Friday, October 31, 2014

For Those Who Chose to Bury Their Hearts at Wounded Knee

Something about getting caught in the moment and creating something beautiful out of it has always been a high interest of mine.  One of the most interesting and meaningful times of my life was during a business trip while our organization traveled to North Dakota to deliver nearly 500 wrapped Christmas gifts to Lakota Native Americans pre-school students.  

Learning about the traumatic events between the Lakota and the United States during the Wounded Knee had given us a sense of heaviness in our hearts to see how the struggles still exists in the children on the Lakota reservation today so we had decided to visit the Wounded Knee battlegrounds the following day to pay our respects to all of the fallen heroes and to pray for the decedents who are still struggling to balance society and how to keep the Lakota lifestyle living.  

The next morning we witnessed wild horses running through the snow covered plains.  There was a big sign at the battle sight.  We then traveled across the road to the cemetery where all of the brave fallen Lakota heroes were buried.

The photo of the Wounded Knee Cemetery was taken by me last year in December by my cell phone to remind me to raise my daughter to be humble, to love and capture every moment because what we teach our children, will be carried on by them.


2 comments:

  1. This is a beautiful story. I love the symbolism of the wild horses witnessed while you were there!

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  2. Every year at Bergen Community College where I work we have Native American Week. I wrote a paper a few years back about the Lakota people and also did a speech about Native American story telling. I love the history of these beautiful people, but there is much sadness too. Wounded Knee is one of the saddest stories. One of my very favorite musicians is Bill Miller. I first saw him at BCC during Native American Week. His Mohican name is Fush-Ya Heay Aka which means bird song. He is awesome. He won a Grammy for his song "Ghost Dance" and it's about Wounded Knee. Here is a link to Bill Miller on YouTube talking about why he wrote the song and then singing it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vdg2sVB0XU8 You have to listen to it when you have time. His music really moves me and I went to see him at least 5 times in NJ, NY and PA! I can't wait to see him again.

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