Ulrike Helwerth

I am a Lakota (1), I speak Lakota but I come from the tribe of the Hunkpapa and I am a chief and overall leader of 79.000 people. My native Lakota name is Tjaoya Tewanka Pewee which, in English, means 'Lady-Seen-by-her-Nation'. I come from the Sitting Bull tribe and I grew up where they killed Sitting Bull (2) on the Standing Rock reservation in South Dakota. My name was given to me when I was four months old and its meaning is 'you will lead your people and the nation will follow you'. This same name has only been held previously by one other woman, and that was Sitting Bull's sister.

Women Chiefs

Back in the old times we had matriarchal societies. Those prestigious societies were our governments and I am a descendant of one of those woman chiefs of long ago. The society I come from is called 'the Red Robe society'. In former times those robes were made from buffalo but today there are no longer any buffaloes, so instead we wear a red coat or a red shirt.

We also had an overall government, which in English was called 'The Seven Campfire'. Each campfire had a chief, and there was a chief over everybody and that was Sitting Bull. Every tribe in The Seven Campfires of the government had a woman leader. She was either a warrior or a headwoman of a society, or she was a spiritual leader or a medicine woman. The final decision-making, whether to do or not to do something, even whether to go to war or not, was a woman's decision. But this government disappeared when the white military started destroying our natural boundaries and confining us to the forts.

In the early 19th century, when they started making treaties with us, our women chiefs were not recognized and we had to appoint male representatives from our families. So they gathered at one of our sacred places called 'Two Kettles' to discuss the future of our people, but they were all massacred by the military. Later when the treaty process was fully applied to our territories with the cooperation of the men chiefs, there were no longer any women's societies. Everything started going underground. The women's roles were kept secret, because we believe that things always happen twice, and they will repeat themselves if you do not take care. So only selected families kept the knowledge and the wisdom and the principles of life and the practice of the ceremonies.

Secret Knowledge

The rituals and the initiations continued, but it was never done publicly and you were afraid to talk about it. Many of the teachings that I received were very secret, and all the elders with whom I worked and who taught me have said: 'You cannot talk yet until the sign has been given'. I was very young and was not allowed to ask what the sign was. I first had to prepare for four years. And when I was worthy of this information, it was given to me as follows:

We navigate with our star cosmology, and follow certain migration patterns. But we also have to know the place where we originated from, when we first came on top of this earth. Before, we were inside Mother Earth. If you can identify where these places are, then you are worthy of being within the society and of having this information.

So I had to travel from my region to the point we came from which is called 'Wind Cave', a very sacred cave. Going there you have to discover something about yourself. What I discovered was that we were known as a 'star people' but we were also known as a 'common people'. This means that we were one people from one mother and one father, and that it was a privilege, an honor to stand upright. Therefore you must not abuse that power by arrogance, but have humility.

How a person walks and talks is very important to the old elders because they watch to see if you have arrogance and they will say: 'You appreciate nothing because of the way you walk and talk, you take things for granted'. They have to make sure that all is respected and honored. Whether you agree with it or not, is not the question, you need to be humble and you need to say 'Yes', otherwise you are not a good leader. Everything we do as a chief or as a headwoman is based on our deeds, not what we accumulate, not money, or anything like that.

Dealing with Mainstream Society

I was allowed to go to school because of the changes that were seen coming. We needed to have educated ones to understand what the dominant society was doing and how that was going to affect our people. So I was given permission to attend school. I graduated from a public school and went on to college. But during this time, I was still told to return home, and so it took me almost nine years to really finish my education. The elders feared that I would become too absorbed in the mainstream society and forget about the people. So they kept pulling me home.

When I was in my third year of college living away from home, my grandmothers suddenly arrived one day. I could not believe that they had left the reservation and found me. But one of my aunts had picked them up outside of the city limits and brought them to my place. They wanted to check up and make sure that I was not being totally assimilated. When they saw that I lived in an apartment as a single woman, for them it was not good or healthy. I did not have places to grow things. I had grown up in rural surroundings with horses and wild animals and there was nothing like that here.

The other problem for them was what I was learning in school. They said: 'You speak too good English, you need to come home'. They wanted me to leave right away but I made an agreement with them that I would stay until the end of the year and then I would go and stay at home. They were anxious about things that were happening in my family and that I needed to take responsibility then, and assume my role. My responsibility was that I should be a warrior and take the place of a brother who had been killed in Vietnam. So I went into the military service and spent 13 years there, and during that time I was able to finish my education. Back home I was treated very respectfully because of my military status, my warrior status.

Time to Teach

Today I am the only female chief who sits on a council of 17 other chiefs and they are all aged in their nineties. I am also their legal advisor and handle all the international affairs of my people, even the economic aspects. I am also helping to bring back the traditional ways of society structures to our people.

For us, everything is directed by our prophecies. Our particular prophecy is the white buffalo calf woman returning. In the 1990s, when the women elders with this knowledge (we call them robe keepers), started dying, I was given permission to teach. They said to me: 'Now is the time to teach, to bring it out in public. Go out, the women will come to you, they will know you through a dream'. So I went home and stayed there for one year, had no public contact and did what I needed to prepare the teaching. As all these teachings have never been written down, I had to start by translating these teachings into English.

After that year the women started coming, finding me through dreams. It was amazing. One of devastations of my people has been alcohol, particularly among women. So many of the women who came were sick - into alcohol or drugs, or some other form of destruction. Through the teachings they started to change their lives. And they started looking at their background, their identity realizing that they were someone, and they became society women. Many women who had formerly been matriarchal headwomen, came out now and said: 'I am a descendent of so and so; this is my genealogy; this is who I am. Do I have the right to be a member of the society?' But one has to earn that right, and so the women had to undergo a one-year initiation period. After that, for the next four years they had to keep themselves worthy of maintaining the teachings and the principles of the society. And there are many things that are required of them.

By now I have 290 women in our society and only one percent is affected by alcoholism in the reservations. This is because women are now realizing their role and responsibility as women. Bringing that back gradually has been like a culture shock, because they have been so used to the dominant way of life.

Women of Red Nations

In 1970, when the big civil rights American Indian Movement was developing, our elder women got together and said: 'We need to send someone out from the society'. So from their knowledge of the families, they picked a family of women, young girls, who have the teachings within their family. And the elders said: 'You will wear a red coat, which symbolizes this red blanket that we wear. And you will be sent out to tell the world what is happening to our people, and then you will report back what they are saying'. This family of sisters went out and included Madonna Thunderhawk, a teacher and an aunt of mine; and Phyllis Young who is also a red rope. They were sent out to tell the people what is happening to us, because they could speak and read and write.

From this originated the 'Women of Red Nations', and the first part of our teaching was to go public with our women. When the teachings began, many of our people were scared, and they are still scared, because of the spiritual power which is part of it. Some of our people are Christians and some are traditional practitioners, and those ways are still in conflict on the reservations. Well, I am a Christian but I am also related to the tradition. So this has to be a gradual process, step by step, and we are starting with the young kids and then the kinship falls into place. Next year we are taking some of the young women and girls to Wind Cave to teach them.

This work is beginning with women and it is going to end with women, because the prophecy says that 'the white buffalo calf woman will only return when the women take their place of honor again'.

(1) Lakota are native North Americans of the prairie and central plains. Their dialect is Lakota. They form the western tribes of the people of the Dakota (better known today as Sioux). The Dakota consist of various tribes of distinctive cultures and dialects.
(2) Sitting Bull was one of the most outstanding Dakota chiefs. He is said to have been the famous winner of the 1876 battle against General Custer at Little Big Horn. He later escaped to Canada but returned in 1889 with the so-called 'ghost-dancing movement' and was finally murdered by the white militaries. With the massacre of chief Wounded Knee in December 1890, the long lasting resistance of the Dakota was definitively broken.

Recorded and written down by the German journalist Ulrike Helwerth.

Germaine Tremmel is a Native American, a descendent of the Lakota and a member of the Hunkpapa group. She is an attorney and serves as a legal advisor for her people. She is an observer of the Lakota Nation Human Rights and its official representative at the board of directors of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO). Germaine Tremmel is a leading Lakota chief and head of a women's society. She also serves as spiritual advisor for The Red Drum Women Singers of Minneapolis/Minnesota.

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