Anthropology paper

Mathew King, Chief of Lakota Sioux, Pine Ridge Reservation The Peace Pipe “Call me a chief of the Lakota. I’m a speaker for the chiefs. I walk with the Great Spirit, with God. I talk to Him. The Great Spirit, with God. I talk to Him. The Great Spirit guides me in my life. Sometimes He comes to me and tell me what to say. Other times I just speak for myself, for Mathew King. I’ve got Red Cloud’s Peace Pipe. They gave me that when they made me a chief. I wouldn’t accept it in the beginning. He’s a great man. He made all those treaties. He fought when he had to and beat the White Man’s soldiers. Wiped Custer out. He had a lot of powers. But I’d rather solve my problems through peace. I also have Black Bear’s pipe and Noble Red Man’s. The Peace Pipe is our only weapon. It’s our holy power. It’s God’s power. The Pipe mediates between man and God. To receive the Pipe, to receive God’s gift, you’ve got to be pure in your heart, mind, body, and soul. And never forget that after the prayers you’ve got to live that life, a life with God. That’s the hardest part.” How God Made Things Simple “God made everything so simple. Our lives are very simple. We do what we please. The only law we obey is the natural law, God’s law. We abide only by that. We don’t need your church. We have the Black Hills for our church. And we don’t need your Bible. We have the wind and the rain and the stars for our Bible. The world is an open Bible for us. We Indians have studied it for millions and millions of years. We’ve learned that God rules the universe and that everything God made is living. Even the rocks are alive. When we use them in our seat ceremony we talk to them and they back to us.” How to talk to God “When we want wisdom we go up on the hill and talk to God. Four days and four nights, without food and water. Yes, you can talk to God up on a hill by yourself. You can say anything you want. Nobody’s there to listen to you. That’s between you and god. I know. I did it way up on the mountain. The wind was blowing. It was dark. It was cold. And I stood there and I talked to God. Once, while I was up on the mountain, I prayed to God to give us a cure for diabetes. And while I was there, somebody said, “Turn around! So I turned around and there was the most beautiful Indian woman I’d ever seen. She had long black hair and the most wonderful face. She was holding something out to me in her hand. It was those little berries of the cedar, the dark blue berries on cedar trees. She held them out, but before I could reach out my hand she disappeared.” God’s Messenger and Covenant with the Indians I know who she was. She’s the one who brought the sacred Pipe to our people. We call her White Buffalo Calf Woman. God sent her to save the Indian people. That was long ago. At that time we were starving, the children were crying. Our hunters circled far and wide to hunt the buffalo and the wild game, but there was nothing, not even a rabbit, not even a bird. We were being punished for having strayed from God, for not knowing Him. His wrath was on us. But still God loved us. He wanted to give His Indian children the Pipe so we could talk and pray with Him whenever we wanted. So He sent the beautiful White Buffalo Calf Woman to us with the Pipe. She took the bundle with the Pipe on her back and set off to carry it to the Indian people.

But on her way she met two warriors. She set her bundle down and looked at them. They saw how beautiful she was. Man, your can’t resist a woman like that! No man is strong enough to resist a woman. You just can’t do it. Well, the first warrior was so afraid when he saw her that he just fell down, too scared to move. But the other warrior right away had evil thoughts about that woman because she was so pretty. So she called the one with the wicked mind over to her and a cloud engulfed, and when the cloud went away, he just lay there, skin and bones, dead. God don’t want no evil thoughts!” Talking to God, Part 2 “So I knew when I saw here up on the mountain that this was the same woman. But she disappeared before I could take those blue berries from her hand. Later on, when I got diabetes, I forgot about the berries. They sent me to White Man’s doctors. They gave me pills. Every morning I had to take insulin. I spent a lot of time in the hospital. Then I remembered White Buffalo Calf Woman and those little blue cedar berries. I picked some, boiled the, strained the juice, and drank it. It’s so bitter it took the sugar right out of my body. The doctors checked me and were amazed. They said the diabetes was gone. I didn’t have to take insulin anymore. They asked me how I did it, but I didn’t say. God gave us medicine to share with people, but if the White Man gets his hands on it he’ll charge you a great price and will let you die if your don’t have it. God’s medicine is free. God doesn’t charge a fee. We don’t give money to God. We give Him our prayers, our thanks. And sometimes we give Him the only thing that’s really ours: our flesh, our pain. That’s what the Sun Dance is all about – giving God our flesh, our pain, and –never forget—a prayer of thanks.” What Man Gets Everything Wrong About Us “He says we’re warlike when we’re peaceful. He calls us savages, but he’s the savage. See, he calls this headdress. Each feather stands for a good deed and I have thirty-six in mine. It’s not about war; it’s about who we are. When we sing songs he calls them war songs. But they’re not war songs, they’re prayers to God. We have drums, so White Man calls them war drums; but they’re not for war, they’re for talking to God. It’s not about war; it’s about who we are. There’s no such thing as a war drum. He sees how our warriors paint their faces, so he calls it war paint. But it’s not for war, it to make it so God can see our faces clearly if we have to die. So how can we talk to the White Man of peace when he only knows war?”