Before the World Began

It was a spring day of the vernal equinox when I arrived in this alien life from the ancient world. I felt my lungs fill with oxygen, listened to the ghost voices as the doctor spanked my ass with a sterile rubber gloved hand to jump start my fragile lungs. I started to scream. The red darkness filled my primitive thoughts and ambivalent mind. It hadn't yet been filled with the voices of doubt and fear. That came with time. I searched for my ancestral Lakota determination. I heard primeval voices of the Anasazi, Hohokam, and Moggolon. I heard the Elders' spoken words before my birth, before their birth, voices of our ancient people. My first cognition was watching the blue curtains blowing in the wind, and hearing the voices of their ancient carnal thoughts. I saw an indistinguishable face, as soft as the breeze. It sang a song of many dreams. The songs drifted across the years, decades and generations. The melodies of pride were met with the harmony of loss, grief, shame and the ghost dance challenges still to come. Perhaps it was a 60's impairment, or a warp in the space-time continuum.

I had a dream sent from my ancestors, my name was Tatanka Mato Itate', given to me by the great white father in that world ... I am nobody in this one. I see you walk past me, I am invisible in the white world, and you do not care to see me in mine. You hold rather tightly to your misguided beliefs about our people. We are red shadows; we are the American shame of your white privilege ... the denial of your genocidal humanity.

Tatanka Íyotake's spirit spoke to me at a Catholic mission when I was four years old; it was 1958 in the mountains of western Montana in the Mission Valley. Uncle Ervin and my dad took me to meet the white buffalo named Big Medicine. He was shaking his shaggy head, flailing, snorting a frosty chill defiantly into the crisp morning air. The depth of his power was overwhelming as I stared into his haunted steely blue eyes. His massive being embodied the souls of our ancient ancestors whose spirits still walk the earth. Qua Quia is symbolic of future events, even wearing their hides transcended the Medicine Man to the spirit world. I wanted to cry but I stood there, still and frozen in time.

I heard the oral history from birth as I listened to my parents, aunties and uncles. They often visited around my mother's round wooden oak table laughing and joking into the early dawn. The women drank black Lipton Tea or Folgers Coffee and worried. The men drank Lucky Lager, Seagram's 7 and boasted. They told family stories remembered from childhood and their parents' childhood before them, long before they were born. I first heard the stories of my great-great grandfather Itate' when I was an infant. The white men called him 'Windy Mouth'. To his people, Itate' was the voice of the four holy winds. He was a tall man who spoke many languages and shared many teepees. The winds waited for his direction in their travels; the people listened to his voice for guidance to the winter hunt. He was a warrior with the love and admiration of the clan and his woman, Winpagi -Wan Mni Awacin. She was the envy of every young woman in the tribe. Above all, Itate' was a protector of the helpless, the elders and children. He fought fiercely in battle and spoke peace in his heart. Itate' carried wisdom spoken only to the chosen Lakota warriors.

Itate' was a mentor to the young light-eyed Indian warrior, Tshunke Witko. Crazy Horse is known to the white man as a huge stone rock