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Winter Counts: Memory and Lakota Spirituality
NCSS: I Culture: b. explain how information and experience may be interprited by people from diverse cultural perspectives and frames of reference
Winter Counts: Memory and Lakota Spirituality The vibrant spirituality of any society is dependent on any number of interrelated factors. The historic and contemporary difficulties faced by the Lakota were and are numerous. A study of their personal and collective responses shows adaptability and continuity in spiritual and cultural practices. Important ways of supporting Lakota cultural vitality are the winter counts and oral histories and traditions. As symbolic representations, the figures found in winter counts depend on societal knowledge to construct meaning. The winter count is a record that depends on a keeper or interpreter to explain the entries. Because of this, winter counts are necessarily intertwined with oral culture. When researching these topics, I found several differences in the literature from what we learned in class. The most basic concerns the keeper of the winter count. In several different sources I found, the reader was given to understand that the keeper was designated or chosen by the people. Even a traditional Lakota elder, Wilbur Flying By, seemed to indicate that the people chose who would keep this history (Lakota Winter Counts). In class we learned that the winter count is a power that comes as a result of a dream or vision. Whether this difference is the result of translation difficulties, dominant society biases, ignorance, or a common reluctance among the Lakota to speak openly about spiritual matters, it is probably not so important to discover. Speaking generally, in any one case it could be any single or combination of those factors. It is a nuance worth noticing though. Even though my understanding of Lakota spiritual practice and social norms is limited, it seems to me that there are many roles, responsibilities and events that occur on the authority of the spirits as given in a ceremony, dream or vision. That is, not as a result of social negotiation but from the urging of spiritual relatives. Historically, most dominant society inquirers/recorders would fit such an explanation into a western rationalist perspective, changing 'receives a bundle in a dream' to ‘chosen by the people to be the tribal historian'. This is an important distinction in the understanding of Lakota spirituality and culture. Another difference, in keeping with the idea that winter count keepers were chosen by the tribe, was that the event chosen to represent a given year was agreed upon by the tribe. From our vantage point, as anthropologists, it is hard to say what course of reasoning prompted the choice of any one event to be recorded. Winter count keepers were probably keen observers and very interested in the experiences of their own people as well as news that came from afar. It is probably not overly imaginative to think that winter count keepers gave serious consideration to everything that happened in the year and the attendant social discourse. In one of his letters, Cowdrey analyzes several winter counts by correlating the symbols standing for a given year/event. Cowdrey even went to the trouble of comparing two winter counts and gives the following figures: "there is a fairly-close conformation of events with either High Hawk's Brule chronology, or the Yanktonais chronology of Lone Dog: 72 matches in a 103-year span, or an agreement of 70%". He also finds that the Leonid Meteor shower is recorded in almost every winter count, giving historians a convenient point from which to align winter counts with the European calendar. He and other authors stop just short of claiming that there was a concerted effort by winter count keepers of different bands to keep parallel, consistent choices of the events to record. The ideal in dominant society of a historical recorder is someone who attempts to give an unbiased account of events. Oddly, any survey of history shows that this type of recorder is probably an aberration. Whatever reasons the Lakota may have for keeping winter counts, I do not think that keeping an unbiased account of events is primary and overriding. It may be more worthwhile to think about why winter counts are or would have been helpful to Lakota society, rather than the goals of social scientists. In speaking about the importance of winter counts and the Lakota language Mr. Young has the following to say: "Only those who are keepers of the language can interpret that and carry that forward. There is alot to it - that we understand who we are, how far we have come, how we survived. It is not simple, because it is so truthful. I really believe that this is our identity, it's our heart, it's our soul, and our spirit. That's what will sustain us in our culture." (Lakota Winter Counts) Just these thoughts remind me of the things we were told on the first day of class, about the purposes of Lakota spirituality. His thoughts also show that there are many levels of meaning when trying to understand winter counts. Really, it shows some of the basic things that are important about any people's history. In my opinion, chronicles, winter counts and other forms historical records might take are only tools, what matters if these things are in the memory of living people. When history is lost through the death of an orator or the burning of books, the people about whom that history is recorded also become lost, if only by degree. In some sense, these people cease to have any significance. As Mr. Emery has said: "a people without a history is like wind blowing in the prairie grass". (Lakota Winter Counts) Herein, then lies the fine line between history and spirituality. Several years ago I read Cultural Narcissism, by Christopher Lasch. The premise of the book is that psychologists have been remiss in classifying narcissism as a solely individual complex. While over the last while I have heard popular discourse that covers such matters, it is usually rather superficial. Another tag for patterns in dominant society could be anthropocentric. It seems as though while some few and isolated people and our society may recognize the essentially harmful nature and effects of both these disorders, so many basic practices and premises of our society teach and affirm both narcissism and anthropocentrism. As many Lakota people have realized, this is a result of a way of life and state of mind that is out of balance. In regard to this topic and winter counts, Steve Emery, a noted musician has some insightful thoughts. In speaking about winter counts he says: "The lesson in my mind is that we need to study our own history more closely than ever because one of the things that is very clear that is happening to the environment around this world is people are not living in harmony and the consequence to nature we are seeing in global warming, we are seeing in catastrophes that the world has never experienced through changes in the weather. And to me the lesson is to only take what you need, to only use what you need". There is of course the problem of what constitutes a need and Mr. Emery further clarifies his thoughts: "People that want this laissez-faire capitalism I think are saying to their great grand children - to the seventh generation, I think what they are saying is “we don't care a bit about you. And if there is still a world when it comes down to you, good luck". (Lakota Winter Counts) Such external consequences of a society's behavior are easy to see and talk about, but before there are such developed and complex manifestations of anthropocentrism and narcissism, there are human, relational consequences. Once again, features of the traditional Lakota way of praying and the ceremonial phrase "Mitakuye Owasin!" are shown to be more substantive than decorative or sentimental. Several years ago, Floyd Red Crow gave a lecture at MSU and communicated many of the same ideas, elaborating on the functions of some traditional Lakota customs and their roles in making and keeping a healthy society as well as the need to return to those ways, in order to restore balance between people and between people and the natural world. Winter counts are so called because "winter meant a completed year" (Walker, 123) and as we learned in class, winter was a time for sedentary activity in traditional Lakota life. Winter counts record all manner of events, from war records, deaths, disease, food availability, changes in technology, and spiritual and ceremonial events. In reading the compilation of winter counts by Walker, I noticed that recorded events of spiritual significance were not prominent. They occurred on several times that I could detect from 1759-1912, but seem to be considerably fewer than notable deaths, war records and, in the reservation period, payment of annuities. In a common sense analysis, this fits with what we learned in class; visions are usually personal, ceremonies are cyclical and/or called for by spirits through a personal vision, other matters of spiritual significance were either extraordinary or common to specific people. Although winter counts have spiritual origin and purposes, they are what we could think of as a public record. Therefore, my guess is that only spiritual events that included a sufficient number and variety of people were recorded in winter counts; other sub-societies probably kept their own private records. Even where there are records of spiritual events, it is sometimes difficult to tell the meaning of those events. For instance, in 1830, one of the winter counts compiled by Walker records "Pte san oat wicaopi. They shot many white buffalo cows." (Walker, 137). What exactly the keeper sought to communicate by this I am not sure. Although it may be a different event, Mrs. Young comments on "a white buffalo was killed. There is a white buffalo calf born and we are all overjoyed about that. It's a sign, it's a great sign and it means great things. It means peace and love, and all those good things and then you go back to the winter count and you see that someone killed it. Why did they kill it? Were we so hungry? Was it the only one left? It is a brutal history, but it is there" (Lakota Winter Counts). Obviously, she is drawing on associated oral traditions and narratives in interpreting the year's symbol. Similarly, in other records it is hard to tell whether the entry is a spiritual event or a metaphor for normal reality. The No Ears entry for 1853 has been interpreted as "Mato wan winsan manu. A bear stole a virgin." (Walker, 141). The authors comment is "that it was an animal and not a man named bear is made clear in Short Man's drawing." Again, whether this entry fits into the dominant society categories of figurative or literal is hard to tell without further information from an interpreter of winter counts. Lakota Winter Counts. Smithsonian Online Exhibit. www.wintercounts.si.edu/ Cowdrey, Micheal. Anderson Wintercount. https://eee.uci.edu/clients/tcthorne/wintercount/Cowdrey.html Walker, James. Lakota Society. University of Nebraska Press, 1982.
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