By: Heidi Bell Gease
"Long ago, thousands of years ago ..."
With those words, Phillip Wright began telling the story of the first sun dance song. He told how a grandpa and the grandson he was caring for -- "a little guy, about this tall," he gestured -- had to flee for their lives as enemies approached.
As the enemy drew closer, "grandpa sent his voice up to Tunkasila," Wright said, asking that he be taken to spare his grandson's life. "And guess what? Someone answered.
"Wright told how Tunkasila helped grandpa and grandson escape. How Tunkasila gave grandpa the Sun Dance ceremony. How Tunkasila sang the first Sun Dance song -- a song Wright then sang with his father, Kevin Wright -- to grandpa as he danced the first Sun Dance.
Wright was one of 16 students from area schools who participated in the first Lakota Nation Invitational Storytelling Competition on Wednesday.
A seventh-grader at Lower Brule, he told the story of the Sun Dance song the same way his grandfather had told him. The same way his grandfather's grandfather had passed the story on to him years before. The same way stories and history and legends have passed from generation to generation of Lakota for centuries.
"He put all the detail in there," Wright said about his grandfather, Harry Charger. "I wanted to share the stories with the people."
Preserving that storytelling tradition is the main goal of the competition, which is expected to become an annual event.
Get the whole story here: http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2007/12/20/news/local/doc476a0dbf8cd36383903651.txt
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment