Martin Brokenleg is a canon at Calvary Cathedral and an associate professor of education at Augustana College in Sioux Falls. S. D. He is a member of the Rosebud Sioux tribe. Artist Michelle Gibbs, who lives in Mexico, crafts her art from fig tree bark, a tradition practiced by Mayan women.
There is a place I can go to recover a deep sense of belonging and being loved. I drive west on the South Dakota grassland following highway 18 on the Rosebud Reservation to the Parmelee turnoff. The dirt road north will take me to the area called Lower Cut Meat, a butchering site in the 1890s. When I come over the prairie rise and look into the valley, I know that members of my family have been buried here for nearly seven generations.
I can see the low hill where a medicine man ancestor lies buried. He said, if he was buried in the ground, he would always watch over the family. My father and uncles tell of the times Eagle Bear came to help them. Other ancestors' bodies were returned to the elements by being placed on scaffolds or in the branches of trees. When the wind blows, it is their dust that blows in my face. This is why the elders teach us that we Lakota will always feel at home only on our ancestral lands. More recent relatives lie in the Episcopal cemetery just south of St. Mark's Church. Their graves are marked with wooden crosses, tombstones, plastic flowers, and cloth prayer flags from our traditional customs.
At many points in my life I felt a need to understand again who I am, where I come from, and to draw strength from my relatives. A visit to the resting place of my family members does that. It brings me in close physical contact with the spirits of my relatives and ancestors.
I am grateful to God who is known to us Lakota Christians in the Hebrew Old Testament but also in the "Old Testament" of our cultural tradition. Thechurch teaches us that God is made known to us in history and through history. For us, Lakota history and tradition are the tools of God's self-revelation to us.
We Lakota are oriented toward family and relatives. Our relatives are the most sacred thing we have. Having relatives provides meaning, motivation, and support in our lives. Our experience shows us that death does not break our kinship bond. We turn to one another for help and support regardless of which side of death our relatives are on. All of our ethics are based on the interdependence and support which relatives always provide for one another. In fact, our experience with the world and everything in it is defined by kinship.
As long as we are good relatives, our relatives will help us. Whether our relatives are persons, animals, orthings of the earth, if we are good relatives, we can count on their help. Whether living or dead, the power of our relatives to help us provides hope and experience. Both the church's liturgical understanding of the communion of saints and our tribal tradition express the vast source of help and support we have from our deceased relatives.
During the Gulf War one of my reservation's communities was sending several Lakota military personnel to the Middle East. At the send-off gathering an elder said that they would be going far away where our people had never gone before. The modem Lakota warriors were told not to be afraid or lonely since the spirits of all our dead warriors would be going with them to help them.
We Lakota are conscious of the presence of our deceased relatives particularly at gatherings for social or religious ceremonies. When the meal is to be eaten, small amounts of food are taken from each serving dish and collected on a single plate or bowl. An elder prays with the food and then takes it to a remote place so the spirits of the dead will be able to join us in the gathering and eat with us. This custom of feeding the dead was thought strange by a visitor who watched a Lakota put food on a grave. The visitor asked the Lakota, "When do you think that dead person is going to come eat that food?" After a pause, the Lakota replied, "When your dead come up and smell the flowers you leave for them."
The ashes of our ancestors
To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground. You wander far from the graves of your ancestors and seemingly without regret. Your religion was written on tables of stone by the iron finger of your God so that you could not forget. The Red Man could never comprehend nor remember it. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors - the dreams of our old men, given them in the solemn hours of night by the Great Spirit; and the , visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of our people.
Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb and wander away beyond the stars. They are soon forgotten and never return. Our dead never forget the beautiful world that gave them being.
When the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the white man, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone.
At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone.
Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead - I say? There is no death. Only a change of worlds.
- Chief Seattle, addressing Governor Isaac Stevens at the signing of the Port Elliott Treaty in 1855
We Lakota have a closeness to our deceased relatives which is personal. That is, we can remember a relative, something the relative said, or the example the dead person set by living or teaching. Any of these can be a source of help when we are in need. It is our custom to call the spirit of a relative to come to help us. For this we use ceremony since it transcends both the spiritual and the physical realms. Ceremonial gatherings provide the presence and communion with our relatives at a profoundly experienced level.
During the holy eucharist, the sharing of holy food on earth also unites us with Jesus and with relatives from other times and places. Church ceremonies such as All Saints', All Souls', as well as feasts of individual holy ones blend together for us. The dynamics of remembering, communing, receiving support, and celebrating all amalgamate in our relationship with our relatives, living or dead.
There is a drum song sung in memory of a deceased singer or dancer. The words are something like, "Whenever the people are together and having a good time, tell them to remember me." In this song, the spirit of the deceased relative or friend, whom we knew and loved, comes to the gathering and gives the occasion real depth and power.
Whether on earth or in death, we Lakota are never alone nor would we want to be alone. The essence of "all my relatives," the most common Lakota ceremonial statement, comes from our life experience. From the moment we draw breath, until we breathe our last, and beyond, we Lakota are surrounded by relatives. Our life experience is such that we know we are obligated to help our relatives and they are obligated to help us. We experience the support and stability that relatives give us no matter what comes along in life. We have a bond with relatives which is not interrupted by death. In fact, our hope for the afterlife is the desire for a state of being always in the presence of relatives. This communion of saints nur tures us in this life and in the life to come. We celebrate this on All Saints' Day as well as on all other days.