Tokeha Enijan, Stands First

Stands First

Wounded Knee, South Dakota

July 2008

Also known as Gary Rowland, Jr., Stands First (Tokeha Enijan) gave an extended interview at the Wounded Knee Visitor Center, less than half of which is presented here. It is a stark reality check on the subject of musical and cultural preservation, and passing down the music to younger generations becomes a multi-faceted struggle.

FAF: Can you tell me about the Sun Dance that’s going to be taking place soon?

STANDS FIRST: My uncle, he’s been helping with Sun Dances for a number of years. A while back, when he was young, the Spirits told him that one day he would run his own Sun Dance; that they wanted him to put a Sun Dance on. So the Spirits told him that years ago when he was young, and now that he’s older the time has come to have the Sun Dance. Last year was the first year.

FAF: What is your uncle’s name?

STANDS FIRST: My uncle’s name is Gerald Ice. He was born here and raised here, and he is one of the last uncles that has all this knowledge of the Old Songs and the Old Ceremonies. He was taught by his uncle, our grandfather, Wallace Black Oak. He was a well-known man. He passed a lot of his knowledge, the things that he was taught by his grandpa, he passed it on to my uncle. So he has quite a bit of knowledge, and I think all of the young warriors, the young men in our tiwahe (family) need to go. We have been going to his sweat lodges and praying with him, and he’s been teaching me a lot of the Old Songs that you don’t hardly hear anymore.

In Lakota, there is a song for everything. There is a song for when you go to hunt, and you get your kill, there is a song for that. When you go out and pick the wild berries or the wild medicines, there’s songs for that too. They are thank you songs. We say wopila (thank you) in Lakota. There’s songs for everything we do: when we get up in the morning, we see the Sun, we have a song for that, a song to give thanks to the Creator. A lot of those ways are being forgotten, a lot of the Old Songs. So when some people go out and pick sage ... there’s songs for that.

So my uncle is trying to bring that back. But there are a lot of other Sun Dance leaders, older elders that have this knowledge too, and they do want to give it to the younger ones. But a lot of the younger ones nowadays are caught up in the white man’s way of living. Some of them know the Old Songs and the ways but they don’t practice them like they should. It’s real important for us to keep this way of life going; the ceremonies, the songs, we need to keep it going, because one day someone is going to come to our youth or ask one of our kids, “What does it mean to be Lakota?” and some of them won’t know what to say because they haven’t been taught.

This is the second year of his Sun Dance. He has a four-year commitment to the Sun Dance, so he has three Sun Dances and then he’ll be done, and then after that he would keep carrying on the Old Songs and the Old Ways. The date is August 7 ... When the Moon is full, that’s when they would have it ... Every day now for the past week, I’ve been going to the sweat lodges every evening. From here until Sun Dance time we go every evening to purify our minds and our bodies and our souls, so when the time comes, we’ll be strong, we’ll be ready. Before, the real hot sweats used to bother me, but now they don’t because my mind, my spirit, my body are cleansed so I can handle the heat. The only thing that gets me sometimes is the water: your throat is dry and you pray for one drop of water; but once the Sun Dance is over, you drink the water and it makes your body feel real good.

It takes a full year to prepare a Sun Dance, and to have a sweat lodge, because during the springtime, that’s when you get your water. And then in the summer, that’s when the chokecherries are black, and that’s when you get your chokecherries. And then, when the first snow falls, that’s when you get your meat. That’s when the deer is the most fattest, at the first snowfall, ‘cause he has all those medicines inside of him from eating off the land. So you get your meat. Then a long time ago they used to have the colors, the red and the black and yellow and white, green and blue. Today they have dyes and a lot of people use the cloth, but a long time ago you had to dig roots and there were certain plants you got to get these colors. Before they used the cloth they used the hide. So you would go out, prepare all this, dig the roots and dye your hides and make your ties. So that whole process took one year. During that whole year you would prepare, and then when the time came you would have everything ready.

FAF: How long does the Sun Dance last?

STANDS FIRST: The Sun Dance is for four days. They dance four days without water and without food. They sacrifice, they give themselves to the Creator, they offer their flesh. On the fourth day you give your flesh back to the Creator. It’s pretty hard. Some people come and they try to jump into it right away. But it’s real hard. When people come to the Sun Dance, we tell them to get out there in that heat, help get wood, get out there and get used to that Sun. A lot of people are used to air conditioning and when they do get out there, it’s really hard on them. I’ve seen people just pass out from the heat, fall over.

FAF: What types of songs are sung at the Sun Dance?

STANDS FIRST: During the Sun Dance the Prayer Songs are sung, and then afterwards you have the wopila, the Thank You Songs. You sing those and tell the Creator thank you for giving us this breath of life, thank you for everything created. And after that there is a Closing Song. There’s songs for everything. There is the Pipe Loading Song.

FAF: When did you first Sun Dance?

STANDS FIRST: I started following these ways ... the first time I witnessed the Spirits ... I was 9 years old then. Right now I’m 24. When I was growing up, my father took us to the sweat lodges and sang the songs with us.

I was 13 when I decided to Sun Dance. My first Sun Dance was over there at Crow Dog’s in Rosebud. It’s a real powerful place ... it was real hard ... but I knew the power was there. Most grown men fall over and get dehydrated, but I made it because in my heart I knew that what I was doing was right. And Great Spirit showed himself to us, so my heart and my mind were there. The songs, everything. You can feel the energy and the power from the other dancers. Plus there’s the Spirits: they’ll let you know they’re there ...

A lot of the ceremonies I went to, I usually take the recorder with me, so some of the old, Old Songs, I record them and take them back and then I listen to them with my stepson and my nephews. We play them over and over. We tell them what the words mean, because a lot of us growing up weren’t taught the Lakota language like we should have been. I tell the boys, if you don’t understand what they’re saying you ask somebody, the older ones. Once you let them identify with the song a little bit, they’ll be more interested in it.

I take a group of young warriors from around here and go up to Canada and train. We have warrior training up there where a lot of the Old Ways are in our training. The first thing we do, though, is we do the Decolonization. A lot of the young warriors nowadays, they don’t know the history of our people. So we teach them a lot of where they come from and let them know, you know, you come from Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, all these great warriors, great leaders. Once they know that in their hearts, know that they are Lakotas, you can see a difference in them. They walk taller and they feel more proud.

A lot of my young brothers, it’s hard to bring them in with us and to start teaching them the ways. Some of them are too used to living the way they have been. So a lot of them, it goes in one ear and out the other. But the ones who do stay and want to learn these ways, you can see a difference in them and they want to bring their families, so they bring their families and it’s slowly getting bigger.

A lot of non-natives are starting to come and to join us. Some people don’t like it, but you know, we’re all the same race. We might have different skin color or different hair, but we all bleed the same. So some people don’t like it when the non-natives come to dance with us, but we encourage them to come. We want them to come and to know these ways. A lot of non-natives, they come, and right away they want a naming ceremony and they want to be adopted; but there’s certain ways of going about it and a lot of them don’t know. So, my uncle, he teaches them what you’ve got to do, how you’ve got to prepare. You have to do a giveaway; you have to do a wopila ceremony. There’s a lot of these things that people are kind of bypassing. They just want to get to it, get their name.

FAF: Can you explain your name and how you came by it?

STANDS FIRST: My Lakota name is Tokeha Enijan. It means Stands First. They gave me that name because in my family, if anything comes up, like any gathering or anything, I’m always the first one to go for it, to go and to stand in front of my people, to stand for my people. So that’s how I got my name, ‘cause I’m always standing up first, or going forward first.

FAF: Why do you think that is with you?

STANDS FIRST: I believe there is a warrior spirit with me. All these things that I’ve done: I went to Canada to train with the warriors up there. I went to Mexico to a big gathering, the Southern Gathering, and I talk for my people. There was other people there that said they were Lakota and they were wearing the headdress, the war bonnets. But I was the one who was from here. The others who said they were from here, they weren’t, ‘cause we know everybody around here. All these things that I’ve done, I was quick to get on it.

FAF: Do you see yourself as a leader?

STANDS FIRST: Yes. A lot of the young warriors, a lot of the young brothers around here, they all look up to me, because they all respect me and they listen to me. So that’s why I became more interested in these ways, because they all look to me as a leader, they respect me, they would follow me. If we had to go to war, they would follow me. They would give their lives for me. So that's why I'm learning these ways: so I can become a better leader. And these ways, I can lead, and at the same time I can pass it on to them so that it won’t die out, so that we’ll have a better chance of surviving ...

In order to be a leader, you’ve got to be able to go to everybody’s house, walk in and visit with them, offer them whatever you have, and to get along with everybody and to not disagree with any of them. And when you lead your people, you don't make those decisions yourself: you ask the people what's to happen, what should we do. A lot of leaders nowadays, they make the decisions themselves; let’s do this, we’re going to do this, I want to do this.

FAF: And that’s not the Lakota way?

STANDS FIRST: That’s not the Lakota way. The Lakota way is, the person that’s leading, you don’t make the decisions. You ask the people. He asks everybody in the camp, what should we do, how should we do this? So the people tell him, and then he’ll make a decision. So he never makes a decision himself. He never takes it upon himself to call the shots or say what has to be done.

A Panoramic View of Wounded Knee

FAF: So when your father was growing up, times were very, very difficult.

STANDS FIRST: Yeah, they had it pretty rough. A lot of the older people, they used to party and drink and stuff. It led to a lot of abuse and neglect.

For a long time, me myself, I was caught up. I had a real bad way of thinking and way of doing things. One day I woke up. I think what really woke me up was the warrior training that we went to. The Decolonization, that’s what helped me to open my eyes wider. Because they showed us pictures and they told us, “This is how the government wants you. This is why they sell the alcohol, and this is how they want you.” And they showed a picture of a warrior, but he was all head hung over, drunk and high. So when I looked at that picture, it was like looking in the mirror and seeing myself. And I thought, man, that’s me. And then I thought, they’re right, this is how they want us. The alcohol brings fights and a lot of bad things. And that’s when I decided to sober up.

A lot of the people who I thought were my friends, who I thought were my buddies, after I sobered up they were all gone. So, after I sobered up and I started being more interested in these ways, a lot of the other young warriors, I told them about this training and I took some of them. And in a way, it kind of changed their lives too.

After I changed ... people came up and shake my hand ... they know that I’m on the right path. And this, the Visitor Center, we're working on making it like a headquarters. And the Native Youth Movement, that’s what we joined up in Canada, it’s like the new generation aim. They have the same concepts, the same teachings, but it’s the newer generation. A lot of people who are in the Movement want to bring back the Old Ways as much as possible so they won’t be forgotten, so they can live on longer.

Some of the other nations, you ask them where their people come from, and a lot of them don’t know. They’re lost, because nobody’s been passing on the teachings. So now, some of the teachings are gone. Some of the people took the teachings to the grave with them because nobody else wanted to learn them. Nobody really bothered to learn. It’s kind of scary once you think about it, because you know one day it could be gone if nobody picks it up.

...And some of the things that we want to get going too are the old horse games. There’s a lot of old horse games that are not being forgotten, but just being neglected. Percy White Plume and Alex White Plume and them: they live down in Manderson and they have a lot of the horse games, a lot of the Old Teachings, the Old Stories, and they’re real inspiring men. Percy, he goes on a lot of the rides, and he was one of the inspirations to me to straighten up and start being a true Lakota, and not just talking about it, but walking it, walking it in everyday life.

FAF: The white man interpreted many of the Native American’s customs and stories to be the opposite of what they were.

STANDS FIRST: Yeah, a lot of the stories, like the Ghost Dance. When they had the Ghost Dance, our people were praying for help, praying for the ancestors to awake and come back and help us, help us to escape these people that wanted to do us harm. And then right away they thought, you know, there’s going to be a ‘big uprising.’ So these people, you know, they fear what they do not understand.

But the ones that do come and experience it, the ones who come and Sun Dance, and they witness the power of the Spirit, their lives are just totally changed around to where they learn to respect their walk of life. They learn to respect everything, even the grass. But the main thing that we want to bring back are the Old Songs and the Old Ceremonies.

Nowadays, there’s Sun Dances all over, and there’s different ways. The leaders, they’ll have their water and their drum and their spirit food set in different places. When we go to another Sun Dance to help or help sing or whatever, the man that has the altar, we respect him and do things his way, when we are there. So, he does the same when he comes to our place. It’s a little bit different, but the same teachings and the same songs.

A lot of the things that we want to teach, that my uncle and them want to pass on, are the Creation Stories, and how the Lakota came about these ways or how these ways came to us: how the horse came to us, how the rocks came about, the grass, everything. The Lakota knew a long time ago that there are 12 galaxies and they knew that the Earth was round. They knew all these things before the white man came. We put these rocks on the fire, we bring them in, and we pray to them. Some think we’re crazy because we pray to a rock, but once they come and they realize how it works, then they understand. When some of them learn and discover how we do things, the way we pray, and it makes sense to them, they think to themselves, well, this way that I used to think, what does it mean? So, they change. The Lakota way of thinking makes a lot more sense to them than the modern way of thinking ... So I believe in these ways, all the teachings this way has to offer, I believe strongly.

FAF: So what do you see as your future?

STANDS FIRST: My future, in this life, I see myself being a leader, because my brothers and even my sisters here, everybody looks up to me. So I know that, in this life, I was put here to be a leader, to lead my people and to teach them the best that I can.

FAF: Your father, Gary Rowland, Sr., was one of two people who led the fight to establish the renaming of the memorial that was originally called Custer’s Battlefield. As a consequence, it is now called...

STANDS FIRST: Little Big Horn Battlefield.

FAF: And that was a hugely symbolic accomplishment.

STANDS FIRST: Yes, and to our people, that is recent history. Now my Dad and them are working on getting it to where our people withdraw from all treaties with the United States and become an independent nation like the Mohawks did [Google Lakota Secession, December 20, 2007]. So we want to get something like that established for ourselves, to where we can stop having these BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] come in and try to tell us how to live.

We want to let our people govern themselves, and to not have just one leader; to have all the people together and to let them make decisions. A lot of decisions that are made for our child today, a lot of the elders and the traditional people, they disagree with it. But they’re in there anyway. We tried to get them out but they have too much pull in the political ring; they always end up pushing us out to the side.

FAF: When you say “us,”, do you mean your generation?

STANDS FIRST: Yes, the people want to bring back the traditional ways of governing ourselves, just the Old Ways of working, the true ways of being a Lakota. But a lot of them are content with their way of living: their house, their car, their air conditioning, their TVs. So if by any chance they had to go back to living the way that they used to live, they would never survive. The ones out here, out in the country, the ones who do follow these ways and strive to keep these ways alive, we are the ones who will survive.

FAF: Have you always lived in the Wounded Knee area?

STANDS FIRST: Not all my life. My Dad moved us to Utah, Oregon, Denver, Montana; but I always made my way back here because this is where I feel most comfortable. That’s because a lot of our family is back here.

But our people were always roamers. We never stayed in one spot. We were always moved around. Wherever we went, we would hunt and gather in that area and then we would move on, to let the game and everything grow back. We were never planters, never farmers; we were always hunters and gatherers ... in the Plains, and the Black Hills. We would only go there to gather medicines, and we would use that place for winter camp sometimes.

So, these youth empowerment camps, we want to get those going and we have older warriors that want to help. But we want to bring in, like, my father and a lot of the older warriors that have been around, so that they can talk to us and teach us what it means to be a warrior, in your everyday walk of life, what it takes; give you all the tools to help yourself to be a warrior, to learn the generosity, the respect, the honor and the responsibilities; how you have to carry yourself and what is expected of you ...

But a lot of them, I think, what they need to start off with is the Healing Ceremony, to heal the inside of them, their spirits ... And me, myself, I’m still learning every day ...

Joy H. Hance

Stands First makes war shields and sells them at the Wounded Knee Visitor Center. He can be contacted at StandsFirst@hotmail.com, or

Gary Rowland, Jr.

P.O. Box 313

Porcupine, SD 57772