Mitakuye Oyasin
Aaron Huey
Image 1 of 18
1. Manderson, South Dakota
Image 2 of 18
2. North of Manderson, South Dakota
Image 3 of 18
3. Stanley Good Voice Elk, a Heyoka, or sacred clown, burning sage to ritually purify his surroundings, Oglala, South Dakota
Image 4 of 18
4. Cody in his bedroom, Manderson, South Dakota
Image 5 of 18
5. Mitchell Crow plays with his dog on what remains of 28,000 pounds of donated used clothes near Loneman, South Dakota. Unclaimed, the rain-soaked handouts go mouldy during summer.
Image 6 of 18
6. A horseback rider on the Crazy Horse Ride travels from Chadron, Nebraska to the Crazy Horse camp at Beaver Wall, to commemorate the life and death of the great Lakota Warrior.
Image 7 of 18
7. Portrait of the Lakota Chief, Red Cloud (1822 - 1909), with school photo, Manderson, South Dakota
Image 8 of 18
8. A buffalo skull left to dry on a fence post near Oglala, South Dakota, will be later used in the Sun Dance ceremony.
Image 9 of 18
9. The camp of a Native American resistance group in Porcupine, South Dakota, flies the American flag upside down as a symol of disrespect to the occupying power.
Image 10 of 18
10. Travis Lone Hill, Manderson, South Dakota
Image 11 of 18
11. Three-year-old C.J. Shot bathes among dishes. the Oglala concept of tiospaye (unity of the extended family) means that homes are often overcrowded, especially with the severe housing shortage on the reservation. At the time of this photograph, twenty-two people lived in this three-bedroom house in Manderson, South Dakota.
Image 12 of 18
12. Preparation for the Sun Dance , Thunder Lake, South Dakota
Image 13 of 18
13. The White Plume family land near Manderson, South Dakota
Image 14 of 18
14. Powwow in Kyle, South Dakota
Image 15 of 18
15. Grand entry at the Oglala Powwow, Pine Ridge, South Dakota
Image 16 of 18
16. Badlands Red Shirt Table, South Dakota
Image 17 of 18
17. Manderson, South Dakota
Image 18 of 18
18. Evergreen, South Dakota
On 29 December, 1890, the US 7th Cavalry surrounded a Sioux encampment at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota and massacred Chief Spotted Elk and three hundred prisoners of war. After the so-called battle, twenty Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded.
Today the Oglala Lakota live in the shadow of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
I started photographing on Pine Ridge in 2005 as part of a story about poverty in America. In the beginning, it was all just statistics: a 90 per cent unemployment rate, a 70 per cent school dropout rate, and a male life expectancy of 47 years. Over time, it became clear to me that these statistics came from a deep historical wound. And then my photographs of Pine Ridge became a story about a prisoner-of-war camp, a story about genocide, a story about stolen lands.
Years after beginning this project, the story and my relationships on the reservation are more complex than ever. The story has evolved to be about my family, about the people who call me brother and nephew and uncle.
‘Mitakuye Oyasin’, translated to English, means ‘All my relations’. The Okala Lakota say this at the beginning and at the end of ceremonies. One of my brothers, Andrew Ironshell, says it means ‘a responsibility, almost a call to action, or an acknowledgement that you are a relative to the land, and to the environment and the human beings around you’.
I have stumbled into something sacred on Pine Ridge. I don’t know which part is the ceremony. I think, maybe, it is the whole thing.
More on Granta.com
Levert’s Appearance
José Adiak Montoya
‘But as everyone will surely know, that’s not what came to pass.’
Fiction by José Adiak Montoya, translated by Samantha Schnee.
Best Book of 1978: Who Do You Think You Are?
Emily LaBarge
‘I have read them so often that sometimes I cannot remember what is mine and what is hers’
The Colour Brown
Renu Sabherwal
‘It was, she thought, like trying on made-to-measure garments that have been tailored for someone bigger, smaller, rounder, thinner than you could ever hope to be.’
The Great Homecoming
Anna Kim
Read an excerpt from The Great Homecoming by Anna Kim, a novel of love and loss in the wake of the Korean war.
To the Dogs
Jianan Qian
A short story by Jianan Qian on stray dogs, desperation and re-education in rural China during the Cultural Revolution.
Masculinity Is Leaving The Male Body
D. Mortimer
‘If we’re gonna imagine this beautiful queer paradise what form does a man take?’
