29th July
I woke up at 5.45am to the whir of the fan, pushing air around like a teenager told to wipe down a table. Its been hard to sleep, thinking of Kaz and home. I put on my MP3 player and jotted notes in my notebook. Everyone else seemed to be stirring too. The morning was spent bumming around a bit.
In the afternoon we all went off to the site of the battle of the Little Big Horn (or Greasy Grass as Native Americans call it). I have been there before (three times in fact) except this time the monument to the Native Americans who fell defending their land was finally finished. Even its design compared to the nineteenth century monument to the 7th Cavalry highlighted a different attitude. The earlier one is phallic, squatting on top of "last stand hill", dominating the landscape in its aggressive assertion of the "heroism" of Custer and his men. The Native American monument is altogether more understated, sitting back from the main path and being part underground so that you walk into it and come into its circle. Each tribe that fought is remembered and the stone is illustrated with images drawn in a traditional tribal manner. The monument engendered an entirely different feeling.
The site is dotted all over with white markers. These point to the places that the bodies of 7th Cavalry troopers were found. Again only in the last couple of years have the Park Authorities put down markers in the same was for Native Americans who fell defending their village. Symbolically they are in red stone. I was shocked to discover a little way off one of these markers near the road another new marker. It was for all the 7th cavalry horses that fell in the battle. It was as if the Authorities spitefully added this and I couldn't help feeling it was a snub to the tribes that had lobbied for so long for recognition of the battle from their perspective.
After the visit we drove across the highway to "The Trading Post"- a kind of shop selling books, jewelery, t shirts etc. The Venturers spent some time there looking for gifts for home. I found a postcard allegedly of Crazy Horse- although it is said no one ever managed to take his photograph.
We went back to Lame Deer via Harden because there was a forest fire. We had to stop at a supermarket. Latter some of us went to help set up a Sun Dance site at Emma's request. We drove towards Birney and then pulled of the main road, across bumpy rutted tracks, We entered a wood and slowly made our way through the magically landscape to the site. We helped put up some tents and then sat around while Emma "visited" with her friend Shirley. We returned to the trailer about midnight. As we were returning to Lame Deer the sun was setting, it was a huge ball of orange fire in the sky, so clear you could almost reach out and grasp it. The moon soon came up and caste its silver glow across the rez picking out the trees and hills, a timeless vista that remembered the old ways when the people were free to roam and lived their life without recourse to the white man.
