James Giago Davies
Something moves in a mysterious way
Honoring your inner Lakota
By James Giago Davies Many of you were not raised Lakota, and do not consider yourself Lakota, especially if you are an iyeska (mixed blood) who looks Wasicu. But there are two types of identity, the one we consciously construct, and the one hidden inside, hidden but alive and kicking, and deeply influencing our perception of self and others. Sometimes you don’t have the option of choosing your conscious identity; society can decide that for you. My surname is Davies, which is Welsh, because my dad was Wasicu, but there wasn’t one person when I was a boy in Rapid City who said, “Look! There goes that little Welsh boy!” I was too brown to be confused for a Welsh boy, but I never self identified as a iyeska. Wasicu wouldn’t let me, because to them, I was just an Indian, in for a penny, in for a pound. What they didn’t understand was that internally, the Wasicu part of me would not be denied, and it created aspects of me that Lakota felt awkward around. What I didn’t understand was the Lakota part of me would also not be denied, and it created aspects of me that Wasicu felt awkward around. My mother never intended to teach me any Lakota mannerisms or behaviors. But they were alive and kicking in her, and so by the time I got to school I didn’t look an adult authority figure in the eye, I nodded my head up instead of down when I greeted people, I hated eating alone, and I had to joke about everything, especially if a moment was overly tense or serious. Lakota people do this because it served great utility back in the tiospaye, kept people calm and cooperative in crises situations. Wasicu people see such humor as rueful, gallows humor, but more than any other identifying aspect, humor defines the Lakota people. That humor softens ugly realities, gives people strength to face the worst life has to offer, maintains the humanity they will need when to raise children and become ikce wicasa. My mother once saw a man walk into Pine Ridge Hospital, with an axe in his head, and when he would laugh, the wound would spurt blood. But he was still standing, still laughing. My brother picked up an older man who had walked fifty miles cross country, from Hermosa to Pine Ridge, in a snow storm. Had he not picked him up, he might not have made it. And he joked with us all the way into Pine Ridge village. An old Lakota man, Stephen Yellow Hair, talked about the Bataan Death March he had been on, and Wasicu tell horror stories of Japanese atrocities, but Stephen joked it was no worse than growing up on the rez. The Japanese could sense there was something fundamentally different about this soldier, and unable to process what it might be, Stephen said, “they pretty much left me alone.” It wasn’t just his brown skin, Hispanic soldiers and Filipino soldiers were brown, but the Japanese definitely did not leave them alone. For many years I tried to repress the Lakota part of me that kept trying to crash the party and get me in trouble with Wasicu. But I always failed. Every time I ate alone at a restaurant as a reporter (and it was on the newspaper’s nickel so I chose the best restaurant) I could not enjoy my food. I always ended up leaving with a doggy bag. I have never even taken in a movie by myself. Just can’t enjoy it. When applying for a job, you have to look the person in the eye, and I couldn’t do that comfortably until I was past thirty. I figure I lost a dozen jobs before then. Even had I looked Wasicu they would have just considered me evasive. Still, my struggle is only half as bad as it would be were I full-blood. Wasicu think they are complimenting you when they say, “But you don’t even look Indian!” I was told that many times when I worked at Target, but then when something went missing, I was the first one they suspected—suddenly I looked 100% Lakota buck. But there are rewards for that Lakota programming, and they may not be material rewards, status rewards, but they shape your character, and make you a better person. I was on a tour of Wind Cave with the Hot Spring Chamber of Commerce and their guests. We were the last tour, but at the last second a tourist couple showed up and we were gracious enough to allow them on our tour. One of them was very loud and annoying, and she was as round as a bowling ball, and her heavy breathing and bellyaching about all the stairs and the endless walking grated on people. I was as sick of her as the rest of the group by the time we reached a large resting area with benches. People grabbed a spot, and it took several more minutes before the heavyset lady got there, propped up by her skinny friend, and she stood there sweating profusely, gasping for breath, and all those Chamber people looked at her and just sat. They were wearing suits and ties, represented commerce and propriety, and they just sat and pretended she wasn’t there. I am as selfish and ordinary as the next person. I don’t claim to have a higher moral standard than any of them, but something prompted me to get up, something prompted me to graciously turn over my bench space to that unpleasant woman, because I looked into her eyes and all I saw was our shared humanity. But it wasn’t James Giago Davies that acted the gentleman, it was that sad, beaten down little Lakota man in me, that stepped up and crashed the Wasicu party in a good way, it was the part of me I had spent a lifetime suppressing, a part I wasn’t even sure still lived inside of me. But he is not really me, he is the timeless expression of everything kind and accepting in Lakota people. He was the one that gave the lady that seat. Like all the suit and ties around him, James Giago Davies would have just sat there and let that woman suffer. (James Giago Davies can be reached at skindiesel@msn.com) Copyright permission Native Sun News
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