Read, Listen and Watch as
Red Cloud Students Address Environmental Issues

posted on April 22, 2014 

 

This spring a number of Red Cloud students and alum entered a writing contest entitled "Voices of the Land," sponsored by the nonprofit Lakota Children's Enrichment. They were challenged to address issues around the environment and their place in it, and their entries were judged by a high-profile panel of poets, journalists, and even a Nobel Peace Prize winning advocate. Here, read, listen and experience their powerful work!

A Sampling of the Winning Entries from Red Cloud Indian School

Autumn White Eyes '10

Grand Prize Winner
Young Adult Category

Colton Sierra '14

Grand Prize Winner
High School

Marcus Ruff '17

Runner-Up
High School
 

 

Mitakuye Oyasin

By Autumn White Eyes '10

Grand Prize Winner in the Young Adult Category

1.
On August 20th 2013, I left the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for New York City.
Flew into a city where lights on towers looked brighter than the sun.
I went through a week of disillusionment
I saw people walk by one another that they will never know, hundreds of people to turn the other cheek, and I started wondering if I was ever hurt,
would they come to me? Would they come to me?
I saw gardens between buildings, with plants, desperately trying to find a way to the sun between the dark buildings.
wondering what they would feel if they had a home like mine. 

2.
My home
My home is all the air in the sky, its sunsets melt my heart into a serenity of sanctuary.
I could write a thousand poems of its beauty
I could tell you about my cousins playing basketball next to Sacred Heart Church,
the thunder that booms against the windows while it’s raining,
And sing to you the songs of my ancestors that
I once sang
while picking sage in the prairie, taking only enough of what we needed,
and said a prayer to thank it for its sacrifice.
The inipi
is one of my favorite places,
we return to mother’s womb, like retreating to our beds when we are feeling unsafe.
The heat rolling off my back doesn’t feel painful,
and sweat rolling off my skin does not burn as it should.
I pray for tomorrow’s day, my mother’s health, and the future of the children
My mother holds my hand next to me, as Unci Maka teaches me how to breathe again,
And we sing. 

3.
In the Black Hills of South Dakota, Mato Tipila stands before us.
Watching over the land the people, above the sky,
letting us know she is the closest to the creator.
When I was a senior in high school, I prayed at this sacred site.
Watched rock climbers destroy her sacredness as we tried to pray.
I never thought I could feel sorry for a white person,
never thought that I could ask an unknowing question,
“What tribe are you?”
If you look far enough you could remember,
Look inside and you will find that you were a person of the Earth once too.
I watched them climb, wrapping their legs and arms against Mother Nature,
Trying to feel the spirit that has held my hand in my darkest and lightest nights,
I realized they were searching for our Grandmother, for family,
and for the Earth they will return to.

4.
Unci Maka,
Grandmother Earth
Our Earth is in crisis.
She is crying for our sympathy, feeling us strip away her nutrients.
Cutting down her mountains for mining, drilling for natural gas, and polluting the water,
‘til her resources run clean.
Like humans she cannot function without her organs.
She isn’t happy with us,
OUR family isn’t happy with us.
And like a mother who isn’t happy with us, I’ll try to make her proud.
Mitakuye Oyasin
We are all related.

 

Walking Home

By Colton Sierra '14

High School Grand Prize Winner

There are tumbleweeds tumbling terribly down the dirt road I walk from. Lays Bad’s Lays bag thrown out the window after I’ve been kicked out. Sun blazing, and dust settling.  

Each step I take wakes my spirit. I am here, but not alone. Listening closely, keenly, and intently, and I can hear it. Just me at my home.

My heart is beating in love because of this familiar feeling. Joyous and jovial, now jogging in the wind.

No dollar amount can amount to this. Feeling like I’m on top of a mountain. My heart rate racing ravenously for the promise land. But for that I’d need to meet with Doc and Marty McFly and time travel.  

See the only thing promised for the land is destruction. Especially the way things have been going. Water is dirty and the heart of the country is bound for tractors. Turtle Island is racing millions of steel hares with no idea of the future.  

So what comes next? Rich but poor land or poor but rich land? There are theories of some outlandish beings destroying the world. But maybe we are our own apocalypse.  

I’ve stopped running by now, and my walking pace is slow. The main road is nearing and I need a ride. No, I need my uncle’s horse that is what I need to ride. Sun to my back, on my way back home.

 

I Awake

By Marcus Ruff '17

High School Runner-Up

I awake in a heaven,
A heaven with streams of holy water
A land hugs the immaculate water
With its embrace, the water returns life
Lush, green life
The life dances with the spirit of the wind

Tȟate, [the Spirit of the Wind ]
Time is an illusion
An illusion as long as the wind whispers secrets into my ears
As long as the raindrops tell story as they fall
As long as the WAKINYAN [the Spirit of the Thunder] cloaked in robes drifts overhead
Looking for anything not of this realm
But things not of this realm are the gateway
A gateway through the passage of our minds

Time progresses
The land’s vibrance begins to fade
We descend into a new age

Bombs sound out to the West
Foreigners to the East pave passage ways and hiking trials through an exploited land

I can’t walk feeling the hollow ground
The hollow of a pipeline piecing Maka’s [the Earth and its spirit] earthly flesh to the South
I look to the North hoping to find a sanctuary
But all I see are blinking lights
and I inevitably progress forward into a new age of Golden Dawn. 

 

Learn More about the Competition

 

 

 

All Content, ©Red Cloud Indian School, 2014