Native Women - Part 2
Native Women - On Line Photo Exhibit
The Denver Public Library explores the daily life
of late-19th-century Native American women of the plains and the desert
southwest. Multiple tribes are pictured, illustrating a composite of
early Native American life. Similarities in daily activities for women
across tribes are presented.
This gallery explores daily life for
late-19th-century Native American women of the plains and the desert
southwest. Multiple tribes are pictured, illustrating a composite of
early Native American life. Similarities in daily activities for women
across tribes are presented.
The gallery highlights the nation-building roles of
women and thus favors women-in-action images. Consequently, photographic
qualities are sometimes secondary to the activity being shown.
A photographic portrayal of Native American life
before the arrival of white culture is necessarily contaminated with
evidence of Euro-American culture. Images show cotton, iron kettles,
straw hats and umbrellas. Nevertheless, the activities of Native
Americans, which this gallery emphasizes, can give us insightful
glimpses into early American life.
http://photoswest.org/exhib/gallery4/leadin.htm
Native Pride - Counting Coup (coo) from: Native Reflections
In 1987, SuAnne Marie Big Crow, a young Pine Ridge
Reservation Oglala student, liked to play all the sports that she could.
You know how it is when your school team plays on the opposing
teams home turf. There is
some animosity towards the "visitor".
SuAnne was only in the eighth grade when she went with the
varsity team to play ball at a town called Lead (leed), in South Dakota.
This is in the Black Hills, a little northwest of the Pine Ridge
Reservation.
In the fall of that year, the Pine Ridge Lady Thorpes basketball
team went to Lead to play a game.
SuAnne was a full member of the team by then.
She was a freshman, fourteen years old.
Getting ready in the locker room, the Pine Ridge girls could hear
the din from some of the fans.
They were yelling fake-Indian war cries, a "woo-woo-woo" sound.
The usual plan for the pre-game warm-up was for the visiting team to run
onto the court in a line, take a lap or two around the floor, shoot some
baskets, and then go to their bench at courtside.
After that, the home team would
come out and do the same, and then the game would begin. Usually the
Thorpes lined up for their entry more or less according to height, which
meant that senior Doni De Cory, one of the tallest, went first.
As the team waited in the hallway leading from the locker room,
the heckling got louder. A
typical kind of hollered remark was "Squaw!" or "Where's the cheese!"
(the joke being that if Indians were lining up, it must be to get
commodity cheese); today no one remembers exactly what was said.
Doni De Cory looked out the door and told her teammates, "I can't
handle this." SuAnne
quickly offered to go first in her place.
She was so eager that Doni became suspicious.
"Don't embarrass us," Doni told her. SuAnne said, "I won't.
I won't embarrass you."
Doni gave her the ball, and SuAnne stood first in line.
She came running out onto the court dribbling the basketball,
with her teammates running behind.
On the court, the noise was deafeningly loud.
SuAnne went right down the middle; but instead of running a full
lap, she suddenly stopped when she got to center court.
Her teammates were taken by surprise, and some bumped into one
another. Coach Zimiga at
the rear of the line did not know why they had stopped.
SuAnne turned to Doni and tossed her the ball.
Then she stepped into the jump-ball circle at center court, in
front of the Lead fans. She
unbuttoned her warm-up jacket , took it off, draped it over her
shoulders, then began to do the Lakota shawl dance.
SuAnne knew all the traditional dances - she had competed in many
powwows as a little girl - and the dance she chose is a young woman's
dance, graceful and modest and show-offy all at the same time.
"I couldn't believe it - she was powwowin', like, 'get down!"
Doni De Cori recalled. "And
then she started to sing."
SuAnne began to sing in Lakota, swaying back and forth in the jump-ball
circle, doing the shawl dance, using her warm-up jacket for a shawl.
The crowd went completely silent.
"All the stuff the Lead fans were yelling - it was like she
reversed it somehow," a teammate said.
In the sudden quiet, all you could hear was her Lakota song.
SuAnne stood up, dropped her jacket, took the ball from Doni De
Cory, and ran a lap around the court dribbling expertly and fast.
The fans began to applaud and cheer.
She sprinted to the basket, went up in the air, and laid the ball
through the hoop, with the fans cheering loudly now.
Back in the days when Lakota war parties still fought battles
against other tribes and the U.S. Army,
no deed of war was more honored than the act of counting coup.
To count coup means to touch an armed enemy in full possession of
his powers with a special stick called a coup stick, or with the hand.
The touch is not a blow, and only serves to indicate how close to
an enemy you came. As an
act of bravery, counting coup was regarded as greater than killing an
enemy in single combat, greater than taking a scalp or horses or any
prize. Counting coup was an
act of almost abstract courage, of pure playfulness taken to the most
daring extreme.
And yet this coup was not an act of war, but of peace.
SuAnne's coup strike was an offering, an invitation.
It took the hecklers at the best interpretation, as if their
silly mocking chants were meant only in good will.
SuAnne's dance has been danced for centuries, and the dance said,
"we've been doing the shawl dance since long before you came, before you
had gotten on the boat in Glasgow or Bremerhaven, before you stole this
land, and we're still doing it today; and isn’t it pretty, when you see
how it's supposed to be done?"
Sadly, SuAnne died in an auto accident on her way home with her mother on February 9th, 1992. From: sdc 10.20.05