This is the story I was told.

When the boats came, about 300 of them passed away on the trip.

It was 1500 and 300, 298 or somewhere around there and when they got here, it was a prison camp.

It was the men and women and the children of the influential people, the people who had the oyates ear, I guess so to say, and so they put them there in the prison camp and they degraded them in front of their children and families, to maybe stop that awareness of what they were and the things that they did to them.

Where they, they would have to sell themselves the women would have to sell themselves to feed their children, sometimes sell their own children to feed everybody.

They sexually assaulted the men in front of their families to show them that they weren't nothing and things like that.

You know, I never could understand why, why we had to do all that.

And my godfather was telling me a story.

I heard a story and I ran it by him and the story I heard was that before all this, before the white man came and while we still had our way of life and it was real strong, that when all the spiritual people were gathered, they told them that 'hey, there's change coming, it's gonna... the balance, but that not to worry that, they'll put all the the people where the healing will come from in one spot and that's where the healing will come from.'

And then, they said that place is here and I was like, wow, I thought about that and I kept that story to myself for a long time and I ran it by my godfather who lived those ways, and things like that, he looks at me said 'yeah that's been told by everybody for a long long time.'

I said why doesn't anybody in Fort (Thompson) know it then?

Why?

I need to share it.

It's a prophecy it's going to come true.

Because I'm like, okay well I guess that's that makes sense you know but those those things that we go, that we've been through as a people, I used to look at it and see ourselves in a negative light, but the more I, the more I am aware of our history and who we are the more I see that it's just showing us how strong we are and the strength we have and and the things we already overcome and looking at the things we already overcome.

There's nothing that we can't do; and that's why, that's why I come on these things.

They say the horse reflects what what you carry, and if you come with anger it'll show you anger and when you come with sadness it'll come and help you.

Maybe not on this ride but we have some horses at our pasture, my mom she works in the social services field and worked in a shelter and children's advocacy center at the time and this one lady came and said she was in a bad situation talking to my mom and said she had this dream of these horses, she said, well we got some horses you can come check them out, she goes out there and the first horse she sees is the one in her dream and she just starts bawling because it had to do with some family members that passed away and things like that.

And as she was sitting there crying all of them horses got in the line all stood in front of her and went and then the last horse came the one she dreamt about put his shoulder, put his head right on her shoulders.

I don't know, I think that's all that needs to be said about the horse.

They know.

They know more than we do and when we find that connection, wow man, the thing, the power behind that.

They say the, the shunka wonka, and the dog's a shunka.

Well, from what I'm understanding and learning, and I could be wrong, but this is what I'm starting to understand, is the dog, shunka, means more than that.

The dog, and what a dog is, it's the friend.

No matter what you do, it's always there when you need it you know and then the horse does all that but sacred, bigger.

You know it is.

That's, that's what it is, they're big dogs.

I guess.

The War of 1862, they called the Dakota Uprising, that happened back in Minnesota.

It's more complicated than people think.

They think it started over some eggs and that's the farthest thing from the truth.

It was through starvation.

They were starving the people.

They were on that strip they called the Minnesota strip, and all around them was all these farmers and they had been clearing all their land off and the people still had to strip and they're in there and they're going there taking.

Taking our resources and from what I've heard was the women couldn't even go out and gather for fear of being assaulted by them and who would you go to for justice.

You know, who do you believe, you know, it's even like that today, but it started from way back then.

All the way to the the war.

What had happened was after the Minnesota Uprising and Abraham Lincoln hung 38 of our grandfathers plus two.

Two more a year later, the women and the children and the old men were put on the boats and they kept the men in prison down there, I believe in Davenport, Iowa.

But they brought them up the river here to Fort Thompson and 1300 got on the boats down there and only 1,000 arrived.

So, 300 perished along the way.

So, if you look at our staff "A Woman Who Has a Hard Time."

There's 300 eagle plumes that are around her, they represent the 300 that perished along the way.

Then after the war the people, the 38 being hung, people put in Fort Snelling and it was Hell there for them.

And there's stories there of what was happening to the women because they separated the men and the women and what was happening, nobody really believed it until those letters came out.

There's Dakota letters, there's a lot of stories in there, my mother-in-law she read one and she started crying because it told what happened.

What that girl was going through, and nothing... they couldn't do nothing about it.

From the soldiers, from there after the the hangings, the women being sent down.

Women, children, and elderly sent down river, St. Louis up the river and to what would be known as Crow Creek.

If you ever go to Santee Nebraska there is a mural on in the tribal building.

They call it the 'Cap Office', there's a mural in there of a steamboat called the Florence and on that steamboat it's packed with faces upper decks, lower decks, it's completely... they said it was standing room only on there.

They were fed pork and hard bread and water from Missouri, that's what they had to eat and people started dying, started getting sick, some people some of them jumped off because they didn't know what was coming for them and they'd already been through Hell back in Fort Snelling and watching the people watching our warriors be hung and then they were chained up.

They were chained up, and these were women, you know... are they dangerous?

Why are they chained up?

But they chained them up.

But they sent them up the river and they disembarked at Crow Creek.

That's where they took them and then there was nothing there for them.

Nothing.

You know, I, to me, I feel like they thought that people were like animals, like people can take a dog and take it out in the country and let it go and think that dog is going to survive.

You know what, but 98 percent of the time that dog dies.

Because they don't know how to survive.

And you know, the women were sent to a land that was different from the woodlands of Minnesota.

Without anything, with children they were left to fend for themselves and the rations they had, it wasn't enough and then there was all kinds of stories about cottonwood soup and what they were forced to eat.

There are stories about about... these are the easy stories, the easy stories are going through horse manure or picking out grains of corn or any kind of grains to make some kind of soup for their children.

That's the easy stories.

There was a man there, he was a commander he, encouraged his man, we found his... what they call memoirs or whatever his journals, that's what they call them journals.

We found his journals and in his journals he encouraged this man to dehumanize the women.

And with that man, and we know what that meant, and that's what happened to them.

He said things in that, in his journal, about the women's bodies, that do it, do... whatever you want to them, dehumanize them and... and they did and nobody to protect them.

The men, the men were imprisoned in Davenport, Iowa.

So, they had to live through that, still trying to feed their children.

Later on they had to turn to that, to feed their children.

Do anything and everything, to try to feed their children.

First year, over 300 died.

Over 300 children, from starvation, malnutrition, and sickness.

And you know, somebody said, well, they drink milk.

Well you know what?

They didn't have bottles for babies.

Those women nursed, you know, nursed, those babies.

What happens when that woman don't get enough nutrition?

She's not going to produce milk, and that's what happened.

The babies started dying and all over those hills are our graves of those little ones.

So, all this, all these things happening to them and yet, still trying to hang on and the dehumanization part, it didn't happen like they wanted it to.

It made them more human because they did everything and anything to keep their babies alive, trying to.

I've asked, I've asked all the women on this ride for the last five years if they would do the same thing they all said yes because... you do whatever you could for your children and if you have children, I'm a man, I would die for my children, my grandkids if something was to happen, I would die for them and that's what those women did.

And that's just a Dakota thing, and I mean, maybe it's a human being trait, I don't know.

But you would die for your children and... you know this whole ride started on that 38 ride when we were riding and I was I was talking to my son and I told him about this.

He didn't know nothing about it, he's a Yankton Sioux, he didn't know nothing about it, and very few people knew about this, this part of history.

And I told him about it and then I learned more.

I learned more and more and I talked to people up here in Fort Thompson and we did some research and there's no pictures anywhere from 1863 to 1866.

It's like that part of history is gone, they erased it, we can't find any pictures of what happened.

Just after that, but I told him about it and I said, you know, we should do a ride for them, to honor them, to honor them and to remember those children.

And it was, I mean when you say something, you make a commitment to do something, something like that you should keep going on it.

So, we did, and it was a struggle.

But, we did that first year, we honored those grandmothers.

We call them our grandmothers because they're, I mean they were there, there was no age limit on those women up there.

There wasn't 30 years old and... might have been real young girls to grandmas.

But they all went through Hell up there and they did whatever they could to try to feed those children.

So, I told them we need to honor them for being moms, you know being mothers.

But it was, it's hard because when we talk about these things, my friend Claude, he always told me, we have something inside us and it's called historical trauma.

And right now I'm getting, getting a little bit like that, getting a little sad thinking about it again.

When I think about them, my mom, my grandma... What they do, what they did for us.

And it's just what they did back then, they did everything and anything.

Those children you know we, we remembered them that first year.

We had a, we did what they couldn't do up there.

Up when they died, when they passed away, we had ceremony for them and we honored those moms for doing, like I said, with doing what they did.

The the main focus of Dakota 38, the message is reconciliation and healing.

Everything that evolves around it is, it's all intertwined with each other, and stuff like that.

These rides are all intertwined, the lifestyle, the horse culture, the horses they're all intertwined with it and they're all contributing and they're all helping to heal and what I would like to see is this carried on further and people recognize it as healing.

I mean, we're talking medicine, we're talking modern medicine.

IHS (Indian Health Services).

This the kind of healing we're talking about, you can't do it in IHS.

it's inside, and it's, I guess they call it generational trauma.

All that, that bad, negative, negativity that we carry inside us that's been collected from back there up until now.

I mean, it's so... we're so used to it that we don't even know that we're doing it.

I mean, a lot of the people we have to explain this healing and explain it to them so they can make that connection.

I mean they did, they all know, there's something there that's not clicking.

What is this?

I mean they're smart people, but it's been conditioning... conditioning to the point where they don't understand, they don't see it and they don't realize what you're doing sometimes.

And that stuff.

So, that's what we're trying to break here and the healing.

When they recognize it, when they see it, when they understand it, then they can start helping themselves.

But they don't, there's a lot of them that go through it, and not really because... of all the alcohol, all the drugs, all the... don't make that connection.

It's really hard, really hard, because we sit back and watch them.

This destructive behavior that they're conditioned to use and it's a very, very painful situation for everyone.

So, after that they exiled the Dakota, I mean a lot of the Dakota went North, went West, you know the ones that they had in prison there at Fort Snelling were the ones who were sent to Crow Creek and at Crow Creek that name nobody talked about it.

I mean, nobody talked about Crow Creek, you didn't hear about it, you never heard stories about it.

I remember hearing some stories one time and I didn't know exactly what they were talking about.

This is when I was young but nobody talked about it because it was such a hard part of our history and we have history books they talk about Crow Creek a little bit, all they say is they had a hard time.

That's it.

Nothing.

Nothing else, it didn't, it's like they didn't want the world to know what those soldiers did.

That those were war crimes but they don't, they don't like to hear that and that it was a P.O.W.

camp.

But, they don't want to say that.

And these were women and children under, under the care of the United States Government, Abraham Lincoln.

A lot of people think, Abraham Lincoln was a good man, he knew what was going on, he knew, he's the one who signed the order on the on the '38' and they always say he was compassionate but it wasn't that.

It was because of other countries watching what was happening here, in this country.

Just like today, when something happens other countries are watching us.

This country right now for whatever we do, whatever happens and that's the same way back then.

He was scared, he was scared they were going to join the confederacy because that was... that went on the same time as the Civil War.

The largest mass execution in the history of the United States, they hung 38 Dakota boys in Mankato, Minnesota.

December 26, 1862. and we needed to remember them, to honor them, to bring awareness to them for their, for the sacrifice that they made.

I mean, a lot of them, a lot of the Dakota boys out there that were captured and that were taken in as prisoners and stuff, thought that they had the truth because they helped and it wasn't that way so for their help to the to the non-native they suffered for it severely.

For the Dakota people and anything that we do with horses or we do with rides or runs or walks is a not only a memorial but, is to help heal what they call historical hurt, historical trauma.

Same thing as veterans of war have is PTSD, that post-traumatic stress disorder.

And so those effects from then still affect us today.

And so, we take a prayer, we start a prayer, and then we take that, we carry that, horses help carry that, the people, the staffs, then when it's done we try to let that go.

So, we take that, any kind of hurt and trauma and we take it and we let it go and we're always thinking about the little guys that you can see behind.

The little guys so they don't have to struggle and they don't have to battle anymore.

And when you go through history and different parts of those, you have religious persecution, you have the educational persecution and all those different eras from that 1862 era for Dakota people.

So, you have a boarding school era religious persecution that's basically how these communities got started.

Whether it's Crow Creek or Santee or Flandreau, and it was an imposed religion which all led into what they call Federal Law.

Which was a Indian Court of Offenses, if we did what we're doing today, back then, all the men here would be put in prison for what we're doing today.

And so, the contemporary times federal law was the freedom religion which was in seventy four, seventy eight it's right, right in that area where we as native people were allowed to maintain, do our ceremonies.

So, a lot of our ceremonies that we do today were hidden back in the day because it was illegal.

It was illegal to do that.

So, you think about, '78 that's not very long ago that we were even allowed to... even allowed to do this.

So, any anything that I talk about is usually a documented source, it can show you the Indian Court of Offences.

You can look that up, if a group of five of us was standing together... and it's funny because, and not to get off track of the subject, is that because of these pipelines and pipeline protests they're actually going back and using those laws in Minnesota and they're trying to do those laws again here in South Dakota with this Keystone XL pipeline coming through and saying that a group of us can't be, can't gather together.

You know how... how insane is that?

Well, we always hear it, it's your lifestyle.

You'll be back.

She ran away.

You guys drink... you know.

But, so does the rest of the world.

And to me, I feel, I still feel like they think that people aren't human beings.

That we're less.

That we're less.

And the only way we ever really see anything is through this [phone] and that's Facebook.

We see who's missing and we, we always share because that those are our relatives.

Whether it's Washington State, whether it's Georgia, whether it's Canada, South Dakota, Nebraska... That is our Amber Alert, because they're not doing it.

Again, the greater, a greater awareness of those issues that seem to always get pushed under the carpet, or pushed out of the way, that's something that we as native people have been dealing with from from day one and I always go back to federal law or case law.

One of the things that came along with, in a reservation era, when we were placed on reservations is they call it 'The Bad Man Clause'.

So, a non-native person that came on to the reservation and he did something through that 'Bad Man Clause', you're supposed to be held accountable, but to date, because of jurisdiction state and federal, they don't follow that 'Bad Man Clause', but it's in place.

So for all of these years, I can't remember the percentage of what the number is on indigenous women, but it's something like 10 times the national average of missing women and so in an awareness level, it's good that they're bringing an awareness to it but they're placing us, again, in a category of "indigenous" when it should just be 'Missing and Murdered Women' but if that's what it takes...

If it takes a horse ride or it takes a walk or a run or a protest to bring that awareness...

I'm 57 years old and it's gonna be 2020, and this stuff, just blows my mind that we're finally getting to this point.

And it's gonna be, 2020.

What does that say about the federal process?

What does that say about a state process?

Where you can worry about this group of people, but over here... secondary, and it shouldn't be that way.

So, for me it's just a greater awareness of those issues.

If there could be, and it's not just South Dakota, this is across the board, all native lands, all across North America.

There's unsolved murders and they're still missing women, and so I can only be thankful that again there's an awareness that's being, that's arising.

So, the greater the community becomes involved, the more people that you have to help is always a plus, no matter... whatever law enforcement agency, whatever federal agency, just community awareness, has just been pushed under the table too long.

I remember, me and my até talking about how they brought him up this river here behind you and there was nowhere, nowhere to dock here I guess back then.

Otherwise, they probably would have dropped them off here, but anyway they went on up the river to Fort Thompson, ''Old Fort" and we have a lot of relatives there that are from here.

The Yanktonai's, when they built the dam, I think about them when I'm up there because as a THPO, (Tribal Historic Preservation Office) Director back then there was remains found.

They were not the Hunkpati they were the Yanktonai band which is from here.

One of our bands that were up North.

And we have them in Canada, but the women, yeah, they endured.

Some say, some they say carried their babies in their arms, for three days and the babies were dead.

So, you put yourself in in that position and the feeling and, it gets really emotional.

When we we talk about these things, and it's again, it goes back to the historic piece of the trauma that was put on us by the leaders, back then, of the United States, we lived up to our obligation I believe, you know we've... we're here on this, I call it a prison camp, they call them reservations, but things are different for us nowadays.

Back then we were the caretakers of the land, now I guess we're we're stuck in a little place and it gets different once you go outside the boundaries, but and then when we leave from here, we get into areas where the racism is terrible.

We see people that, that just hate us for not even knowing what we're doing.

You know?

But still, it just goes back to the way they were brought up, I guess.

You know, their grandparents taught them that, we're savage, bad people, I guess.

And when you see them, that's all they are, you know?

But if you get to know any native, we have stereotypes out there on us to this day.

We still are looked down on, but I'm very proud of being who I am.

The meaning of this ride is that... to remember that there were over 1500 that were imprisoned in Fort Snelling and out of those 1500 there, it was over, there's over at least 11 or 1200 were women and children.

So, the ones that were shipped, taken on steamboat, those were women and children.

So, along the way, starting in Minneapolis, down to St. Louis and then coming up the Missouri.

Whenever somebody would die, because there was a lot of sickness and the boats were overpopulated and when somebody died they didn't have a proper burial, they just basically threw them off, threw them in the water and that was the end of it.

Whether it was a woman or children.

So, the ride is to remember those women and children that came up and then were dropped off in Crow Creek or Fort Thompson.

So, that's kind of the meaning of this, is to remember the women.

The women and the children.

The staff here on this ride, the women and children's ride just has a pipe stone carved head on it and it has 300 plumes and there's some feathers on there that belong to some people and there are tobacco ties on it and those, those are all individual, the 300 plumes represent the 300 children that died the first year, the exiled prisoners were brought out here that first year they lost 300 plus children the plumes represent them.

Why I started to ride is when Jim and Perry came and asked us I was still using pretty heavily or pretty regularly at that time and I wanted it, I want it different and I was, I had started trying to straighten out my path a few years before then.

But with change, that's how it is and so, when he asked me I was pretty unsure of it and wanted to represent that, but didn't really feel I deserved... deserved to do that.

So, I was, my dad he's always...

I always ask him things and he's like "pray on it".

I'm like, oh man, come on just give me an answer.

And I'm beginning to understand what that... what that means.

I just asked, show me that I'm good enough to represent this.

I don't feel like I'm good enough.

For me, it brought awareness to why them old ones struggled and how much they went through for us just to be here.

For us to be walking, breathing, talking.

And, wow, you know, the things you read about and the stories you hear... it's just unreal, you know?

Made me understand, like wow, the love they had.

You know?

It's pretty powerful, too.

To experience that and get that understanding that there's countless people who struggled for you to be here.

So, at least honor that and do something with it.

It's harder for us to come together in a good way but we always come together in death.

I think these rides symbolize what oyate is, as a whole because more than coming together in death, we should always be together in life.

So, I think these rides are significant in our culture because at the end of time story, it's a coming to circle that means all nationalities, white, red, black, and yellow, the colors of the circle.

So, and I do believe that seventh generation is who we need to do this for and save and that's why there's seven powers.

That's why we have seven sacred rights.

That's why we honor the four directions.

And the seventh being ourselves.

I believe that.

If we can get past what's been taught us and we go back to feeling the way we feel on a day-to-day basis; I think we could bring circles together.

You know there's a lot of, trauma within that, within families that do with that.

And when I think about that kind of stuff too, it's kind of like a double whammy to a people that really has, pre-existing conditions of PTSD.

Things, that, where they're being triggered and, a lot of them, a lot of young people back home aren't just all on any rez.

I see they talk about the suicide rates being really high and I believe it's because of that PTSD.

Going anywhere else in America, suicide rates aren't that high, but if you go to a reservation it's really high.

Even myself, when I was younger, I made an attempt, to take my life and, that just, I was going through a lot at that time, made me think about a lot of things.

And when that happened, it kind of scared me, but you know, I thought about, why did I want to do that?

I was depressed, I went into a depression and started having anxiety attacks, panic attacks and I thought I was going crazy.

So, I didn't know how to treat it, I guess, so I drank a lot.

Drank a lot and eventually, that led to me getting in trouble and took me down a different, a dark path, but because of these ways, it kind of brought me back.

So, I'm grateful for the horse and all the leaders, the headsman, of these rides, that lead these rides, gives us a purpose, another purpose.

Repurposing a time where I wasn't really doing anything, and it made me find out more about myself and why I was dealing with things and gave me that support system that I didn't really have there.

People gathering around people, that talk about PTSD and trauma and things like that.

I never grew up hearing any of that until I started coming on these rides and then I started to realize, 'hey, you know, some of the people that come on the ride, some of the other riders and leaders they talked about it and I recognized those same traits that they were talking about within myself.'

So, finding that support and finding that, I don't know what you would call it, more of a mentorship, guidance, helping me process things.

I find that here, on these rides.

As the years go on, there was younger people I've seen, young young ladies and my nephew grow up on this ride and I was talking the other day about what I feel that means and it's cool to see that they're riding for the children that suffered and their families.

And the way we believe is you have seven generations in you, in the traumas the struggles, but also the strengths.

And when you start realizing that or when I started realizing that... My focus went away from the negative things around me.

My environment never changed, I still live in Fort Thompson, still work there and just what I see, how I see things and recognizing that and maybe if I was exposed to that at a younger age I would have followed, maybe a a less, a less difficult path and I think that's what we're supposed to do is make our... the next generation's life better than what we had.

And, if that's exposing them to this or maybe being a part of it, then that's a good thing.

I would say, the past maybe three years now, it kind of came down to that, where it was majority young youth.

Younger kids, our kids, they got older.

I've seen a lot of these kids grow up on these rides.

So, just to kind of see them when they're kids, now some of them adults, that's a good feeling because I know that they're watching and they're learning their way of life and also finding that identity and connecting it with the horse.

So, that's pretty awesome.

The horse has energy.

Not only the horse I mean we say the horse has energy but creation has energy.

Every animal, every blade of grass, everything.

It all has their own form of energy.

The horse became a family member when the native first brought it, came in contact with him.

They brought him in, they treat him as family, like that and stuff, with this energy, this healing energy that he has.

He share's it with the people, like that.

And so, grandmas and grandpas they knew these things back there.

Today it's a little different because we're not in that environment anymore, so it's a little harder to understand, to realize, to make these connections.

Simple explanation, that is you can take a horse into anywhere there's a public gathering, you lead a horse into that gathering or by that gathering and what you're going to get is you're going to get all these little ones and they're going to all come running and look at them and you can see the smiles and the lights, it lights them up and they come running and they're like this and they want to touch that horse they want to make contact with it.

That's the energy that we're talking about, that's this healing power that we're talking about.

It does that to them, it has that effect.

You get a lot of time to be with yourself and I don't know if a lot of people can really understand that, because a lot of people they like to relate this... people driving down the road they relate it to trail riding, but they don't really understand the significance, they don't understand the movement, and it's all about energy.

What we create here when we have all these horses together, it creates energy.

If we had a horse, for instance, if we had a horse that hadn't been ridden in a long time, wouldn't go by itself, you get all these horses together they start moving.

So, the horse and the company, you're all creating a greater energy that helps with that processing.

You just, I don't think you can get that at a clinic or in a therapist session or counseling.

You can't get that there.

We get it in the ditches with our horses.

Horses are the therapists.

So, that's, it's awesome.

We found a way to tap in.

Stuff that we already knew, but kind of just put it away.

Put it to the side.

A lot of people, we don't talk about that stuff, so.

But, we are now.

The horses, I believe the main thing about these rides is the medicine that these Shunka Wakan give us.

I said earlier how I got a horse.

That is the biggest honor to me is, I'm gonna get choked up, just it's unexplainable the medicine that they carry, not just to sit on their back, but to hold them and feel them and just to be around them.

It's healing for not only our people, every nationality, there isn't a nationality in the world that doesn't feel the medicine of a horse.

Our culture, our region, the horse is Wakan.

Shuka Wakan (Mysterious Dog).

Lela Wakan (Very Sacred).

And the fact that they, through all our turmoil's and abuse and our mistreatment to them and not knowing... they still have unconditional love, they still are always there, like the creator is for us.

The relationship with me and the horse, means a lot, because it reminds me of our ancestors and that's why I do ride.

Because, sometimes it's getting just a little taste of what that instance just had if not even that.

And riding, it's beautiful as you connect with the horses and build a bond and a relationship and it's kind of like a man's best friend.

So, I'm a firm believer that these rides not only have to continue but that it's a healing for all people.

The world is round.

Medicine wheel is round.

Joining circle, coming full circle, is round.

So, we honor our grandmothers who were taken down river, put on boats and they came up the Missouri River here to Fort Thompson on June 1st, 1863.

It really makes my heart happy to see the young ones, more and more young ones, that are taking our place, so to speak.

And I've seen a lot of healing come come from this ride and the 38 ride, for our people and it's a good thing.

My sister was 15 years old and was murdered out in the field and so the whole community came together and locked hands and looked for her and it wasn't until three days later we found her in the same spot we had all walked through.

So, not only did they do this harm to her they kept her in the trunk of a vehicle before they put her back after the people were done looking for her.

I was in boarding school and I was raised by white people because of the trauma situations and the bad happenings that go on to children in the home maybe in first hand knowing, my daughter, my sister, I keep calling my daughter my because I stood in as a mom a lot of times in my family when my mom was in treatment and they were so young.

There's 12 of us, they didn't know any better, they called me mom, so I apologize for calling my sister but, I feel in a way all women are mothers to all children, all women and mothers to men and it's in the end of times, it takes a good woman to make a man be a man.

Well, this is a really special event for the state of South Dakota because we're drawing attention to the fact that we have a lot of folks and indigenous women that have been missing.

Human trafficking impacts all of our communities, cities, counties, our reservations and the more that we can draw attention and awareness to that the more we can all work together to make sure that we are protecting our women and that we're taking care of those who are most in danger.

I think that a lot of our women and children are more than just missing as far as even the sex trafficking, too.

Because, I at one point in my life was for sale as well, and so I'm a survivor of that, to break free from that terrible life and so that's how I know I'm relatable to it.

Because I, once, at one point, I guess could have been considered a missing person that was definitely for sale.

So, many times we just need people to watch out for each other, so individuals that may see some signs of individuals who've been trafficked or others who may be in danger of that, don't have supervision at home, are loaners... we see someone paying attention to them that we know has a bad reputation or a stranger... talking about this and raising awareness so we watch out for each other is incredibly important.

Yeah, and it's definitely something that I can have my son be involved with too, and then the other kids that my other two kids that I have at home, then we just bring that back and share it with them and then it just... we are becoming reconnected with our culture and the ways of our ancestors which is really adding to our connectedness at home, too.

Well, it's a really sad part because most native people do know somebody who's murdered or missing.

I don't know if it's our small communities, our small circle, but it shouldn't be like that.

You can go out in the rest of the world and I asked you yourself, do you know anybody?

You said: No.

And I personally know, I know, five that are gone today.

And that's hard because I have a grandchildren here.

I have five granddaughters with me and my daughter she's riding.

My granddaughters are... is it gonna be like that for them?

Are they gonna know five?

Or are they going to be part of that number?

That's the scary part, to see things like that.

A lot of people want to pray about something but then walk away and then let something else take care of it.

And to me, I think we need to walk our prayer and while we're doing that, asking for that help to make it happen.

And no matter what it is, if you want to, if you want to succeed in something, they're going to give you everything you need to succeed.

But it's up to you how far you want to go with it.

And to me, that those words right there say it all and walk your prayer, live your prayer, and you can make it happen.

But it's up to you how far you want to go.