From Sweden to Pine Ridge

PINE RIDGE— It has been a whirlwind year for Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg (Toon-berg). Few people in human history have had so much fame and influence generated by their actions in so short a time, and after only a two-day notice (KILI radio scrambling to cover the event after only a few hours’ notice), the 16-year-old Thunberg arrived at Red Cloud Indian School to speak before a modest but excited crowd of about 200 people on Sunday night.

Sharing the spotlight with her was local teenage climate activist Tokata Iron Eyes, daughter of environmental activist Chase Iron Eyes, who is also a close advisor to Oglala Sioux Tribal President Julian Bear Runner. After a prayer and song from Basil Braveheart, and a heartfelt introductory speech by Bear Runner, Iron Eyes introduced his daughter and Thunberg, who occupied two chairs in the middle of the Paul “Dizzy” Trout Fieldhouse. It took 42 minutes to introduce Thunberg, and 45 minutes before she actually spoke, and it was clear, people had enthusiastically rushed to Red Cloud School to see a small Swedish schoolgirl, inexplicably transformed in just over a year, into a towering iconic international personality.

Usually such people exude a signature power and energy, and once they speak there is gravitas in their voice, perspective, persona, but the demure schoolgirl that took a seat on a star quilt beside Tokata Iron Eyes, seemed gentle, somewhat withdrawn, and intriguingly unremarkable. At no time in the hour-and-a-half she spent at Red Cloud did she say anything genuinely profound or insightful, and her speech and words were very measured, her responses often ended awkwardly and apologetically.

Tokata Iron Eyes, on the other hand, was impassioned, articulate, forthright, engaging and controlled the mic and the conversion for most of the discussion. Chase Iron Eyes directed the conversation, and although there were a few questions from the audience, the media was given no chance to talk to Thunberg, even though the usual media circus which follows the Swedish activist wherever she goes, was nowhere to be seen.

What is it about this schoolgirl that has engendered so much attention, so much love, and so much hate? The answer to that question never arrived in something specific that Thunberg said or did. But as she sat there, quiet, polite, reserved, her face an alternating array of unique and inscrutable expressions, her quiet dignity and inexplicably infectious charm spoke in profound ways she herself never can.

Thunberg struggles with several disorders, Asberger’s, selective mutism, and OCD. For these reasons she is not a powerful or eloquent speaker. Her success, her worldwide Pied Piperesque following, defies critical explanation. In some remarkable and special way, her gentle presence has been electrified to an organically impactful level that makes all others look like calculating limelight seekers by comparison.

Braveheart spoke to this energy, in his opening remarks, which he explained as Taku wakan skan, “something in sacred motion continues to move throughout the world.”

Chase Iron Eyes added his observation: “It’s indescribable, it’s synchronicity, it’s kismet, it’s destiny, it’s all of those things. We never could have imagined that Greta and Tokata, that those worlds would have come together in such a way. We are constantly thinking of how we can best advocate and we never could have foreseen this.”

The only part of his observation that can be challenged, is that it is not the association between Greta and Tokata that is an expression of what could never have been imagined, but Thunberg herself, the catalyst for this entire youth movement of climate conscious activists; she is the sacred, mysterious motion moving through this world.

There are a multiplicity of bewildering factors converging on Thunberg’s activism and travels. To this point, no one pundit has been able to get a handle on who she actually is and what her activism actually represents.

It started in August 2018, with Thunberg protesting outside the Swedish parliament. Eventually local social networks got the ball rolling, and it helped her parents were an opera singer and an actor, because the parental contributions for both Thunberg and Iron Eyes are no coincidental accident. Without parents who direct, if not often create, the platform and the agenda for these young activists, they would be no more famous or successful in their activism than a random person shouting from a street corner.

Whatever sacred energy Thunberg had, it ignited early, and burned white hot, and soon she was down in Italy, at the Vatican, and an Italian football coach said she was a “whore” and the “right age to take a pounding.” He was fired, but the vicious and intense invective spewed ugly against her, largely from middle-aged, right wing, White males. She crossed the Atlantic in a sailboat, committed to a minimal carbon footprint on the world. She crossed the country in a Tesla driven by her father, and once she got to Iowa, a school teacher made a remark that it was too bad he didn’t have his sniper rifle. He was placed on administrative leave. The University of Iowa would not let its name be used in promoting her speeches or appearances. As Thunberg progressed deeper into Flyover America, the kind of mentality that caused her activism in the first place, agitated dark and threatening around her.

Whenever such a remarkable personality comes along, and rides such a towering crest of cultural consequence, vile detractors will crawl out from the woodwork, and opportunists will try to lasso the crest and barge onto the wave for all they can exploit. Eventually that wave reached the Pine Ridge reservation, and it must have been a surreal thing to Thunberg, to be so famous and yet in so remote and personable a setting as an isolated reservation high school fieldhouse.

Little substantive, technical or issue oriented was discussed at the panel discussion. It was too orchestrated and controlled. What talk there was, was mostly rhetorical and aspirational, and the climate deniers would have had a field day scoffing at what they would have deemed as transparently contrived spectacle.

When Thunberg did speak, she was very hesitant and brief, perhaps because she had spoken these words so many times across half the face of this planet.

When referring to Tokata Iron Eyes she said: “I remember I was very captured by your speech (at an event in Washington, DC) because it was incredibly captivating. We did some other things together, some days after that, in the Congress and the Senate; it’s just so good to meet someone the same age, who shares the same commitment, because we were born in so different parts of the world, in many ways we are so different, but also in many ways we are so much alike. We share both the commitment in saving the planet. I look up to you a lot because I feel that you are very courageous. I see that you are a true person. Some people are very true and they are very valuable.”

In offering her description of Tokata, Greta inadvertently described herself as well, and despite the lack of substance at this gathering, there is no denying Thunberg is a force with which to be reckoned, that she has power her frail body belies, a power of conviction and spirit, a mysterious and inexplicable energy and purpose, to be an activist for meaningful change.

Thunberg may not understand any better than the rest of the world how and why she has seized the day, and now has captured the interest of a planet, but her final panel discussion words to the gathering reveal she is aware that she has an unprecedented opportunity to be the spokesman, the impetus for a radical shift in climate change awareness: “I just felt like I am one of the very few people in the world that can actually do this trip, so therefore, I mean, why not, plus…it was fun as well. It’s been amazing in so many ways. I am traveling slowly through the continent, slowly making it to Chile, the COP 25, if I make it there.”

She is referring to the United Nations 2019 Conference on Climate Change in Santiago, Chile, beginning on December 2. This is where the yearlong sabbatical from high school will end. Having already been named one of the 100 Most Influential People by Time Magazine, and having been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, Thunberg will be the belle of the climate change ball in Santiago. We may never know why her foot was the only one that could ever fit the glass slipper, but the whirlwind success of her climate change awareness campaign, will be something sociologists will study for decades to come.

(James Giago Davies is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota tribe. He can be reached at skindiesel@msn.com)

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