A young Leonard Crow Dog, an equally youthful Frank Fools Crow, and Leonard’s Father Henry on the Rosebud 1973.
A great figure, a great man and a great Medicine Man, maybe one of the modern world’s greatest, continued on his journey recently. Chief Leonard Emmanuel Crow Dog — activist, leader and great guide to the Sicangu Oyate, the Burnt-thigh, Brulé Lakota people —passed into the World of the Spirit at his home, Crow Dog’s Paradise on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, South Central South Dakota USA, about a month ago today, June 6th, 2021. “Lakota Spiritual Leader Leonard Crow Dog Walked On” read the title of the Native News article. He was 78 years old.
Rosebud Sioux Tribe President Rodney Bordeaux issued a statement saying, “As a young man Leonard Crow Dog learned from his father Henry Crow Dog and Lakota elders. He did not go to school; instead his parents enlisted four medicine men to guide his education. Throughout his life, Crow Dog learned from the University of the Universe as he would say, and he shared his understanding of the WoLakota with our Sicangu Oyate, the Oceti Sakowin (note: People of the Seven Council Fires or the Great Sioux Nation) and Peoples of all Nations. Leonard was in touch with the sacred power that connects all of us and the Creation. He stood for human rights, and he knew that the Lakota received our rights from the creator — our breath of life, freedom to dream and live our visions, and our sacred duty to protect Unci Maka, Grandmother Earth.” Per another online statement celebrating his life, he was acknowledged for protecting and restoring land known as Pe’ Sla, a part of the sacred Black Hills, providing cultural and spiritual knowledge to tribal leaders and representatives that guide their work as tribes restored their rightful authority and care over the sacred land that was promised to the great Sioux Nation in the Fort Laramie Treaties of 1851.
You’ve heard of the American Indian Movement (AIM) the group formed in the late 1960’s by grassroots activities Russell Means, Dennis Banks and Clyde Bellecourt, because our entire nation had a sympathetic listening for their 1970’s warrior antics. I remember hearing as a kid of the armed occupation of wounded knee on the Pine Ridge reservation as well as their take over of Alcatraz Island. I had not heard that they stormed the replica of the Mayflower, history I learned of while researching for this article, cracking me up. But this movement, founded to turn Native peoples toward a renewal of their spirituality, with a strength of resolve to transcend the ruinous policies of the USA, Canada and other colonialist governments, existed in various forms for 500 years without a name. Leonard Emmanuel Crow Dog was AIM’s Medicine Man and spiritual advisor.
I loved Uncle Leonard. He was an absolute force of nature, a servant to the people, and the teacher to my teacher Wicasa Itankan Tatanka Weitgo, Chief Philip Aaron Crazybull. Phil was Leonard’s Heyoka or sacred clown. They were both men, but they were more then men. My Kola Hadrien, who was close to Phil before we met and actually played a role in connecting us, conveyed that a fiery Leonard would turn to him and shout, “Nephew! Scribe! Write this down! ‘I, Leonard Crow Dog, declare war on the United States of America!” That’s one of my favorite old stories, and why I waited until the Fourth of July to post this tribute. Because Leonard deserves it, as there is no finer example of a man who stood apart as well as for his people, an “American” in our land’s truest sense.
He exuded native pride, with a dignity and beauty to his stride, like a mountain lion. On that note, he also talked in this poetic, otherworldly sort of way, like a sacred prattle: “It’s hard to know, it is hard to understand,” he said in a recent online video. “It’s not written in the library of Congress… the most telepathic communication of a prayer, prayer of life, the Wolakota will be in the dreams of our generation, of our people…the medicine is there, the healing is there, that’s why its sacred… I don’t care how many Cesaereans she goes through, the Mother Earth is always Holy, is always sacred, … the dream is still there. Although they did their best to destroy it, it’s still there.” He was fond of saying that: “We are still here.” Truth. There’s no problem when people dub The United States of America a Christian nation. Clearly The World of The Spirit supported the efforts and prayers of our nation’s founding fathers. But I like to remind folks that before the their little buckled shoes even set foot on this land, there was a spiritual tradition practiced here for hundreds and thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of years, Shamanism being mankind’s first, natural religion. A tradition of power, prayer, purification, and peace.
When I tell my life story, I sum it all up by saying that for the most part, I lived on an Indian reservation from roughly 1999 to 2006. And although that is not precisely true, Ceremony was the only thing I really cared about and wanted to do. Some of my best times and best memories were summers spent on the Rosebud reservation, rolling up to Chief Crow Dog’s home in a beat-up old pickup truck to carry tipi poles to the Sun Dance grounds. I was hanging off the back, and he looked at me smiling and then faked a scorn, razzing me, saying, “You know your people have been making my people suffer for the last five hundred years.” I called back, “Not me personally Chief!,” and as I bobbled off, he grinned again. You see, my people, the Armenian people, were also part of a horrific genocide. Whatever the psycho-spiritual shakedown from my ancestors having to endure such a damaging experience, after spending a couple years as a student of Phil Crazybull, doing sweats, walking the Red Road, finally vision questing and sun dancing, my mental illness was slowly but surely cured by the Indian religion.
When I danced I danced hard, danced my ass off, because I knew it was being saved, and like they say in recovery, at some point I realized my ass was attached to my soul. In my mind’s eye, I see Leonard with his staff, in his dark blue skirt, motioning to the brilliant blue, wide, South Dakota sky, leading twirling lines of hundreds of sun dancers in the summers of 2004 and 2005. Between rounds, the dancers all go under a shaded arbor to rest. I somehow ended up across an aisle from Uncle Leonard, who gazed at me, and then slowly nodded. That look meant the world to me, as well as the world to come. Prior to my connection to Ceremony and The Red Road, I was formerly fond of saying that I was quite unwell within myself, but now recognize my life as a healing journey. And so, in that pursuit, I’d done it all — fundamentalist religion, recovery, therapy, men’s groups, even hardcore Zen and Vipassana meditation — but only the path that Leonard called The Way of The Sun and The Moon and The Stars could save me. And it did. That and being the student of a true Lakota Heyoka.
I’ve never written about my visions in this space before, and I’m not going to write about them now, as they say that one’s visions are one’s own, to do with what one will. But let’s just say that my mind was often occupied with thoughts of having to stick my hand into a kettle of boiling water and pull out a dog’s head at Paradise circa the summer of 2006. When Phil informed me, “We bring a basket with a rattlesnake into the Lodge and the real Heyoka proves it by reaching in and killing it with his bare hands,” my response was, “Where’s the basket?” It’d been a hard Heyoka initiation the summer of 2005 at the Children’s Sun Dance that Phil lead on the Diné reservation the summer before. In fact, at one point, after being tackled and pinned down and pierced at the bottom of my back by a gang of Indian goons, while I screamed “I’m crying Uncle, I’m crying Uncle you losers ‘cause I’m the only fake Heyoka out here!” I went into Phil’s tipi out of my fucking mind. “This shit is crazy Phil what is happening here? Do you know why I do all this stuff!? Do you know why I’m willing to put up with all these trials and walk this line? Because I want a girlfriend!” Which was my way of saying that I knew that I was unlovable, but I would do whatever I’d have to do to be loved, which I know today is self-love. “Those guys took it easy on you out there! When they initiated me, Leonard himself broke my nose.”
Then on January 18th, 2006, Phil passed unexpectedly at the age of only fifty-six. Chief Crow Dog and Chief Sonny One Star, Phil’s brother, were both at the Children’s Sun Dance on the Navajo reservation in June, as I remember scribbling in a notebook trying to keep up with Leonard’s sacred ramble, declaring that although losing Phil blew a hole in everyone’s heart, we were going forward. Later that summer, in August, I visited Crow Dog’s Paradise for the last time. I spent one night in Phil’s camp, took a look at who the upcoming “leaders” were, and I was out of there. My girlfriend at the time Mieze —ah The Healing!— and I rolled down the couple miles to Sonny’s place, on the same road to Paradise — pun intended — and he became my teacher for a few years. I circled back in the summer of 2012 to Sun Dance with Steve Blue Horse at Howard Bad Hand’s Dance near Shiprock, New Mexico, confirmed my mission, and then life moved on.
“Look at the real reality beneath the sham realities of things,” said Chief Crow Dog. “Look through the eye in your heart. That’s the meaning of the Indian religion.” While it’s true that Leonard has left us, we still have the songs, we still have the sacred Chanupa and we have Ceremony, and our healing way of life. For that I thank Chief One Star, Chief Crazy Bull, and Chief Crow Dog, Wopila Pilamaye. May you rest in Power Chief. Aho Matakuye O’yasin