Medicine Wheel Ride partners with Harley-Davidson in 5th annual memorial ride

DEADWOOD — This year’s Medicine Wheel Ride brought more than 200 bikers to the annual memorial ride, where decorated bikers ride through the Black Hills and raise awareness to missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. Prior to Sunday’s ride in the Black Hills, riders finished a 10-day 2,211-mile ride in the Western United States. The ride began on Friday, July 26 at the Chumash Reservation in Southern California and others met along the way to finish the last part of the ride through the Black Hills.

For the past five years on the first Sunday of the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, bikers and spectators convened at the Bear Butte State Park near Sturgis and gathered in prayer. 192 riders—each decorated with ribbons and information about a missing Indigenous person— registered at Bear Butte but along the ride others joined said Lorna Cuny, Oglala Lakota and co-founder of the Medicine Wheel Ride. This year’s ride was the 5th annual and unlike in years past, the ride ended at Outlaw Square in Deadwood rather than at the Crazy Horse Memorial.

The change was largely due to a sponsorship with Harley-Davidson, but road construction on the route to Crazy Horse Memorial also dampened the organized ride through the Black Hills. The bike ride brought large crowds to Outlaw Square in downtown Deadwood, where South Dakota based Indigenous performed a free two-hour concert. Organizers showed “We Ride for Her,” a documentary about the Medicine Wheel Ride at the beginning of the event. In years past, riders would participate in an afternoon of education and presentation by various speakers for several hours.

“This year’s ride was very different because we didn’t go to Crazy Horse,” said Lorna Cuny to Native Sun News Today. “We went to Outlaw Square where Harley Davidson Motor Company was hosting a fundraising event for our organization.”

The aims to show “We Ride for Her” brought some worry for Lorna, and other organizers because they didn’t want to be exploitive. “I don’t want to be exploitive to families who shared their stories around this issue, but it’s important because there are groups of people who don’t even know this is an issue.”

Deadwood has a history of gambling and prostitution, whereas the Sturgis bike rally has a history sex trafficking. Last year, five men were arrested during an annual sex-trafficking sting operation at the rally and in the last ten years 76 men have been arrested for sex-trafficking during the rally. According to the City of Deadwood’s website, prostitution was legal from the city’s founding in 1876 through 1980. Taking the ride through Sturgis and Deadwood, with Harley-Davidson as a partner in their messaging, are signs that more people are listening said Cuny.

Today, in South Dakota, Native American women and girls constitute 40 percent of sex trafficking victims, according to “The Neglected Epidemic of Missing BIPOC Women and Girls” report made to the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in March 2022. The Chairman, Congressman Jamie Raskin, of Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties also commented on the lack of media coverage of missing Indigenous women.

“Just one example—in Wyoming, out of the more than 700 Indigenous women who have gone missing in the last 10 years, less than one in five received any media coverage at all. How is that possible?” said Congressman Raskin in his statement in 2022.

Raskin also commented in his statement, “For example, in South Dakota, 2-of-3 missing persons are Native American despite only 1-of-10 South Dakotans being Native American.” The Medicine Wheel Ride is a nonprofit organization that organizes around missing Indigenous women and victims of violence, including human or sex trafficking. Their mission is to end human and sex trafficking of Indigenous women and people.

Cuny said that Harley donated a 2024 Harley-Davidson Street Glide, valued at $25,999, and various organizations will be selling tickets through Christmas Eve. All proceeds from the sweepstakes are slated to go help the Medicine Wheel Ride continue its advocacy and mission. For more information on the Medicine Wheel Ride, and their plans for next year’s ride, visit their website at www.medicinewheelride.org or find them on social media.

“It’s really amazing,” Cuny said of Medicine Wheel Ride’s partnership with Harley-Davidson. Cuny shared that the relationship with Harley-Davidson sprouted last year after the 2023’s rally. “I was able to meet Harley’s CEO and he really like what our mission was about, and what we aimed to do and ever since we talked about ways to expand our outreach,” Cuny said. “A company you wouldn’t thinking would support Indigenous issues, and for them to want to step up, is amazing for us.

(Contact Darren Thompson at darrenjthompson@hotmail.com)

The post Medicine Wheel Ride partners with Harley-Davidson in 5th annual memorial ride first appeared on Native Sun News Today.

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