Dr. Zimiga speaks 4 - Talk on "Crazy: Horse A Life" (sequencing of adulthood & conclusion)

Dr. Zimiga talks “Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life” by Kingsley M. Bray (part 4)

Link to video: https://youtu.be/WjLmKcGxNck

Transcript of video (found below):

Zimiga: I think one of the things that’s important throughout the history of humankind – this question has been continuously asked, ‘What is man?’. The sequences of Crazy Horse brings us closer to who we are as human beings by social actions and beliefs we follow. In this instance the story’s way of life takes us all the way back to how men and women-kind were created…And that’s where we started with the story of Crazy Horse. I think the sequencing of the story started as a child and we went from that to the four stages of life as a Lakota and looked at the firs stage of birth, and the second stage is of childhood, and then adulthood, and then as an elder. I think that’s where we are now. Looking at sequence towards the end is always transformation – transformation from one age to another.

These young people now-a-days, we look at them as teenagers, and those teenagers – they’re neither a child or an adult. It’s an age of storm and stress…And that’s where we find in Crazy Horse’s life as taken on the roll as a Lakota (..) as a Lakota man, that transition. Kingsley, I think, what he really misses is to realize that is all of us throughout the whole world we have this transformation. It isn’t just owned by one culture or another. It was always thought that younger people are looking to who they are and what they need to be. But in Lakota instances, those early training years you become connected to a philosophy – the Lakota philosophy that all life, everything in itself, is sacred…And to be taught that as a young man when you go out, he (Crazy Horse) was that kind of man that associated with other young men…who we can say teenagers. It was a whole new staging where he learned the importance of what it was that he was searching for.

He (Crazy Horse) chose it for himself. Nobody chose it for him. It was his choice because of his family. Lakota families, one of the things you have to think about is that in comparison to Kingsley, he lived within his family but lived within a nation of people who governed on certain types of rules…And his childhood was probably the same process in that how was he looked upon? I mean even today we look at some people as a young child. (For example…) They may have abusive beginnings where those abusive beginnings end up shaping their character in the future. Some of them, as Kingsley points out that some of them were really a transition, a transition – and out of that youth there were many things that were coming out. I’ve taken some notes and want to identify some of those disconnects that have served today.

…And that’s why it’s really relevant to look at it from our childhood. One, is the whole idea of Lakota psychology or of people. It is the bonding factors for who we are begins as a child. Some of us think in our adult relationships, because of the way we’re treated, we have overcompensation…And that overcompensation is the fear of being abandoned or rejected, and how do you prove your worth and avoid the conflicts at all costs? Those rules are set up as… a warrior. There was discipline. He (Crazy Horse) had to learn from other warriors…And that is the same all over. In the history of humankind, you think of it as the foundations of many of the European nations were based upon the Greeks. The Greeks hand seven tribes. The Greeks in themselves had an oracle where they would go to and their philosophers or their teachers. So, then the teachers become an important part. Not only that, but those that undertake him and usually in Lakotas, it isn’t, it wasn’t a…we didn’t have chiefs. But what we had was an extended family that became, and we governed through that. Those that could lead were chosen by the people…And so it was within the deeds you’ve done, and that was done with Crazy Horse (Tasunka Witko). Even the name Tasunka Witko relates to a spirit, a spirit of something that is animate, something that is, that you want to capture that spirit…And we see that as in warrior that we capture by utilizing certain types of wildlife. There are certain types of things that we observe, and with that type of observation Crazy Horse knew that. He observed the black coats or the priests and he listened to them. He listened to their words and Saint Pierre De Smet in the Jesuits.

The Jesuits profoundly continued to have this whole thing about conversion – always conversion in one way, they were ‘always’ right. Whereas Lakota in itself said you had a choice to choose who you were…And that conversion was done not within a classroom or within texts, but by icons, certain icons specifically related to the whole idea of writing an icon which we use today. If you look at how many icons are out there that we use in communicating today. So, he (Crazy Horse) went through that process. He went through that process and he was in that transformation. One of the things that we have a thing…or we call it a dragonfly – that stands for that, stands for transformation, as a transformation of both men and women, as a young people. It’s a transition into that world of becoming of being part of ceremonies, like ‘Catch the Ball” – how to do become a woman ceremony. How do you do that within Lakotas? You do it through Hanbleceya – go up and ask your Creator of who you are. These were the things that was impounded in Crazy Horse’s mind – as that person. He was neither, he came from where he was born…and that was what was given. So, he listened to those things, and he listened to what he thought was in that those things that would guide him.

So, in that time if you start looking back…to the times before 1868, look at all the battles that he has seen already. He had seen people of his stature just shot down and killed. He’s seen those happening with some of the leaderships that were surrounding the areas we, everybody, called at Fort Laramie. Fort Laramie was a trading post. The trading post became the place where you would go to talk of things…and people in each tiospaye lived different from one another. But they had an alliance of families, and those families had their own…leaders that they chose because of the knowledge of what that person possessed – both in men and women. It was an equality. It was an equality that they found in their philosophy. In their philosophy of significance of numbering seven and four and everything revolved around those issues. So, when you sing a song in Lakota, they say nowadays it’s usually done in four verses. Whereas western civilization, they have done it, their musical scales, if you look at, is seven notes. Lakotas is six… and so within the music itself it talks about the four directions – the mother earth, the sky, and the power beyond that, not just in this world but other world, to the universe, the stars we see and measured. So, coming into March and the solstice. It is a beginning of the ceremonies that will start again to reassure everything in this earth that there’s no past. The past is passed. Those who have passed are in the spirit world, they have gone on, they have done what they were made to do. But the future is always coming…but the present is here within this day and that’s why they call it anpetu and he (Crazy Horse) learned those things. Anpetu is the redness of the day when it comes. ‘Anpetu waste’ means it’s going to be a good red day.

At the end, he (Crazy Horse) was in a new transition, he was transitioning at the age of 32, some say 39, he died. He was killed. He came back and he was very patient and humble man and they found him very pleasing. He wasn’t a tyrant…it wasn’t in his personality. But he wanted to transform into adulthood. He wanted to relate, and his time of protecting was over. But in the end, he knew that when they took him and he was assassinated – they came in and tried to poison him…and so finally, the people, the Lakota people looked at him and said that he was a person that was an enigma. An enigma is…he was different. Why was he there? He took what he learned from all those around him and he used it for himself. He could not go back…because he already had it in himself his early learnings as a child, as a young adult, and a Native American.

So, we thank you for listening and will continue on with new stories and new contemporary native writers.

Thanks for watching!