On the Wrestle of the Minute Bighorn, 146 years ago, my ancestors defeated the US navy’s Seventh Cavalry led by George Armstrong Custer, who had previously massacred Cheyenne people.
This 25 June, on the anniversary, I will make a call to total genocide to present protection to diversity. I create no longer make this call flippantly. Somewhat, I’m speaking with a giant sense of urgency from lived experience.
For the Cheyenne, the genocide started with what the US navy wrongfully known as “the Indian wars”, when it became nothing more than the slaughter of our people, buffalo and horses to exterminate our system of existence. It is this very genocidal mindset which now produces the local weather disaster, additional genocides, even the menace of nuclear battle.
Vehoc, Chief Phillip’s large-grandfather. Photograph: Whiteman family records.I have to fragment with you the yarn of how my people and my family survived thru generations – regardless of many attempts to exterminate us. The truth that we survived is a lesson in resilience, and I do know that we also survived for a motive: to present protection to and fragment our teachings for a time such as this.
My late father Chief Phillip Whiteman Sr became a descendant of chiefs. We are peace chiefs – we never provoke battle, our predominant role is to steward our people and system of existence.
My father’s grandmother, Quill Dress Lady, became somewhat lady at the battlefield and witnessed Cheyenne matriarchs push stitching awls into Custer’s ears so as that next lifetime he would listen. They did this because after the Washita bloodbath in 1868, the set Custer had attacked a restful Cheyenne camp resulting in the killing of many ladies and young people, our Cheyenne chiefs quiet made peace with him in a sacred pipe ceremony.
They told him to rub the final ashes into the ground, and warned him he would not sleep esteem the ashes if he ever double-crossed the Cheyenne. Custer did not focus on us, however whatever the medication men talked about after ceremonies continuously got here appropriate.
My family holds the songs for the sacred space by our home community, the set we went into ceremony ahead of the Wrestle of the Minute Bighorn. Our relative Ma’ome (Ice) served as the sun dance instructor for Sitting Bull when it became revealed that we could per chance well persevere.
We quiet pray there on 25 June each and every 300 and sixty five days, when Cheyenne young people sail the 45 miles to the battlefield.
My large-grandfather Vehoc became a young man at the Wrestle of the Minute Bighorn. Vehoc system spider, trickster – one arrangement Cheyenne consult with white people. Christian missionaries translated this to Whiteman, since his father became a US soldier. That is the set our English family title comes from, a painful reminder of the abuse Indigenous ladies continue to endure, with so many missing and murdered.
This historic trauma taught me that either you abominate your self or you settle for and bask in your self.
Vehoc’s mother, Vonha, chose the latter route. She cherished her son and raised him Cheyenne.
After she perished, persecuted in the sacred Murky Hills, her sister took over as his mother, finest to later be massacred by the US navy at Wounded Knee in 1890. She quiet lies buried in the mass grave.
Vehoc carried deep scars from the Sand Creek bloodbath in 1864 when he became three years ancient. There the US navy slaughtered quite so much of our people at a restful Cheyenne and Arapaho camp, the set white flags were flying. My maternal grandmother, Milky Draw Road Lady, became an quick descendant of Chief White Antelope, who became castrated there. Scores of girls and young people were also mutilated.
The Minute Bighorn Battlefield nationwide monument in Montana. Photograph: Benjamin Rasmussen/The GuardianAfter their defeat at Minute Bighorn, the US navy made exterminating us their no 1 priority.
Interior two years of the fight, our ancestors were forced to Oklahoma from our homelands in the north, even supposing they’d been promised to us below their bask in treaties.
Upon suffering starvation and illness as they witnessed the genocidal mindset being done, our chiefs took our peoples’ lives into their fingers by leading them wait on north.
The US navy hunted us esteem animals. Dreary Knife’s followers were caught and imprisoned at Citadel Robinson. On 9 January 1879, after days without meals, water and warmth, they broke out. Many were slaughtered appropriate there after which.
The few who lived, later reunited with Minute Wolf’s band, ancestors on my father’s facet, who had made it home and secured the survival of the Cheyenne people in the north.
For the final 26 years, thru our organization Yellowbird Lifeways, we were organizing a sail the set Cheyenne young people be conscious the footsteps of their ancestors, working 400 miles thru four states in harsh wintry weather stipulations.
The Cheyenne young people sail, organized each and every 300 and sixty five days. Photograph: Yellowbird LifewaysIt is extraordinary to gaze them work together and fetch themselves as they overcome the conditioning of their lives on the reservation. Alcohol, medication and suicide are merely signs of oppression. After they sail, we remind them of their spirit, resilience and sacredness. We remind them of what we survived to purchase our Cheyenne lifeways.
One day of the final 300 and sixty five days, many non-Indigenous people were vexed to hear of the unmarked graves at Indian boarding and residential faculties in the US and Canada. No longer us.
This arrangement forcefully removed Indigenous young people from our families with the intent of exterminating our system of existence, in violation of Article 2(e) of the Genocide Convention. That mandatory college machine meets the definition of this most noxious of all crimes below world law.
No have to dig up the young people’s remains, you ethical have to fling to the cemeteries on our reservations and it is likely you’ll per chance well per chance also gaze the whole buried doable. So quite so much of our people die young from the ongoing effects of genocide.
My late mother, Florence, Looks in the Morning Lady, became very diminutive when she became place thru ceremony and given her title by her grandfather, a medication man who became shot in the leg at the Wrestle of the Minute Bighorn.
She used to allege that our medicine and teachings are the motive she survived boarding college and torture at Indian hospitals. As a descendant of chiefs, she became initiated into the Elk Scraper warrior society, whose role is to present protection to our Cheyenne system of existence, at age 12, turning into the final warrior lady among the many Northern Cheyenne.
Elders Clinton Birdhat carrying the staff and Jenny Parker, whose father survived the Citadel Robinson Bloodbath in 1879, carrying the flag at the stay of the memorial sail, working at the side of Cheyenne formative years. Photograph: Yellowbird LifewaysDespite the prohibition on working in direction of our ceremonies and on speaking our language at the colleges, my people and grandparents raised me in each and every, and I inherited and earned the accountability to purchase our lifeways.
The truth that we possess survived this genocidal onslaught with our language, ceremonies and teachings is nothing brief of a miracle. We were no longer imagined to outlive, quiet we did.
Possess you ever requested why? We know. We survived because these teachings, handed on from technology to technology, connect us to the land and the universe. They are the finest counter-clear as much as the intergenerational effects of genocide.
No doubt one of my teachings is that the Creator reveals her bask in for diversity in her advent. Without the working out of diversity there could be not any such thing as a team spirit, and without team spirit there could be not any such thing as a oneness with Creator.
The Creator desires us to esteem each and every assorted; that’s what the loving Creator is all about.
Looking at the wars, mass shootings and genocides going down at some point of the arena appropriate now, and finding out about what has been done to my people above, you would query: how can people create this to each and every assorted?
The reply is easy: what we create to each and every assorted has already been done to us. European peoples were enticing in wars and suffering the effects of genocide long ahead of they got here here, and sadly it is quiet going down now. On the present time, humanity faces extraordinary extinctions due to the what we possess done to Mother Earth.
What you call pure mess ups are Mother Earth’s system of therapeutic herself.
If western pondering could per chance well possess solved these existence and diversity-threatening conflicts, it would were done by now. In 1946, Albert Einstein made a call to “let the people know that a brand new form of pondering is significant if mankind is to outlive and pass to elevated ranges”. Cheyenne teachings elevate our pondering, whereas western genocidal and exploitative pondering has introduced us all to the brink of extinction. I call it a solutions virus: it is oppressive and does no longer price diversity.
We are succesful of also no longer ever stay battle and genocide except we substitute the mindset that created it. Battle can’t defeat battle, finest bask in can finish battle.
My bask in and my forgiveness create no longer rely on you. I have to forgive you for what you possess done to my people, the genocide and the eradication route of. This could per chance per chance well also be our final probability to place an stay to this genocidal and suicidal mindset.
I such as you, and there could be nothing it is likely you’ll per chance well per chance create about it.
Chief Phillip is the co-founder of Yellowbird Lifeways, Nurturing the Breath of Existence, a company working to pass on Indigenous teachings to facilitate this significant shift in consciousness. Their community empowerment projects tackle meals sovereignty and horse medication