In the beginning, we sleep to Peyote songs in raucous laughter, young men stretching their

first war whoops and mocking rooster crow's answer from the teepees.

We wake to geese calls before sunrise the loud yapping of packs of coyotes that always remind me of a small horde of freshmen jostling one another in the hallways the bros of the animal world

if we win these sounds will greet our great-grandchildren and one day I'll be on the hill with white hair on the microphone

talking about these mad days when the Hunkpapa called and we answered.

I might even embellish how brave I was or important.

If we fail, only silence.

I ask all my grandmothers and grandfathers living in dead, be with us now bear with us. Help us find the will to do what needs to be done.

I'm not going to die here. I don't want to be arrested and I'm too big to run and I'm not a fighter not really I don't see what lies ahead

There is so much that could have been done we could have reached out to our black brothers and sisters to stand with us, sent out our most

respectable to every mayor's office, city council meeting, PTA school board and town hall

on the Missouri. Every town and farming community that drinks the water or the pipeline crosses and

doesn't really matter now.

We are here, they are coming. All I ask of myself is to live these next few days well.

The camp is waking up.

Alka. Because I am too sad or mad to think I will write. There is no Lakota word for God. God is an English

word meaning deity but since England has been a Christian nation for over a

thousand years when we say God, it means Christian God, unless specifically

pointed out to mean another God. Christianity began in Judaism where he is named Ottenai,

among other names, meaning king of the universe.

The Lakota universe was not created

by a one single male god. You can squint real hard and have to get into those beard stroking theology

...