Post by Deleted on Feb 28, 2017 17:48:07 GMT -5
Try pasting this link into your browser:
<<https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=osu1281961865&disposition=inline>>,
for this part (and more) of Brenda Garner's story about Brings Home a Blue Horse and her new hunka relatives the Laubins.
When they stopped dancing, we died. We stopped living. We felt there was nothing left to live for. Now we can dance again, and it brings sunshine into our hearts. We feel j-us-t good!
-- Brings Home a Blue Horse, 1934
In their 1977 book Indian Dances of North America, ethnographers and dance performers Reginald and Gladys Laubin credit Brings Home a Blue Horse, a Lakota from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in South Dakota with this exclamation. The year was 1934 and the Laubins had been adopted into the One Bull family. Hinto Agliwin (Brings Home a Blue Horse) was their new sister. The statement expressed her response to the recent removal of a three-decade-long federal ban on Native dancing that had specifically targeted "[t]he ―sun dance," and all other similar dances and so-called religious ceremonies. The Laubins write, "That is how important dancing was! To Indians it was not just recreation or relaxation. It was the way of life. During the bans more than a generation had been effectively removed from direct contact with the dance." This vignette and the claims made by the Laubins and Brings Home a Blue Horse are intriguing and worthy of a closer examination. Four general, interrelated observations can be made. First, Brings Home a Blue Horse identified herself as part of a group through her usage of the plural pronoun, we. Second, she claimed that the Sun Dance ritual was necessary to the life of the group. Third, she made her claims with tremendous emotional intensity. Fourth, she provided historical information; the ritual underwent a period of suppression.
<<https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=osu1281961865&disposition=inline>>,
for this part (and more) of Brenda Garner's story about Brings Home a Blue Horse and her new hunka relatives the Laubins.
When they stopped dancing, we died. We stopped living. We felt there was nothing left to live for. Now we can dance again, and it brings sunshine into our hearts. We feel j-us-t good!
-- Brings Home a Blue Horse, 1934
In their 1977 book Indian Dances of North America, ethnographers and dance performers Reginald and Gladys Laubin credit Brings Home a Blue Horse, a Lakota from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in South Dakota with this exclamation. The year was 1934 and the Laubins had been adopted into the One Bull family. Hinto Agliwin (Brings Home a Blue Horse) was their new sister. The statement expressed her response to the recent removal of a three-decade-long federal ban on Native dancing that had specifically targeted "[t]he ―sun dance," and all other similar dances and so-called religious ceremonies. The Laubins write, "That is how important dancing was! To Indians it was not just recreation or relaxation. It was the way of life. During the bans more than a generation had been effectively removed from direct contact with the dance." This vignette and the claims made by the Laubins and Brings Home a Blue Horse are intriguing and worthy of a closer examination. Four general, interrelated observations can be made. First, Brings Home a Blue Horse identified herself as part of a group through her usage of the plural pronoun, we. Second, she claimed that the Sun Dance ritual was necessary to the life of the group. Third, she made her claims with tremendous emotional intensity. Fourth, she provided historical information; the ritual underwent a period of suppression.