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Remembering the original Big Foot Riders


 

 

We are fast approaching the 128th Anniversary of the Massacre at Wounded Knee. This anniversary marks one of the most shameful and dreadful days in the history of America.

In 1986 three Lakota men decided they would ride their horses on the same path Chief Big Foot and his 350 followers took when they road from the Cheyenne River Reservation in the bitter winter of December 1890 to seek the protection of Chief Red Cloud on the Pine Ridge Agency.

The three Lakota men – Birgil Kills Straight, Alex White Plume and Jim Garrett – started the ride by forming a group they called Si Tanka Wokiksuye Okolakiciye – Big Foot Memorial Riders – and set out on his path in December 1986.

There were only a handful of riders that first year, but as they made the ride each year the number of riders to join up grew. On the 100th Anniversary of Wounded Knee, December 29, 1990, nearly 100 riders joined the Si Tanka Wokiksuye Okolakiciye.

And so it has been since 1986. Rather than just ride for four years as was originally planned because the number four is Sacred to the Lakota, the ride became more than just a ride, it became a sacred ritual that brought the Lakota people together to commemorate one of the saddest of days in their history and to keep the sacredness of that day in the minds always of the Lakota people.

A community sprang up at Wounded Knee in the 1920s after Clive Gildersleeve, a white man, and his wife Agnes, an Ojibwe Indian, built the Wounded Knee Trading Post. They built cabins around the Post to house the Lakota people who worked at the Post. Many Lakota artists and craftspeople brought their paintings and beadwork to the Post and left them there on consignment so the Gildersleeves could market their products. Many Lakota on Pine Ridge earned money for school clothes and groceries from the money they made at the Wounded Knee Trading Post.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs knew that the memory of what happened at Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890 was still in the minds of the Lakota people. So in an effort to suppress that memory the Bureau named the village the people were calling Wounded Knee to Brennan, after a BIA official. But the Oyate still called it Wounded Knee.

Ethel Giago, the daughter of Tim Sr. and Lupe Giago, was born at Wounded Knee. Tim Sr. worked as a clerk and butcher at the Trading Post for many years. Tim Jr., found a playmate his age named Joanne Gildersleeve, the daughter of the Trading Post owners. A lot of families raised their children at Wounded Knee.

Native Sun News Today will have a special Wounded Knee Edition to commemorate the 128th Anniversary of the terrible massacre that happened there in 1890. The Special Edition will be published on December 19, 2018, and then the newspaper will shut down for the Christmas Holidays and will stay closed until January 2, 2019. Stay tuned.

(Contact the Native Sun News Today Editorial Board at editor@ nativesunnews.today)

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