Wounded Knee Descendants Meeting discussed future of repatriated sacred belongings

KYLE – At a March 25, 2023, meeting of Wounded Knee Descendants at the Oglala Lakota College (OLC) in Kyle, SD, participants acknowledged ancestors murdered at the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre and their descendants scarred by intergenerational trauma, according to Manny Iron Hawk (Titunwan Okowozu) and Renee Iron Hawk (Tituwan Oohenumpa) of Red Scaffold, SD. Both are active in the HAWK 1890 Wounded Knee Descendants group centered on the Cheyenne River Reservation.

The March 25 meeting also included mourning prayers, songs, and ceremonies in remembrance of relatives represented by eleven boxes of sacred belongings, some of which were stolen from the 1890 Wounded Knee victims. The belongings, kept at the Founders Museum in Barre, Massachusetts for over a century until being returned to the Lakota of South Dakota in November 2022, held a place of honor and remembrance at the meeting.

Marlis Afraid of Hawk (Mnicoujou/Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe), also active in the HAWK 1890 Descendants group, said that she became “really emotional” and tearful during the singing of a ceremonial song, remembering her grandfather, Richard Afraid of Hawk, and her father, Daniel Afraid of Hawk.

In the 1930’s, Richard Afraid of Hawk was active in a Wounded Knee descendants’ group and advocated for reparations for the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre but was denied. Marlis Afraid of Hawk agreed that her tears honored her ancestors and others lost at Wounded Knee as well as their descendants.

March 25 was the first of four gatherings, The Si’Tanka Ta’ Oyate O’mniceye (The Ancestors’ Belongings meeting), to discuss what to do with the items — bury them, burn them, or display them in a local museum — but also to pray and grieve, said Cedric Broken Nose (Oglala Lakota) of the Pine Ridge Reservation, an active member of the Sitanka Takini Wounded Knee Descendants Group.

Broken Nose said items such as clothing, which have blood or sweat on them from their wearers, would traditionally be burned in a spiritual ceremony to return them to the ancestor they belonged to.

Although it has been proposed to bury items at the Wounded Knee Massacre burial site, Broken Nose worries that the items could be dug up again.

“As Lakota people, we have a whole year to go through this bereavement process and then release the items like in a ceremony to release the soul,” he said. “It helps us to grieve and let go at the end.”

According to Manny Iron Hawk, Dustin Pourier (Oglala Sioux tribe), known as the “fifth member” of the tribal council, spoke out at the March 25 meeting in favor of reparations for Wounded Knee descendants. According to Pourier, reparations would be incomplete without Black Hills land being returned to the Indigenous people of the area. He would like to see repatriated land used for a healing center for trauma recovery.

Tawa Ducheneaux (Cherokee), archivist from OLC Kyle, also attended the March 25 meeting. She is the caretaker of the Wounded Knee sacred belongings since they returned from Massachusetts in late 2022. In her position she is also the caretaker of other sacred Lakota belongings unrelated to those from Wounded Knee.

Ducheneaux’s husband is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. She earned a master’s degree in information and library services with a concentration in archives and special collections. As part of her master’s program, she was part of a tribal cohort of Indigenous students with similar interests and professional goals.

Ducheneaux says she is passionate about knowledge “in all forms” being returned to the Native community. She says that OLC has an extensive collection of Native historical items in safekeeping and she would like to see some of those items returned to tribal members.

She feels that some of the items would be appropriate for OLC to retain in their special collections. She respectfully says that the tribe and the college together will decide the future of the items in OLC’s collection.

Ducheneaux’s dream is to see a museum “for the people, by the people” with a restricted access repository for artifacts and sacred belongings and a Visitors’ Center campus, similar to the Red Cloud Heritage Center on the Pine Ridge Reservation which concentrates on the fine arts of all Native Americans and the traditional arts of the Lakota.

Future meetings of the Wounded Knee Descendants are planned but dates and times have not yet been confirmed. Broken Nose said that future meetings will likely follow the astronomical coming of the seasons.  

(Contact Grace Terry at grace@angelsabide.com)

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