth century
in terms of poverty, desperation and drunkenness. All three exist here.
The Pine Ridge reservation is a beautiful, rolling high plains plateau,
about the size of Wiltshire. It is the poorest place in America (poorer than
Harlem, poorer than the Mississippi Delta). It has an annual per capita
income of about £1,300. Unemployment is around 75 per cent. One in four
babies are born crippled by foetal alcohol syndrome, because their mothers
drank persistently and heavily throughout
pregnancy. The average life
expectancy is 47, the
lowest in the US.
The news from Indian Country is not that these things exist but that they are changing. There
is a generation of thoughtful, educated Lakota, aged roughly 20-50, whose eyes and minds were
opened by the occupation of the Wounded Knee site in 1973 by a militant group called the
American Indian Movement (AIM). The occupation, and subsequent siege, was a roar of
impatience with the human waste of Pine Ridge and other reservations. AIM wanted to change
things overnight and seemed to change nothing. In fact, for many years afterwards the abortive
revolution made life at Pine Ridge far worse, deepening factional rivalries within the Oglala.
Murder became as commonplace as in New York.
Now many of the Oglala men and women who supported AIM say they realise that the
restoration of Lakota values, the Lakota economy and, ultimately, a form of Lakota
independence is still a worth-while and possible objective, but it will take many years and,
maybe, several generations.
The key to the new spirit in Pine Ridge, and elsewhere, is a new spiritualism. This is, in part,
Nicholas Black Elk's doing from beyond the
grave. Black Elk Speaks , his conversation
in the Thirties with a white poet, John
Neihardt, republished in the Sixties, forms
the core of revived Lakota religion today.
Jim Garrett says: "In the early Seventies,
people of my generation were looking for
ways to change our world. We read Black
Elk and we thought, hey, it may be better not
to assimilate. Maybe
we will never ride to
hunt the buffalo again, but the core of our
beliefs is returning. In Pine Ridge village,
many bad things happen. People are drunk,
violent, they abuse members of their family. This was not the Lakota way. But all of this is
disappearing as the old spirituality returns.
- END OF PART THREE Copyright www.park-koerner.de
ANNOTATIONS:
Wiltshire:
county, in the south-west of England
abortive:
coming to nothing, unsuccessful
factional:
referring to a small united group within a bigger one
QUESTIONS ON PART THREE:
1. What is the economic situation of the reservation?
2. Explain why the occupation of the Wounded Knee site by AIM was not a futile operation,
although it looked like that at the time.
3. What do the Lakota hope to achieve, and what are their hopes built on?
4. What is your opinion, having read the different parts of the text so far, about the future of the
Lakota people?
5. 5) In which possible way(s)
is your opinion influenced by John Lichfield?
6. Unfortunately you can't see the photographs by Norman Lomax which went the article. Try
to imagine three probable photos for the text so far and describe them. Say why you would
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them.
TRANSLATE
the last paragraph into good, idiomatic German. Avoid words like 'assimilieren' or
'Spiritualismus'!
- CONTINUED
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At the Senior Citizens' Centre in Kyle, the old people speak in Lakota, drink coffee, and
watch the daytime soaps on television. Henry Big Bear, who is 77 and has the mocking, playful
Lakota sense of humour, cheerfully agrees to talk to a stranger.
He remembers the old days: not the open prairie, but the early reservation days when there
were no roads at Pine Ridge, few log cabins, and most Lakota still lived in tents. (Now they
mainly have small bungalows, built in un-Indian squares). He was brought up by his grandfather,
Little Chief, who did recall the days of Lakota freedom.
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Henry shows where his fingers
were bludgeoned with hammers byCopyright
the teachers
at the Indian
School in Rapid City if he spoke a word of Lakota. Eventually, he became a
farmer with his grandfather, breaking horses. Once, as a teenager, a horse he
was riding fell and he narrowly escaped being crushed. "I think sometimes,
maybe I should have died then and not seen all these troubles. Today is
different. We don't eat healthily. We go to the store. In my grandfather's time,
they would eat strong, free meat. Today we eat from little packets."
His daughter is married to a Mexican-American (mixed marriages are a
constant source of friction for the Lakota). "All these little ones, my
grandchildren, they only speak English ... they come out all mixed up. I
couldn't teach them anything. In my day, when my grandpa raised me, I was
taught that the grandfather must teach his children's children."
Now Henry goes along to Little Wound High School, as a surrogate
grandfather, to help teach the children there the Lakota language. (Only 40
per cent of the Oglala speak Lakota, but the number is rising.) Are the kids
interested? "Not bad, not bad. If they can't talk Indian, they can't be Indian.
We have a pow-wow ground here. The children are out there, dancing again."
- END OF PART FOUR by John Lichfield, The Independent on Sunday 23 December 1990
ANNOTATIONS:
soaps:
short for 'soap operas' - shallow and long-running TV series
bludgeoned:
hit with a stick or s.th. similar
breaking horses:
taming wild horses so that they can be ridden
surrogate:
person or thing that is used or acts instead of another one; a substitute
kids:
(infl) child, young person [not very good style in British English]
QUESTIONS ON PART FOUR:
1. Compare how Henry Big Bear and his grandchildren were taught at school.
2. Why is it so important that these children learn the Lakota language?
3. According to Henry, it is the grandfather's role to educate his grandchildren. Do you think
this is the normal thing is Germany as well? Find reasons for your opinion.
4. What do you think is the function of the first paragraph of this part?
> A very interesting book, also discussing Indian dialects, is Benjamin Lee Whorf, "Language,
Thought and Reality," published
in a German translation by >rowohlts
deutsche enzyklopädie<
under the title "Sprache, Denken, Wirklichkeit." Here one learns how different English and, for
instance, Nootka are. Here is an example from p. 43:
- He invites people to a feast
NOOTKA:
TL'IMSH
YA
'IS
ITA
'ITL
MA
ENGLISH:
BOIL-
ED
EAT-
ERS
GO FOR
HE DOES
GERMAN:
GEKOCH- TES
ESSEN-
DE
HOLEN
TUT ER
- CONTINUED
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Robert Grey Eagle, 37, vice-president of the community college on the Pine Ridge
reservation, and a former Chief Judge of the tribe, describes himself as a "born-again Indian."
"In my late teens," he says, "I went through a period of self-destructive behaviour - of
messing around with alcohol. In my early twenties, I accepted myself for what I was - a Lakota.
It was then that I was able to make something of my life. When I take part in sun-dances, go to
the sweat-lodge, I feel a confidence, a sense of joy, in my Lakota identity."
He joined AIM and studied at universities in Idaho and Arizona. He is a handsome, articulate
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man, distant at first, like many Lakota,
and impatient with an outsider'sCopyright
questions.
But he warms
with his enthusiasm for his people's future. He dismisses the notion - common among whites that tribal tradition and economic advancement are
enemies; that the Lakota can become richer only if
they cease to be Lakota.
"No one goes into the Jewish community and
says: 'You can either be a banker or a Jew, you
can't be both.' We've found there's a difference
between cultural assimilation - becoming brown
white men - and allowing ourselves to be open to
useful ideas. We don't want assimilation but
acculturation, absorbing those things we can use
into our won culture and traditions.
"I'm not such a sentimentalist that I believe we could go back to the 1860s. If I had a chance,
I'd go right away. We are a noble, beautiful people, hardened to suffering, capable of great
innocence and great wisdom. We need to preserve the best of that world and at the same time
accept the best of the non-Indian world, in medicine, science and economic development."
Much of this is unproven, at Pine Ridge at any rate. The change is that there are Lakota who
think like this. Until recently the tendency has been for ambitious, educated Indians to go
elsewhere and for many reservation Indians to lose their culture, traditions and language to
drunkenness and welfare loafing. Robert Grey Eagle is part of a new trend among educated
Lakota to come back to the reservation. Ninety per cent of the kids who graduate from
reservation high schools stay or return after college. Outside the reservation, in white South
Dakota, 90 per cent of high school graduates make their lives elsewhere.
- END OF PART FIVE -
ANNOTATIONS:
sun-dance:
[excerpt from Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol IX, .671] "sun-dance, the most
spectacular and important religious ceremony of the Plains Indians of 19thcentury North America. Ordinarily held by each tribe once a year in early
summer, it was an occasion when all could gather with guests from other tribes
and reaffirm their basic beliefs about the universe and the supernatural through
words, ceremonies and symbolic objects. ... The development of total tribal
participation,
widespread
cooperative effort, directionCopyright
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officials as tribal
leaders and shamans (...) indicate the meaning of this ceremony in terms of
tribal aspirations (secular and religious) and in the reinforcement of social
control." It often continued for several days and nights; sometimes pieces of
the dancers' flesh (breast, back) were torn out by skewers in order to sanctify
their
loafing:
vows. TheCopyright
US government
outlawed it in 1904. Copyright www.park-koerner.de
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spending time idly
QUESTIONS ON PART FIVE:
1. What is a "born-again Indian"?
2. Why does Grey Eagle use the example of the Jews?
3. What, according to Grey Eagle, is best for the Lakota Indians?
4. In which way does education in Pine Ridge prove him right?
- CONTINUED
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In recent years, the US
Supreme Court has twice
recognized the validity of
the Lakota's legal claim
(based on an 1868 treaty) to
the Black Hills, which
contain,
among
other
things, the richest gold mine
in the US and the Mount
Rushmore monument. But
under US law passed in the
Thirties, valid Indian land
claims can only be settled in
cash, not land. In 1987 the
US awarded the Lakota
$180m (£90m) as a final
settlement for the Black
Hills. This was an absurdly small sum. But, in any case, most of the Lakota insist that they want
the hills, not the money.
Gerard Clifford, 51, co-ordinator of the Black Hills Steering Committee for the different
Lakota bands, is married to the great-great-granddaughter of Nicholas Black Elk. Clifford wears
a sharp blue suit, smart tie and engraved cowboy boots. But the appearance is deceptive. Clifford
is a devout believer in Lakota religion. He says white people always miss the most important
point about the Black Hills: they are the centre of the Lakota universe, as important to the Lakota
as the Wailing Wall to the Jews, or Mecca to the Moslems. The Lakota will therefore fight to
persuade Congress to rescind the cash-not-land law.
Can he imagine this ever happening? (Congress recently declined to apologise for the
massacre at Wounded Knee, but sent its regrets.) "Oh, yes." Clifford says. "I think so. This is not
because I'm confident the US Congress will do the right thing. It's because I'm confident in the
power of prayer. The Lakota traditions say we'll prosper if we're true to who we are. I'm
confident we will regain the Black
Hills because the Lakotas have returned
to the sun-dance."
- END OF PART SIX by John Lichfield, The Independent on Sunday 23 December 1990
ANNOTATIONS:
validity:
state of being legally acceptable
k in southwestern South Dakota, 25 miles southwest of Rapid City, is a
huge sculpture of the heads of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln
and Roosevelt, each about 60 ft high, carved in granite. Work began in
1927 under Gutzon Borglum and was finished in 1941. It attracts about
one million visitors per year.
Copyright sharp:
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(too)
stylish
deceptive:
likely to deceive; mistaking
devout:
sincerely religious; pious
Wailing Wal:
or Western Wall (Hebrew HA-KOTEL HA-MA'ARAVI):
in the old City of Jerusalem, a place of prayer and pilgrimage sacred to
the JewishCopyright
people.www.park-koerner.de
They are the only remainsCopyright
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Second Temple,
destroyed by the Romans in AD 70.
to cancel or repeal; annul
rescind:
QUESTIONS ON PART SIX:
1. Why are the Black Hills important to the Indians?
2. Why are the whites interested in them?
3. What are the legal aspects concerning the Black Hills?
4. How can Clifford be sure that Congress will give in in the end?
COMPOSITION:
Write about 150 words on one of the following topics.
a. Some Indians always walk in two worlds, trying to maintain the perspective of both and to
draw unto themselves the best of both.
b. The United States of America need healthy Indian communities with Indians who feel
responsible for their destiny.
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- CONTINUED
-
American Indians are not necessarily doomed to be
permanent strangers in their own land. For the Lakota, trying to
convert their new-found self-belief into some form of
sustaining, but not demeaning, economic activity, there are
many positive role models in the rest of the Indian world.
In Maine, the Passamaquoddy Indians won $40m in a federal
land
claim in 1980. Good investments
it into $100m.
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They built a business network employing Indians and nonIndians in blueberry farming, sewing, turning plastic bottles into
car boot linings. The Choctaw in Mississippi, once a byword for Indian degradation, created a
light manufacturing base from playing cards and car parts. They are now a model of efficient,
caring local government.
The Ak-Chin in Arizona have turned their tiny reservation into successful agribusiness,
producing high-quality cotton for designer shirts. The tribe provides cradle-to-grave health care.
Thewww.park-koerner.de
Confederated Tribes of Warm
Springs
are the largest employerCopyright
in central
Oregon, with
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lumber and hydro-electric operations and a four-star resort. The White Mountain Apaches in
New Mexico own the largest ski resort in the South West (and a plant which assembles the
Apache helicopter). The Mescalero Apaches in New Mexico own cattle ranches, a ski resort and
luxury mountain hotel.
These success stories (still the exception) have been studied by Robert H White in a recent
book, Tribal Assets: The Rebirth of Native America. Like Robert Grey Eagle, White dismisses
the idea that economic development endangers Indian cultural survival. The opposite is true, he
says.www.park-koerner.de
It is whites who are imprisoned
by the
Hollywood view of Indians
in eagle-feather
bonnets
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and beads: Indian culture is deeper, just as the English culture is more than thatched cottages
(which doesn't mean you burn the cottages or throw away the beads). There can be something
intrinsically Indian about an Apache ski-instructor, just as a Japanese car worker is still Japanese.
The great might-have-been - the evolution of Indian culture, untouched by the white world - is
as impossible to imagine as the undisturbed development of societies in Africa (or, for that
matter, Japan). What we think of as the classic Indian period was rather brief - in the case of the
plains Indians, 200 years at most - and highly influenced by European conquest. There were no
horses
before the Spanish came, and
the plains
Indians were mainly poor
gatherers.
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"All societies grow," White says. "Some whites seem to believe that Indians must remain
hunter-gatherers or they cease to be Indians, and that they certainly must never wear a tie. In my
experience, this is nonsense. In all the cases I studied, a determination to celebrate and protect
Indian culture was the key to economic success, and economic success was the best protection
for Indian culture from the mainstream."
- END OF PART SEVEN
ANNOTATION:
byword for s.th.: person or thing considered to be a notable or typical example of a quality
QUESTIONS ON PART SEVEN:
1. In which circumstances do you think is labour "demeaning?"
2. Why are the examples of economic success given in the text so impressive?
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3. What
exactly does Robert
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H. Copyright
White want
to say?
a) Economic development?
b) Cultural protection?
4. How were Indians traditionally shown in Hollywood films - explain these stereotypes with
the help of films you have seen.
- CONTINUED Copyright www.park-koerner.de
Beset by factionalism and possessing few natural
resources, the Oglala Lakota have made little progress down
the road to economic sufficiency. The tribe remains 70 per
cent dependent on federal funds.
In a recent referendum, the Oglalas turned down a $100m
project to bring water from the Missouri (where the Lakota
have water rights). The scheme would have supplied water to
white ranchers along the way to the dry table-land of the
reservation. The plan was defeated
because of suspicion of white involvement
and resentment of
the Oglala leaders (since ousted) who promoted it. There is also a vague, and much less
wholesome-sounding plan, to exploit the reservations' deposits of zeolite, a form of fertilizer
which could be strip-mined.
The younger, educated Lakota, like Robert Grey Eagle and Jim Garrett, see the future more in
terms of specialist farming, computer software and telecommunications, educational tourism,
and professional services for the reservation (and beyond). In fairness to the Lakota, it should be
remembered that the Great Plains are a pitiless semi-desert. The agriculture-based economy of
the surrounding white communities is also in dire trouble. So much so that - in an exquisite irony
- a respected land economist called Frank Popper predicts that the only viable future for much of
the Dakotas, and the high plains parts of Montana, Nebraska and Kansas, is as an "American
Serengeti": a natural grassland, in which deer and buffalo roam again.
Popper's theory provokes apoplexy among white plainsmen, and wry smiles among Indians. It
is perhaps significant that the Oglala Lakota, and other tribes, have already started to collect
bison. There are two sizeable herds at Pine Ridge.
In Black Elk Speaks, the great religious leader relates a vision he had when he was nine years
old - in about the year 1872 - from the top of Harney Peak, the highest point in the Black Hills.
In the vision, Black Elk saw a fat buffalo disappearing and being replaced by a strange herb with
"four blossoms on a single stem" - "the herb of understanding."
"... I saw that the Sacred Hoop of my people was one of many Hoops, that made one circle,"
he said, "as wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the centre grew one mighty flowering tree to
shelter all the children of one mother and one father ..." Black Elk understood his vision to mean
that the Sioux would lose the buffalo as the mainstay of their existence and that he, personally,
would be responsible for providing
another means of spiritual and physical
support. He died in
disillusion, the vision unfulfilled. But the book he helped to create disseminated a revival of
Indian religions. This has contributed to the Lakota's new-found confidence.
At this moment, 400 Lakota and friends are riding across South Dakota, following the route
of Chief Big Foot and his band to Wounded Knee. This is the fifth year that they have performed
the ride - and the last. When they arrive at the massacre site, they will perform a Lakota
ceremony called the Wiping of Tears, marking an end to the tribe's 100 years of mourning. Like
all Lakota religious ceremonies, it was banned immediately after the massacre. Performing it
now is intended to symbolise the mending of the Sacred Hoop - a new beginning, but also a
return.
- THE END -
ANNOTATIONS:
strip-mined:
open-cast mining as opposed to mining from underground
passages
dire:
dreadful, terrible
Serengeti:
grassland range in Central Africa
apoplexy:
sudden inability to feel or move, caused by the blockage or rupture
of an
artery www.park-koerner.de
in the brain;  a stroke
Copyright
mainstay:
chief support(er)
disseminated:
spread widely
QUESTIONS ON PART EIGHT:
1. What can be said about the Lakota economic progress?
2. What are the prospects for the future of the Lakotas and the whites in the area?
3. Why did Black Elk die in disillusion?
4. Why do some Lakota perform the commemorative ride?
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT AS A WHOLE:
1. How do Copyright
you know
that this article was writtenCopyright
for British
readers?
www.park-koerner.de
www.park-koerner.de
(Three different items.)
2. Which text type does this article mainly belong to?
3. What can you say about the author's competence?
(Include the author's sources in your answer.)
4. Can you verify the author's opinion from what you know from other
sources (articles
or books)?
5. What kind of paper does "The Independent" seem to be?
6. What is the aim of the text?
COMMENT:
Write about 150 words on one of the following topics.
1. Do you think the US government does enough for the Lakota Indians?
2. "The white men are like locusts when they fly so thick that the whole sky is like a
snowstorm. ..." (Chief Shakopee)
In the text and in this quotation the Indians of the 19th century are depicted as victims and
the whites as killers. Explain why you (do not) agree.

Im Original veränderbare Word

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