An Essay of (K)Nots and Footnotes

That our Tribal homelands have diminished over time since the original designations in our treaties with the U.S. government is (k)not in question. A cursory look at the 1868 Treaty of Ft. Laramie is evidence of this, with demarcation of tribal territory covering most of the present-day state of South Dakota; vast territory that has since been whittled into significantly smaller reservations, displacing and scattering the Očeti Šakowin bands who signed this treaty across South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska.¹ As I cannot help but write from a Lakota perspective, my view is (k)not toward land as fee simple property and its monetary value, rather I am more concerned with the people of the land. Oddly enough, this concern boils down to language—as this is at the heart of creating relationship (kinship, allies, enemies, agreements, responsibilities, and memory). Thus, I am interested in the language of the treaty and its present-day power; the language and understanding of our people and tribal leaders; the knots and the gaps between.

1. I was recently in an airport when I called my father, Daniel Long Soldier, on a layover in Dallas to pass the time. We were “shooting the breeze” when he began telling me a story from his childhood. One day, when he was five years old, my father said, he was walking around the creek with his cousin Bunny, down the hill from our village, Potato Creek, in South Dakota. My dad and Bunny caught a turtle. There was an elder, a grandpa, who spotted them walking around and offered them two pops and two candy bars for their turtle. They thought this was a good offer, so they accepted the trade. When my dad went home, his mother (my Grandma Mabel) asked him where he’d been. He told her about the old man and the turtle. Then, my grandma gave my father a bowl and told him to go back down the hill and ask this grandpa for some of his turtle soup. So my father took the wateča bowl back down the hill. The grandpa gave him a serving of turtle soup and my father sat with him and ate. This is where the Potato Creek Powwow Grounds are presently located; at that time, there was a log cabin and tipi there. This old man, my dad said, was named Iron Hail—a Mniconjous Lakota elder who, through warfare, displacement, and relocation, resided on Pine Ridge Reservation amongst our band, the Oglala Lakota. By that time, he went by the name Dewey Beard. He was a “warrior-and-a-half,” my dad called him, because he had fought in the Battle of Greasy Grass (Battle of Little Big Horn) and had also survived the Wounded Knee Massacre. My dad suddenly remembered that it wasn’t two candy bars, rather it was two packs of peanuts that Iron Hail traded with them. But my father couldn’t remember if he ever took a bowl of soup to his mother. He laughed, admitting this. At that time, my dad said, Lakota people ate a wide variety of foods, including turtle, porcupine, prairie dog, as well as buffalo and game. As he clarified details and retraced his memory, I could hear my father’s efforts to retell the story correctly. From this story, my interest in Iron Hail’s life began.

The troubling issue that the U.S. government holds self-appointed power through its three branches—executive, congressional, and judicial—to continually abrogate, legislate, enact policies, and judicially rule upon the terms of its treaties with tribal nations is (k)not news to Native people. It’s the trap we’re born into. We are acutely alert and, all the while, acclimated to colonizing methods of control. For example, the outright U.S. theft of the Black Hills² following the signing of the 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty³; the subsequent Black Hills Act in 1877⁴ legalizing this theft; and the return to this issue in the Supreme Court⁵ in the 1980s is (k)not a subject of specialized study to Northern Native people.

It is, literally, family history for the ikče wičaša. After all, the Black Hills is the spiritual center and place of origin in our Creation Stories, inseparable from identity, and the wound of its theft is deeply personal for Očeti Šakowin people.⁶

2. Just six years after the signing of the 1868 Treaty of Ft. Laramie, the discovery of gold in the Black Hills in 1874 prompted American gold miners, settlers, and military to invade Očeti Šakowin territory. Forceful, violent tactics were employed by the U.S. government to seize the land through deprivation of Lakota people and militarized warfare. Like it or (k)not. Legal or (k)not.

The most famous battle of this period is the Battle of Greasy Grass, a.k.a. the Battle of Little Bighorn, in 1876, in which Iron Hail, still a teenager (his age varies depending on the account), rode and fought.

In Song of Dewey Beard, Philip Burnham documents Iron Hail’s account of that day, June 25, 1876, when General George Armstrong’s troops were defeated:

Iron Hail shares details of his fellow warriors’ feats of bravery; notes a moment when a cavalry soldier pointed a gun straight at him, and in return, he hit the soldier on the head with his bow. He also attests to Crazy Horse’s “magic,” as “no bullet touched him” in battle. By late afternoon, Iron Hail said, “the field was littered with hundreds of bodies.”

See Philip Burnham, Song of Dewey Beard: Last Survivor of the Little Bighorn (Lincoln: Bison Books, 2014), 31–43.

3. Second Treaty of Fort Laramie, Article II, signed May 7, 1868.

4. Act of February 28, 1877, 19 Stat. 254.

5. United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, 448 U.S. 371, 100 S. Ct. 2716, 65 L. Ed. 2d 844 (1980).

6. Although Lakota people defeated the U.S. Cavalry in the 1876 Battle of Greasy Grass, this victory was also the death knell for our treaty rights to the Black Hills. With this victory, we experienced, firsthand, Newton’s Third Law of Motion: for every action (force) in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction. In simple terms, the U.S. government reacted to their defeat with legal retribution.

In February 1877, the U.S. Congress passed the 1877 Black Hills Act, “officially” ceding the Black Hills to U.S. control. Any grief over the loss of this sacred land was certainly subsumed by the Lakota people’s life-and-death imperative to outrun the U.S. cavalry, who sought to avenge the death of General Custer.

That year, in late 1877, Iron Hail’s family crossed the “medicine line” into Canada, near Saskatchewan, to join Sitting Bull’s camp. They were among the last Lakota people to resist relocation onto reservations. They took asylum in Canada for three years, facing starvation and harsh conditions. According to Philip Burnham, one winter it was so cold, the Holy Man, Black Elk, said that “a group of whimpering porcupines huddled in his camp to keep warm.”

But eventually, in 1880, Iron Hail’s family, the Horn Clouds, returned to the U.S. and moved to the Standing Rock Agency in North Dakota, home of the Hunkpapa. Then, shortly after, they relocated to Cheyenne River Agency, where they built a ranch with a log cabin and tipi. They experienced, I imagine, some measure of peace.

In 1888, however, their peaceful family life ended. Government agents stepped onto Lakota territory, again, with an “offer” (i.e., threats, coercion, and bribery) to purchase more land, which would reduce Lakota reservations even further. By this time, the previous unity of Lakota leaders was weakened through repeated relocation and trauma; the wounds, with no exaggeration, were both physically and mentally piercing. Fierce disagreement among the Očeti Šakowin erupted over signing the agreement. Yet, one year later, in 1889, the Mniconjous, Sans Arcs, Two Kettles, and the Blackfeet signed the document to sell their treaty land. This is known as the 1889 Sioux Agreement. Iron Hail and the Horn Cloud family refused, however.

After this “agreement,” life-altering events occurred in 1890. Wovoka, a Paiute spiritual leader, brought the Ghost Dance to the Očeti Šakowin. Though it was a spiritual movement rather than a military operation, Wovoka’s teachings set off panic in the U.S. government, and by November, the U.S. military had encircled Lakota land from the Black Hills to Fort Yates to Pine Ridge with army camps. There is no doubt in my mind that during those days, that year, there was no feeling of peace for Lakota people—no stretching outward of the arms at dawn with a breath of serene gratitude. Every current in the air was raw and tense. Something was ahead. Then, one month later, in December, Sitting Bull was arrested and assassinated in Standing Rock.

The day after Sitting Bull’s death, Iron Hail rode with a group of ten men to bring the devastated survivors of Sitting Bull’s band to safety—but they were turned away by Mniconjous leader, Hump. When Iron Hail returned to Cheyenne River, the U.S. cavalry was just upriver, dangerously close to their tiospaye.

Under Big Foot’s leadership, they fled in the middle of the night on December 23rd. Remember, this was winter in the Northern Plains. They headed south into the Badlands, where the “Minneconjou men used axes and spades to hack out a path for the wagons,” and “Big Foot had his men slaughter some of the yearling colts to feed his band.” They reached American Horse Creek on Pine Ridge Reservation by December 27th.

The next day, December 28th, Big Foot’s band spotted U.S. soldiers along the base of Porcupine Butte. Iron Hail and several other men rode up to the army troop to show good intent, since they were innocent of any wrongdoing. Iron Hail dismounted his horse and held out his hand. Philip Burnham writes:

For this account, see Burnham, chapter “Wounded Knee” in Song of Dewey Beard.

So, it follows that much has been written by Native legal scholars and academics about this injustice. In his essay, “Rescuing Paha Sapa,”⁷ University of New Mexico professor of law and Indian Law Program director, John LaVelle, addresses the 1980 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Sioux Nation by stating in plain terms that, “because it authorized compensation strictly in the form of money rather than the return of Paha Sapa, the Sioux Nation decision failed to deliver justice to the Great Sioux Nation.” That this crushing governmental and judicial power is a deliberate, strategic system built to “legally” legitimize fraudulent land-taking and domination over tribal nations is (k)not a surprise. It is infuriating, yes. Yet, it is the formulaic, tried-and-true way of the colonizer, globally.

I’d like to mention another (k)not in the “justice” system: the issue of a treaty itself. That is to say, what a treaty is: a contract between two sovereign nations. This is (k)not a matter of debate, as the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed this understanding of “Indian” treaties numerous times. We may look at the Washington v. Washington State Commercial Passenger Fishing Vessel Association⁸ as just one example, in which Justice Stevens’s Court opinion states, “A treaty, including one between the United States and an Indian tribe, is essentially a contract between two sovereign nations.” Here, Justice Stevens cites Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock⁹ for this definition. It is unfortunate, however, that Lone Wolf set another precedent, devastating to Native people’s means to challenge Congressional legislation inside the court system.

In Lone Wolf, Justice White, indeed, affirms an Indian treaty as a contract between two sovereign nations, but goes on to add, “But, as with treaties made with foreign nations … the legislative power might pass laws in conflict with treaties made with the Indians.” Justice White continues with, “The power exists to abrogate the provisions of an Indian treaty…. When, therefore, treaties were entered into between the United States and a tribe of Indians it was never doubted that the power to abrogate existed in Congress.” Tripling-down on Congress’s power to abrogate—in simple terms, to end an agreement—without interference from the concerned Tribal Nation or the Supreme Court, he adds, “Indians who had not been fully emancipated from the control and protection¹⁰ of the United States are subject, at least so far as the tribal lands were concerned, to be controlled by direct legislation of Congress.”

7. John LaVelle, “Rescuing Paha Sapa: Achieving Environmental Justice by Restoring the Great Grasslands and Returning the Sacred Black Hills to the Great Sioux Nation,” Great Plains Natural Resources Journal 5 (Spring 2001): 40.

8. Washington v. Washington State Commercial Passenger Fishing Vessel Association, 443 U.S. 658, 99 S. Ct. 3055, 61 L. Ed. 2d 823, modified sub nom. Washington v. United States, 444 U.S. 816, 100 S. Ct. 34, 62 L. Ed. 2d 24 (1979).

9. Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187 U.S. 553, 23 S. Ct. 216, 47 L. Ed. 299 (1903).

10. I am curious about the Supreme Court’s reference to Indians who had not been emancipated from the “protection” of the United States. How does the Court define this term? Because here, I am compelled to mention the Wounded Knee Massacre, the blazing antithesis of protection.

After Iron Hail counted coup on the U.S. military by putting his hand down a Hotchkiss cannon, the next morning, on December 29th, 1990, an unspeakable tragedy happened that would change Iron Hail’s life forever. It goes without saying, this event changed the lives of all our people. Along with 250–300 Lakota relatives, Iron Hail’s wife, Wears Eagle / his mother, Nest / his father, Horn Cloud / and his brothers, William and Sherman, were murdered in the massacre.

I cannot imagine surviving that kind of personal loss, as Iron Hail did in the following days, months, years. But I don’t have to imagine what surviving that kind of loss is like for our community here and now.

Wounded Knee is located on the Pine Ridge Reservation, home of the Oglala. It so happens that the Oglala Sioux Tribe (OST) posts their tribal council meetings on Facebook Live, so that community members or relatives living off-reservation (like me) can listen and watch.

In September 2022, the OST Tribal Council held a “Wounded Knee Survivor Descendent” meeting. Many issues were discussed concerning the newly purchased Wounded Knee burial ground. Out of respect, I won’t share much, except to note that one speaker from Cheyenne River began his remarks by saying, “We’re still sad. We still have hurt feelings over what took place.”

Then he turned to the subject of purchasing the property of Wounded Knee, which until early September 2022 had been owned by a White resident of Rapid City, South Dakota, named Jeanette Czywczynski. She became the owner when her husband, James Czywczynski, passed away in 2019.

Over fifty years ago, the Czywczynskis ran a trading post at Wounded Knee until the 1973 Wounded Knee Takeover, when the American Indian Movement occupied the town. During the occupation, they fled the property and never returned to live on Pine Ridge again. Jeanette Czywczynski was recently paid $500,000 by two Lakota bands for title to the land, totaling forty acres. Title will be held by the Oglala Sioux Tribe. The speaker from Cheyenne River went on to say:

This meeting is posted on Facebook for public viewing: Oglala Sioux Tribe – OST, Wounded Knee Survivor Descendent Meeting 9/24/22, Facebook, September 24, 2022, https://www.facebook.com/THEOGLALANATION/videos/.

But the slippery, shifting definition of “treaty” and the collusion between the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress, especially with regard to Indian land, is (k)not a shock. Certainly (k)not to Native scholars. Historian and University of Minnesota Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies, Nick Estes, writes in Our History Is the Future:

I am desperate, like so many, for a solution. Sometimes, we may understand a thing by what it’s (k)not, so I continually wonder how justice for Očeti Šakowin can be found, if it has (k)not been established through scholarly writing, advocacy, resistance, and court battles over these issues already. Hemmed in on all sides by a wall of self-appointed American legislative and judicial power, (k)notted into a net of slippery legalese, interpretations, and procedure, I’m often asking: where’s the opening, the crack in the wall, the hope¹² for our tribal nations to retain and/or reclaim our land, as agreed upon by treaty?

11. Nick Estes, “War,” in Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance (London: Verso, 2019), 107–8.

12. I would like to mention a source of hope that is not dependent upon the U.S. government’s integrity; the honoring or dishonoring of its agreements with the Očeti Šakowin. Our hope resides within the collective memory of who we are, despite relocation and the fragmentation of our families and tribes; despite genocidal tactics of boarding schools, criminalization of our spiritual and ceremonial practices, and forceful suppression of our languages. The Očeti Šakowin remain people with a strong culture, kinship, and relationship to the land we come from. This collective memory is far-reaching—shared amongst our many tribes and bands across the Midwest and Northern Plains into Canada—and it echoes through thousands of years of cultivation. This, then, is the undying source of hope because it ensures a continual, ever-present, and rightful knowledge of our place and origin.

For example, following the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890, Iron Hail was given an allotment on the Pine Ridge Reservation, along with many other survivors. He was Mniconjous Lakota from the Cheyenne River area, but he was documented in U.S. census records as Oglala because of his residence on Oglala land. The inaccuracy of government records is inconsequential because Iron Hail knew, his family knew, the Oglala community knew, and everyone there still knows who he was—whether or (k)not the U.S. government documented his lineage correctly. This is how my family, the Long Soldiers, got to know him, during his years on Pine Ridge. He had a limp when my father met him. And everyone knew very well why he limped—the wounds he carried—whether or (k)not government records reflected that either.

And as the Očeti Šakowin collectively remember the tribes, tiospaye, and specific regions that we come from, we also remember what unites us. Albert White Hat, who was an esteemed Lakota language teacher at Sinte Gleska University and has since passed on, once said, “Every culture has a way of life. Every culture has a spiritual life that they should be responsible for…. Now it’s coming—that responsibility is coming.” To enact this responsibility to our way of life, we cannot overlook “the heart of everything that is”: He Sapa or the Black Hills. If for no other reason than this, we hold tenaciously to the “solemn covenant with the land” that Congress recognized in its 2009 National Apology to Native Americans. I assert an understanding of this covenant as extending beyond a spiritual contract alone. In present day, it includes our treaty, which solemnly secures our place in this world. In this place, and nowhere else, the tree of our culture thrives.

To hear Albert White Hat’s explanation of the Black Hills and Lakota Creation Story, see “Relatives – Albert White Hat Sr.,” Sinte Gleska University, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhT1ALhkrgs.

To read the full text of the 2009 Congressional Resolution of Apology to Native Peoples of the United States, see S.J. Res. 14, 111th Congress (2009), https://www.congress.gov/111/bills/sjres14/BILLS-111sjres14is.pdf.

Are our treaties still living, vital documents? The answer is yes, our treaties are relevant, binding agreements. Despite subsequent legislation and Court rulings, these contracts are the foundational documents to which both federal and tribal governments turn, again and again—both in the past and in the most recent Supreme Court cases. In American Indian Tribal Governments, Sharon O’Brien writes:

13. On the note of dominance, we might remember that the U.S. government has granted itself the additional power to seize possession of tribal lands, in events such as World War II, under the 10 U.S. Code § 2663 – Land Acquisition Authorities. In 1942, the U.S. War Department took possession of 341,726 acres on Pine Ridge Reservation for a U.S. Airforce gunnery and bombing range. This included 337 acres of the Badlands National Monument and, devastatingly, the allotments and homes of approximately 125 Lakota families who were forced to relocate. I mention this because among them was Iron Hail’s family. The U.S. government offered Iron Hail and his wife, Alice, monetary compensation for loss of their property. However, the money was paid in installments which ended up being too meager for Iron Hail to purchase property anywhere else.

Thirteen years later, on September 12, 1955—the same year that Iron Hail passed away—members of a subcommittee of the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs gathered in the Legion Hall on Pine Ridge. In Song of Dewey Beard, Burnham writes about this meeting. At ninety-six years old, Iron Hail stood up and said, “I would like to say something.”

14. Sharon O’Brien, “The Future,” in American Indian Tribal Governments (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 293; italics added.

In O’Brien’s text, I am most interested in the verbs, “defining,” followed by, “restore.”

Because as a poet, I continually return to the foundations of language; the multiplicity in definitions—denotation, connotation, etymology, interpretation, and translation; how a word can turn an ordinary line into an extraordinary marvel. It can be restorative and life-changing to read (or hear) a phrase that says a thing in a way we had not understood before, which can often hinge on just one word.

Here, I wish to share two anecdotes that altered my understanding of law and language. It so happens that I enrolled in law school during fall semester, 2022. I could not continue my law studies beyond one semester because I am a working artist/poet, caretaker of an elder, a single mother, and an educator. It was impossible to “do it all,” so I chose to continue my path as a writer and artist. Nonetheless, I gained valuable tools and knowledge during that semester. Namely, during my first week in a U.S. Law course, the professor began his lecture by saying, “Law is language.” I thought, Yes! I knew this. That’s why I’m here. Then, he went on to say, “And it’s the Court’s role to interpret this language.” This, too, was interesting—though I do not wholly agree. As O’Brien wrote, “court decisions that limit tribal sovereignty must be questioned.” The people, our people, have a role in interpretation as well. We are capable of reading and examining particulars. We are capable of unraveling meaning. It’s within our means to create conversation and movement. And we have the power to insist.

Though it may seem that a Congressional act or a Supreme Court ruling brings finality to a matter, this idea is an illusion. Because, here, I think of a dear friend, Amber Morning Star Byars, who earned her law degree and was studying for the bar exam just as I was beginning law studies in 2022. We had coffee. We discussed tribal rights, treaties, recent Supreme Court rulings, and the trap we’re in. These kinds of conversations can feel overwhelming. We shook our heads and glanced around, as we sat amid a swarm of bustling café patrons—hip, coffee-slurping Americans. She said to me, “You know, one of my mentors told me, ‘There is no law. There is only argument.’” In that moment, everything opened.

So, as I consider the language of law (which is law itself) and its creative force for restoring tribal sovereignty, upholding treaty agreements and our rights, I think about it in two ways: First, through our Native languages and what our leaders understood upon signing our treaties. Second, through the documentation of those agreements, which were written solely in English.

When I listen to scholarly conversations about U.S. treaties with tribal nations, I rarely hear mention of an exact accounting of what our tribal leaders themselves understood as they signed. Because what’s missing, we know, are corresponding written translations of these treaties in our Native languages—tangible evidence of the terms our leaders understood and agreed to. Perhaps this would have made an untangling of (k)nots easier.

An incredible example of this untangling occurred for the Māori in New Zealand, who have used the written Māori translation of their treaty with the British Crown as evidence in court to restore fundamental rights. In their case, the difference in understanding occurred—like a poem—through the translation of a single word in their treaty: sovereignty. The New Zealand Ministry of Justice outlines this on their website:¹⁵

One could argue that most Native languages in the U.S., until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, were oral languages with no formal orthographies. It could be reasoned, then, this is why written and signed translations of our treaties do (k)not exist. The same could be said, however, of te reo (Māori language). Until Christian missionaries began documenting and writing te reo, “Māori had no written language, but the symbolic meanings embodied in carving, knots and weaving were widely understood.”¹⁶ Yet, by 1840, a written orthography of te reo was sufficiently developed to draft a Māori translation of their treaty, which was subsequently signed by over five hundred Māori leaders.¹⁷

15. For text of the Treaty of Waitangi, visit “Section 3: The signing of the Treaty of Waitangi,” Waitangi Tribunal Te Rōpū Whakamana i te Tiriti o Waitangi, New Zealand Ministry of Justice, updated September 19, 2016, https://waitangitribunal.govt.nz/publications-and-resources/school-resources/treaty-past-and-present/section-3; to view images and documents/signatures visit “The Treaty of Waitangi,” Archives New Zealand, updated September 25, 2023, https://www.archives.govt.nz/discover-our-stories/the-treaty-of-waitangi.

16. “History of the Māori language,” New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage, updated September 12, 2023, https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/maori-language-week/history-of-the-maori-language.

17. I wish to describe a few signatures of the Māori leaders who signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi / The Treaty of Waitangi. They are not X marks, as seen in U.S. treaties with Native nations. Many of their signatures are visual depictions, symbols, or imagery. I see a signature that looks much like a horizontal shell, with a spiral in the center, swirling to the edges of an eye-shaped border. There’s another that looks like the rising crest of an ocean wave. Another with four floating tines or membranes, swaying left and loosely outward. And another with a bold, symmetrical circle inside another soft, oblong circle. Looking at these marks, I’m filled with a sense of movement. Life. Connection to place, water, and land of origin. And I cannot help but feel, in the gesture of using ink and pen in their own way, their undeniable Māori power.

So as we trace the history of the languages of the Očeti Šakowin (Lakota/Nakota/Dakota dialects) we must remember that a Dakota-English dictionary¹⁸ was published in 1852—sixteen years prior to the signing of the 1868 Treaty of Ft. Laramie.

A quick glance at the original treaty in an online archive¹⁹ reveals the penned signatures of the 135 Northern Tribal Leaders, representing the Očeti Šakowin (Brule, Oglala, Mniconjous, Yanktonai, Hunkpapa, Blackfeet, Cuthead, Two Kettle, Sans Arcs, and Santee) and the Arapaho. All of their signatures are X marks. Though it may seem obvious, it’s helpful to pause and thoughtfully ask, what do Xs mean when they are used as signatures? The crossing of these two hand-inked lines communicates: 1) signatory’s presence and simultaneous agreement; 2) illiteracy in the English language.

While an interpreter was present to convey the terms of our treaty orally, we cannot at this late date double back in time to determine the accuracy of the verbal translation. Yet, because the names of the leaders are transliterated on each line, just left of their X marks, and translated directly right of each X mark,²⁰ it’s clear that a written translation of the entire contract would have been possible.

18. Stephen Return Riggs, Grammar and Dictionary of the Dakota Language (Washington City: Smithsonian Inst, 1852), https://archive.org/details/grammardictionar00riggrich/page/n3/mode/2up.

19. “1868 Sioux Treaty,” National Archives Catalog, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, accessed December 12, 2022, https://catalog.archives.gov/id/299803.

20. I include this photo from online archives for visual reference because it’s important to not only know about our leaders’ X marks, but to see them. When my eyes scan the long, vertical line of Xs, I respond physically. I feel it in my mouth. My lips turn downward in anger or, perhaps, repulsion at what little time it takes to cross two black lines in ink, yet what long-lasting marks they leave on our people. And with the swirl and flair of 1800s penmanship, we see with our own eyes the transliterations and translations of our leaders’ names on the same lines. Done then and there, at the time of signing. My mind becomes an exclamation point (!) as I consider how accessible and doable this task of writing our language was for the translators—a measure the U.S. government refused to perform for the rest of the treaty. Yet, it’s strange that, visually, I respond most to the penmanship. It is a symbol of the era. That era in America. That era for the Očeti Šakowin nations. Without a doubt, I feel it burn in my chest.

I do not take this lightly. I regard this deliberate non-existence of a written translation as intent.

Nonetheless, a verifiable, written and signed translation of our treaty into Lakota language simply does (k)not exist. This cannot be undone. Yet, instinct tells me that an opening for possibility still lies in language, in the multitudes of definitions and interpretations—which must include our Native languages and understandings. As O’Brien suggested, tribes must be active in defining our relationship to the U.S. government.

There is, in Lakota philosophy, a symbol called kapemni,²¹ which translates to something like “twist” or “twirl.” Visually, two triangles meet at the tips. They represent 3D cones, moving in space as twirling vortices. But kapemni is often spoken of as “mirroring,” and understood to mean “As above, so below.” This philosophy has many interpretations and iterations. In a very literal sense, what we see in the sky/stars is physically mirrored on the land. For example, modern satellite photos of sacred sites in the Black Hills align with Lakota constellations on our star maps.²² These sacred sites forever dot our land as living stars.

So I propose that we may, as Očeti Šakowin, remember this philosophy of kapemni—the mirroring in all things—as a source of strength; a philosophy older than ourselves or even our grandfathers who signed our treaties. In this, we can be certain that where there is an understanding of a term in English, there exists an equally powerful understanding in Lakota.

21.

22. To view photos of the Black Hills and corresponding Lakota constellations, see Ronald Goodman, Lakota Star Knowledge: Studies in Lakota Stellar Theology (Rosebud Reservation, SD: Sinte Gleska University, 1992).

Each word is a spinning vortex of meaning—context and story; denotation; connotation; common and formal usage; cultural, political, social, and legal application. We might visualize kapemni when we think of our treaty, mindful that it is an agreement between two nations. And like the two triangles, the nations are equals. So it is our right and our duty to relentlessly and courageously assert our definitions, interpretations, and understanding of legally binding language.

I think of the 1823 Supreme Court ruling in Johnson v McIntosh,²³ which essentially held that, “A title to lands under grants to private individuals made by Indian tribes or nations northwest of the River Ohio in 1773 and 1775 cannot be recognized in the Courts of the United States.” For Indigenous nations, this ruling set a dangerous precedent because of its application of the right of conquest,²⁴ as explained in Court opinion:

23. Johnson & Graham’s Lessee v McIntosh, 21 U.S. 543, 5 L. Ed. 681(1823).

24. According to Burnham, by 1955, the year of Iron Hail’s death, when he spoke of the Battle of Greasy Grass (Little Big Horn) and its survivors, he would say, “I’m the only one left alive.”

“But it was, in the original Lakota language, more an admission than a boast, a humble recognition of fate instead of fact swelled with pride,” Burnham explains.

Iron Hail concluded that “none of it had to happen at all.” Because “if the soldiers hadn’t attacked the camp, his people wouldn’t have bothered them,” Burnham notes. But the troops were after Black Hills’ gold, not the village. The stakes were high. “They got the Hills anyway,” Iron Hail says. “So what’s the difference?” (Song of Dewey Beard, 31–43.)

So, what’s the difference? is a question I understand as rhetorical, rather than an admission of irreversible defeat. To live as a Lakota person in this country, in the present day, I must consider it rhetorical—a question that prods us, Očeti Šakowin people, to ask ourselves. Because sometimes, there are questions that cannot be answered within one lifetime. We may carry the questions of our grandmothers and grandfathers, like Iron Hail—especially when those questions concern generations of our people—and the matter is not put to rest until we can collectively answer with dignity. That kind of answer is (k)not spoken with words. It is lived, fought for, and demonstrated through action.

Thus, I consider an alternate understanding of conquest and defeat from a Lakota perspective. Lakota historian and founding board member of Sinte Gleska University Joseph M. Marshall III writes in his book The Lakota Way:

Joseph M. Marshall III, The Lakota Way: Stories and Lessons for Living (New York: Penguin Books, 2002).

25. A few summers ago, my child and I were visiting family on Pine Ridge. We were staying in a guest trailer on my aunt’s land. It was hot outside and we sat at the kitchen table with the air conditioner full blast. We heard a ruckus outside. First, we heard the boom of our uncle’s voice, yelling. Angry. Then, our auntie’s voice. Forceful, loud. Then, another voice—a man’s voice that we didn’t recognize. We didn’t want to seem nosey, yet we knew something was wrong. I jumped up and said to my kid, let’s open the back door and see what’s going on. We saw a white pickup truck in my aunt’s driveway. A White man dressed in jeans and a western button-up shirt—the work clothes of a South Dakota rancher—stood outside the driver’s door facing my aunt and uncle, with a handgun strapped to his hip. As the argument escalated, a White woman got out of the passenger side of the truck, packing a gun as well. My heart raced for my auntie. Should I go down there? Should I record this with my cell phone? My child and I looked at each other, hesitating for a moment but reaching for our shoes, ready to run down the grassy hill to support them. But the voices quieted, and I saw my aunt begin to walk up the road with the White man following behind her. The tone had changed. My auntie walked in her tall, unhurried way. They did not exchange words. We closed the back door. My nervous system reeled; I caught my breath. Who were those people? We waited to hear news.

About an hour later, Auntie knocked on the trailer door and came inside to tell us what had happened. She sat on the sofa, rattled, and let out the details: This White cattle rancher leases property next to hers. One of his calves was found dead, mauled and eaten by dogs. He drove his truck next door to Auntie’s house intending to shoot her dog, Mahto, because he was sure that Mahto had done it. The rancher’s sister accompanied him as backup. Auntie said her dog had nothing to do with the attack. Mahto had been indoors. No, he could not shoot and put down her dog. Look across the road, she told him. Look at that house on Lakota land, rented by another White man, with seven or eight dogs in his yard. It takes more than one dog to bring down a calf. She told the White rancher that he should talk to the White neighbor, the one raising a pack of dogs right there in broad daylight. So she led the rancher across the dirt road to introduce them to each other. What would happen next, she could not say.

“But I don’t understand,” she said. “Why can’t these White ranchers lease land over by Gordon or Martin or Rushville, on the other side of the reservation border? The grass is just as green over there. They’d be happy.”

“I know, Auntie!” I said. “I don’t get it.”

“Why do they have to come here to live on our land, when they don’t like us anyway?”

“I don’t know, Auntie.”

“Where can we find peace, as Lakota people, if not here on our own land?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know.”

I withhold my relatives’ names for privacy and safety. Yet, the issue of land deeds and leasing by non-Native people on the reservation is a frequent concern. Drive down nearly any tribal road and you will see a checkboard of non-Native ranchers. I want to help answer my aunt’s questions. It’s a (k)not that would require sifting through by-laws, amendments, or updated policies. But I begin here, with the original 1936 Constitution of the Oglala Sioux Tribe:

In answer to my aunt’s questions, it did not take much research to find the language that activates the bottom line: pay, fee, use.

Citing the Oglala Lakota Constitution may seem like pointing the finger directly at our own tribe. So we must remember the year and era during which the Oglala Constitution was drafted: 1936, during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who implemented the Indian Reorganization Act. Among many disastrous measures in this era was the paternalistic mandate to tribal nations to adopt American structures for their governments and to vote in ready-made, template constitutions.

And so it is, the past is present, as our relatives continue to wonder, where can we live in peace, if not on our own land?

See Constitution of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, Pine Ridge Reservation, Pine Ridge, South Dakota; approved January 15, 1936; italics added.

“Conquest,” as an act of “conquering” means “to take control or possession of foreign land, or a group of people, by force.” In establishing the right of conquest, I assume the Supreme Court interprets U.S. “conquest” over Native nations, primarily, as 1) a permanent condition and 2) achieved through force and/or warfare. Yet, the burning question that I have—which I may not answer in my own lifetime and which, perhaps, my grandchildren will answer—is, what if we refuse to accept that we are “conquered”?²⁶ What happens? What will happen?

26. I have often heard dismissive sentiments aimed at Native people. They go something like, “Why don’t you just get over it?” Or, “I’m sick of America-bashing.” Or, “All of it (colonization, degradation, swindling, brutality) is in the past! What’s done is done. Move on.” But to this, I reply: Perhaps, I could try, as an individual, to forget so that I can keep the peace, live comfortably, or be relieved of personal responsibility. But even if I “move on,” the Očeti Šakowin—entire nations of Lakota, Nakota, and Dakota people—cannot. It is simply not possible to erase an entire nation’s history and memory. We are at this place, this state of affairs, immersed in these present economic, social, and political conditions because of the past. If our people, our nations, cannot forget, then, in truth, I cannot either. If my relatives suffer, I suffer.

This holistic connection between past and present, and the responsibility of individual to community, are exemplified in Iron Hail’s life. I turn to an account in Surviving Wounded Knee: The Lakotas and the Politics of Memory, by historian David W. Grua:

Indeed, if Iron Hail had been killed, he could not have gone on to work for his people, meaning us, here and now. His life, his strength, his loss, and his pain are as remarkable and valiant now, as then. This is how time works. A tapestry of interconnectivity. Pull on a loose thread, and find it woven through to the first (k)not.

In turn, this prompts me to wonder again, if we refuse to accept the definition of ourselves as “conquered,” what happens? It’s okay to further imagine, who, then, will we be tomorrow?

See David W. Grua, Surviving Wounded Knee: The Lakotas and the Politics of Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

It’s clear that the U.S. has maintained domination over Native nations, primarily, through military power and strength in numbers. But we cannot overlook the other, equally significant, means for control: language. I do not foresee a future in which our people would engage with modern U.S. military powers; we are not equipped, nor would this necessarily align with tribal leaders’ visions as they care for and protect our communities. But I am a poet. So I cannot ignore this nagging, persistent feeling that restoration of land rights is at hand; and this will be achieved through skillful turns of the very same language that has been used as manipulative, disempowering, and crippling weaponry against us. This idea is nothing new, especially among Native writers and legal scholars. And I am emboldened by our very old, powerful teachings of kapemni—to hold up the mirror. To say, look, see this language reflected back.

Along these lines, I think about Joseph Marshall III’s historical Lakota view on warfare in The Lakota Way:

Article I of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie begins: “From this day forward all war between the parties to this agreement shall forever cease. The government of the United States desires peace, and its honor is hereby pledged to keep it. The Indians desire peace, and they now pledge their honor to maintain it.”²⁷ But I contend that the conditions for “all war to cease” and to maintain “peace” hinge on the crucial noun “agreement” and the active verb to “keep.” Without these particulars, the statement falls apart. Therefore, as the terms of the agreement have (k)not been upheld, I feel at liberty to return to the timeless tactics of our grandmothers and grandfathers: to “defeat the enemy in his own mind.” From this day forward, I declare this as a war of language.²⁸

27. Second Treaty of Fort Laramie, May 7, 1868, Article I.

28. Following the 1942 seizure of Lakota land by the U.S. War Department for a bombing range, it hurts me to say that Iron Hail, our beloved and honored veteran, spent some of the final years of his life residing in a tent camp in Rapid City, South Dakota. Burnham writes:

Indian Country Today’s article “From Little Big Horn to Wounded Knee: The True Legend of Dewey Beard” reports that Iron Hail passed away in 1955. “Time magazine said Beard was living in a ‘tar paper shack.’ [Marie] Fox Belly, who visited him often, remembers that ‘shack’ fondly. It was one room, spare and simple, with a kitchen on one side and a sleeping area on the other.”

Despite these conditions, Iron Hail lived a full and vibrant life. At ninety-six years old, he “died in his sleep in a cabin on American Horse Creek” on November 2, 1955. Burnham writes:

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the Battle of Greasy Grass, the Allotment Period, and the Wounded Knee Massacre were hallmarks that shaped the great span of Iron Hail’s life. While these events seem distant, the past has (k)not passed. It is as close as a breath. As in, the breath of my father as he told our family the story of meeting Iron Hail as a little boy.

In June 1955, Iron Hail was interviewed in the Hotel Alex Johnson in downtown Rapid City, South Dakota—a recording that is now housed in the Library of Congress. He introduced himself in Lakota, “Wasu Maza emaciyapilo.” Then, he sang a song in Lakota language:

I assure you, Iron Hail, we do.