My favorite movie is “Dances with Wolves”, the story of a “white” man searching for and finding his soul after the brutality of the Civil War through a connection to the earth and to the Lakota people of the Great Plains. That’s Hollywood, I know, but recently, I made it real. I traveled with some young adults to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwest South Dakota for the first time for a week of service learning at an organization called Re-Member. Many groups came and worked in teams to help Lakota people in varying ways; community garden, bunk beds for crowded homes, home cleanup, etc. We also went through an education program about past and present Lakota life. Pine Ridge is the second largest reservation in the US in terms of acreage and the second poorest place in the Western Hemisphere. This poem was inspired by hearing the story of the Wounded Knee Massacre while on a visit to the Wounded Knee mass grave site on May 18, 2008. The site is on top of a hill and I was struck by the persistent wind of South Dakota, silent like the dead yet not silent like a story that will not go away, that will haunt us until we hear it and let blow on our bodies and our lives.

And the wind still blows
Even as the story is told,
The story that calls from the sacred ground
Without a sound, a song,
Carried on the wind, a song,
Voiced by the winged ones, a song,
Rustling through the wild grass, a song.

This place of solitude;
Reborn each day with the symphony of birds at first light, singing ancient songs in perfect harmony.
This place of movement;
Guided by the wind passing through canyon walls, sometimes gently, sometimes fierce…but always with ease and perfect flow…a perfect wind.
A perfect wind that calls the leaves to dance their joyous dance, and the grasses wave their waves of humility…with just a whisper from the lips of God.

“Carry my death song,” they said.
“Listen to our death song,” they plea,
The song that cannot cease,
The death song of Wounded Knee.
The many who bore the sin of the many more
Have a song that we cannot ignore.

Stand on that holy hill,
Pray that your heart will not be still
And that it beats and stirs
For this is where the drum of grief carries on the song,
Carries on the life that was taken,
In ignorance and fear taken.

So stand still in silence.
Listen in reverence with your hearing heart
For it is there in the wind,
The death song that becomes life
If we will hear it, know it, sing it,
Dip into the well of grief to drink it.

If your heart is deaf and
Your body cannot feel that heavy breeze,
Put on your Bluecoat
And sing the death song for yourself.
You are already late for your own funeral.

Let the wound open the ears of your soul,
The water of your eyes, and the heart of your passion to sing,
“Oglala Lakota Oyate! Lakota Oyate!
Dance with us! Speak to us and guide us!
Sing your song through us!”

Let it never be forgotten,
Though we try, though we try.
And on that sacred hill the markers stand,
The single border remains
And the wind still blows, The wind still blows.