2016: A Winter Count

Late December is the time when our TV screens blow up with video collages of “the year in review.”

In this year-end post, I want to look back at 2016 in a different way. I’d like to think about the passage of time in somewhat the same way as the Lakotas of the nineteenth century did—as a record of the period from first snowfall to first snowfall, which might be summed up in a single image an elder could use as a starting point for narrating the history of his community.

Battiste Good Winter Count, 1880; Manuscript 2372: Box 12: F6, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

The Lakotas called these records waniyetu wowapi, a phrase that combines the word for the span of time between winters, and wowapi, which “means anything that is marked on a flat surface and can be read or counted, such as a book, a letter, or a drawing.” In English, we call them Winter Counts.

Among the many interesting things about this way of taking stock of a year’s events is that it is usually made by a designated member of a tioyspaye, a Lakota kinship group, and thus often reflects very local concerns. For this reason, every Lakota Winter count will record the same image for any given year. But sometimes they do. The most famous case  is the Leonid Meteor Shower of 1833/34. Many waniyetu wowapi note this event.

American Horse Winter Count, 1879; Manuscript 2372: Box 12: F7, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

This hand drawn copy of a Winter Count made  by American Horse in 1879 shows the year 1833 as a red central star surrounded by a flurry of smaller stars. Battiste Good’s Winter Count (above ) depicts the same winter as a tipi encircled by stars.

At  least one incident in 2016 was like the Leonid Meteor Showers. The protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline were a call to arms across Indian Country and, like the stars raining down in the night skies of North America in 1833, the efforts of the Standing Rock Sioux Nations soon grew to include Native peoples from across America and Canada. They called themselves Water Protectors when the media labeled them demonstrators, and they adopted a Lakota phrase for their motto: Mni Wiconi–Water is Life.

From other, local perspectives, however, many occurances are worthy of marking down on our informal winter count.

In Northeastern California, the Pit River Tribe (known in their own languages as  Hewisedawi) successfully defended their rights of sovereignty over Spirit Lake, a glacial-fed body of water over which the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) had claimed jurisdiction. Over on the coast, the Hupa Nation embarked on the restoration of its traditional salmon fisheries by restoring the Lower Trinity River watershed that supports them.

Many indigenous communities will remember this year for the passing of elders. The Fond du Lac Ojibwa community of Minnesota mourned the loss this year of one of their great writers and activists, Jim Northrup.

A Marine veteran of the Vietnam War, Mr. Northrup wrote an influential collection of stories called Walking the Rez Road in 1993, and produced a syndicated newspaper column, “The Fond du Lac Follies.”

In his youth, he was forced to attend boarding school, an experience he later regarded with some irony. He was punished for speaking his own language and beaten for minor infractions, yet he always felt that the school’s introduction of “formal English” taught him that “it was possible for an Anishinaabe to become a writer.” It came at a high cost. To learn to read and write this way meant giving up Anishinaabemowin—the idiom of his elders. As part of the healing process he embraced after Viet Nam, Northrup returned to study the language, and in his later years, regained much he had lost and embraced a more traditional way of life.

In the Blackfeet Nation of Montana, 2016 witnessed a renewed pride in the work of tribal member Elouise Cobell, as President Obama posthumously awarded her the Medal of Freedom.

In his remarks, President Obama said this about Ms. Cobell:

When Elouise Cobell first filed a lawsuit to recover lands and money for her people, she didn’t set out to be a hero  . . . .   She fought for almost 15 years — across three Presidents, seven trials, 10 appearances before a federal appeals court.  All the while, she traveled the country some 40 weeks a year, telling the story of her people.  And in the end, this graduate of a one-room schoolhouse became a MacArthur Genius . . .   Through sheer force of will and a belief that the truth will win out, Elouise Cobell overcame the longest odds, reminding us that fighting for what is right is always worth it.

But perhaps the most telling event of this time between the snowfalls was the passing over of Joseph Medicine Crow of the Crow Nation in April.

In 2009, President Barack Obama also awarded Medicine Crow the Presidential Medal of Freedom, recognizing his achievements as an historian of Native American history and his U.S. Army service during World War II.

“Wearing war paint beneath his uniform and a sacred feather beneath his helmet, Joseph Medicine Crow completed the four battlefield deeds that made him the last Crow war chief.” Obama said at the White House ceremony.

A few weeks ago, the New York Times published a slideshow featuring photographs of the rooms where the famous people who died during the year had spent much of their time. It is a fascinating gallery, wordlessly sketching the outlines of their inner selves. One picture stands out for me, and I’ll use it as my glyph to mark the winter of 2016. It is the garage office of Joseph Medicine Crow.

Photograph by Mitch Epstein.

Although the office is empty for now, there are others who will step up to take the historian’s place—not only in the Crow Nation, but across Indian Country. The thousands who emerged to protect the Missouri River watershed are energized and there is a new year ahead.

 

Sources

http://wintercounts.si.edu/html_version/html/index.htmlhttp://wintercounts.si.edu/index.html

http://www.turtletrack.org/Issues10/CO120110/CO_120110_JimNorthrup.htm

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/joseph-medicine-crow-last-crow-tribe-war-chief-dies-at-102/

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/21/magazine/the-lives-they-lived-photo-essay-spaces.html

Leave a Reply