December US SUBS Cover Final2 Rev2

PORTFOLIO GHOSTS OF WOUNDED KNEE Photographs by Aaron Huey, text by Matthew Power united states post office Across the road, a large historic marker, wounded knee, south dakota 57794 fi lled with dates and details—Ghost Dance, Hotchkiss guns—green paint bleaching in the Metal letters on a low, windowless bunker sunlight: massacre of wounded knee. The of weathered concrete, a flagpole raised word “Massacre” is a patch, affi xed to the sign, against a dark underbelly of cloud. The fl ag— covering some earlier word. The sign’s fi nal seven stars more than the 7th Cavalry rode sentence reads, “The site of the last armed here under—hums in the Plains wind, fray- confl ict between the Sioux Indians and the ing, fading, unstitching itself, the stripes split- United States Army.” A further edit, scratched ting to ribbons. in the paint over the word “armed”: lies. Aaron Huey lives in Seattle. A collection of his work from Pine Ridge will be published by Radius Books in 2010. Matthew Power is a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine. Pine Ridge village, South Dakota All photographs © Aaron Huey/Atlas Press PORTFOLIO 63 PPortfolioortfolio Final2.inddFinal2.indd 6363 110/22/090/22/09 111:48:411:48:41 AAMM On top of the hill, chain-link fence around The youth suicide rate is ten times the national the mass grave. Another tall stone marker with average. One in three women is a victim of rape. some of the names of the hundreds killed De- Life expectancy is roughly equivalent to Soma- cember 29, 1890: Chief Big Foot, Mr. High lia’s. Plagues of alcohol, drugs, domestic and gang Hawk, Mr. Shading Bear, Long Bull. A spare violence. Pine Ridge is as profoundly damaged a roll call of catastrophe. place as exists in America. The prints from the glass-plate negatives If past is conclusion, is enough distance from taken in the days following reveal more: dead history to gain perspective, there is no past in grass and frozen ground, bodies gathered by the Pine Ridge. To grow up here is to be forever wagonload. A pile of corpses by the lip of the aware of what was lost, or to bludgeon oneself long ditch and in rows at its bottom, soldiers into forgetfulness. leaning on their rifl es. Another of a medicine man, frozen to the earth, his body rolled over marty red cloud for a portrait—a crosshatch of grass stems im- printed on his cheek, the arms reaching out, How can you be far from the past with a last the glass negative itself fractured like ice. name like Red Cloud? A peeling sky-blue house, The grass, sunburned, low to the ground, its particle-board siding dissolving, on a rise sev- rolls beside the miles-long straightaways of eral miles outside of Pine Ridge. Cars on blocks, cracked asphalt. A tribal police unit, lights broken toys, an old trampoline. A friend’s “rez- stuttering, siren a Doppler-shift whine, races mobile” pulls up: no hood, a fl ashlight wired past, makes the hard turn toward Manderson. into the engine housing to replace a deer- This is Pine Ridge Reservation today: some- shattered headlight. Marty is in his twenties, where between 13,000 and 40,000 Oglala Sioux tall and buzz-cut, dressed in a basketball shirt spread across an area the size of Delaware and and shorts. An echo in his face, the long nose Rhode Island combined. Unemployment is 89 and square jaw, of his great-great-great- percent, the few jobs in the tribal bureaucracy or grandfather Red Cloud, last of the Lakota war the Prairie Winds Casino. More than half the chiefs, who fought the U.S. government in the population lives below the federal poverty line. 1860s, ultimately moving his people to Pine 64 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / DECEMBER 2009 Travis Lone Hill, Manderson, South Dakota PPortfolioortfolio Final2.inddFinal2.indd 6464 110/22/090/22/09 111:48:421:48:42 AAMM Ridge Agency a decade later. Marty is one of purifi cation, with a fl esh offering made by pierc- The Wild Boyz—their graffiti tag, a stylized ing the skin of the chest with a peg of bone, bear paw, is seen on walls across the rez—a gang fastening it to a tree, and then tearing oneself that takes its cultural cues more from Tupac loose. It is a sacred act, and something for Shakur than Crazy Horse, affecting the styles which Marty doesn’t believe he’s ready. and slang of urban blacks. Marty moved out I want to be true to it. To feel that full effect. I here with his girlfriend, Courtney, to get away see so much people do it, say it’s this and that, then from the corrosive infl uences of town life. Mar- they go off and get lit, not even a couple weeks or ty’s grandfather, Oliver Red Cloud, wants him a month after. to return to the traditional ways, to speak Lako- I’m trying to show them that I can be strong. So ta, to live up to the name he has inherited. I’ll do it when I’m ready. I see all my friends, how I didn’t talk to him for a long time. That’s be- they’re proud when they do it. I want to be proud cause he knows things that people do. I’ve been like that. But I want to do it the right way. I want kind of sinning, not living healthy. I know he to have the elders look at me and respect me for knows. I don’t want him to talk to me about doing it the way I did it. changing. ’Cause I’m not ready to change in his ways. It’s a different deal when you go out there. ramon twist He watches you all the time. And he talks to you, you have to listen. Usually he chews you out. Told Ponies grazing among wreckage in the long me there’s a lot of hard choices I have to make for afternoon light, graffi ti-covered tribal housing myself. He tells me to behave. He don’t like the tumbles down the hillside. The houses are fall- baggy pants, he doesn’t like the gang-oriented shit. ing apart, surrounded by burst garbage bags dug He tells me what would be the right thing to do, he through by slinking dogs, dead cars on blocks, tells me don’t fi ght with your fi sts. He’s one of the windows smashed. Most basements are rotting reasons I let so much people talk shit, don’t get so with black mold and mildew, and half the hous- violent and aggressive, don’t talk shit back. es on the hill have had their electricity shut off. Oliver also wants Marty to perform the sun A small boy plays in the dirt, shirtless, his face dance ceremony, four days of ritual fasting and almost catlike, the sign of Fetal Alcohol Mass grave at Wounded Knee Massacre site PORTFOLIO 65 PPortfolioortfolio Final2.inddFinal2.indd 6565 110/22/090/22/09 111:48:421:48:42 AAMM PPortfolioortfolio Final2.inddFinal2.indd 6666 110/22/090/22/09 111:48:431:48:43 AAMM Syndrome. Ramon Twist leans into the car out by the fence, there was some tall dark dude just window. Pocked skin, broad smile, front teeth standing there, so they jumped in their car and they knocked out. In faded blue ink, fuck runs took off. And here just again, during the powwow, across the scabbed knuckles of his right hand, a week or two ago, they seen it again. Their daugh- you across the left. He talks down his body, a ter was sitting in her truck and she was talking on story written in scars and tattoos. the phone with her boyfriend, and she looked and it I was twelve years old and I was like, Fuck the was right there in the back mirror. So she started world, so I put them on my knuckles, pissed my mom honking the horn, really screaming. He’s a spirit off and shit. This right here says TBZ—The Boyz— though, he’s Bigfoot, you could never see his print. that’s me, then THUGS 4 LIFE PATRICK AND RAMON, my When you see him he’s bringing you a message, ei- homeboy Dynamite. We went and killed somebody, ther someone’s gonna die in your family, he’s bring- he took the rap for me, he took the rap, he’s doing life ing you a bad message or a good message, you don’t now for me. Patrick. His real name’s Patrick but we know. You can’t say it’s gonna be a bad message, so call him Dynamite. He’s in Denver. We got shot at, be careful, all your family should take care of each we went after this guy, retaliated, bust a cap on the other and watch out. fool, and they was questioning both of us, and he was like fuck it, he took the whole rap. Life, he’s doing life. kimberly ladeux When you kill somebody in Denver, Colorado, that’s life. He didn’t mention my name, he could have, I Night on the hill at Manderson. EBT cards could have been right there, probably got two life have just been charged up with their monthly sentences being an accessory and shit. allotment from the government, and the park- This is my wife and daughter.

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