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London Telegraph: Dirty deeds in the Black Hills
Friday, April 18, 2008
Filed Under: National


"The drum resonates with a bold, insistent beat. The great man sings, not a melody but something older, discordant, handed down across the ages: a story of a people and their struggle. Above the headband of his war bonnet, the eagle feathers quiver and shake.

I am in South Dakota, in He Sapa Wakan (the Black Hills), the spiritual homeland of the Sioux tribe. Beyond the restaurant chains and shopping malls of Rapid City, the pine-clad peaks keep watch over dusty, rolling plains. The ramblers and rock-climbers may not know it, but they are treading on hallowed ground.

“Sioux” is a white man’s term, the mangled last syllable of Nadoweisiweg — a tribal nickname — seized upon by some cloth-eared settler. Wilmer Mesteth, a spiritual leader from the Pine Ridge Reservation, and his kin belong, more accurately, to the Lakota Nation. His song recalls a victorious interlude in the doomed defence of tribal lands and “life ways”: the routing of Custer’s 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

It is rare for outsiders to hear such music but I am here with the acclaimed indigenous author and guide Serle Chapman, whose work has been recognised by, among others, Bill Clinton and Nelson Mandela."

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Native America: dark deeds in the Black Hills (The Telegraph 4/18)

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