A very Happy New Year from me and my family to you and yours! In December, I wrote to you and asked you to help spread the word about passing the Remove the Stain Act. By rescinding 20 Medals of Honor awarded to soldiers who murdered nearly 300 Lakota women, men, and children at the Wounded Knee Massacre in December of 1890, we can more deeply recognize our ancestors. In this way, we honor the sacrifices they made so that we can be here today.

In that same email, I referenced the annual Chief Big Foot Memorial Ride, in which many of my relatives take to horseback to retrace the path our ancestors traveled before that horrific day. Today, I encourage you to watch our new video, in which I talk more about the annual tradition of this ride, the history behind it, and its deep meaning to our people. 

My relatives honor our ancestors at the Chief Big Foot Memorial Ride.

Undertaking this journey and reminding ourselves of the reality of what our ancestors went through on that hard winter’s trail helps to ground and more fully connect us. It takes many days and resources to replicate on horseback the original journey from Standing Rock through my home nation of Cheyenne River to Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation. How hard it must have been for those families who did it on foot in 1890 — and directly on the heels of the murder of Sitting Bull. 

Eagle Hunter, my brother-in-law, put it eloquently and succinctly: “Wasigla.” This is something that you don’t forget. We Lakota are a visual people, and the modern-day visual of following the trail to Wounded Knee is powerfully symbolic for us. We who are Indigenous to this land engage in ceremonial memorials because it’s part of who we are. We don’t usually write it down, we just do what’s in our ancestral memory. But today, I write to share this memory with you.

Wopila tanka — thank you for riding with us in spirit!
Madonna Thunder Hawk
Cheyenne River Organizer
The Lakota People’s Law Project