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| Each year in July, the Realbird clan creates a reenactment of the 1876 battle at the Little Big Horn River between George Armstrong Custer's cavalry and the Souix, Cheyenne, and other tribes camped nearby.
The reenactment is staged near Garyowen, Montana, along |
| But as the Realbirds relate, the land is the real star, the long-time witness of it's own history. |
| The Little Big Horn River rises each year with the snowmelt, bringing tales of the mountains on it's way to the Missouri. In the spring, Montana's hills are covered with the greenest grass, uneaten now by the buffalo herds slaughtered long ago by the White hidehunters. How ironic that this place, where Custer suffered the US government's greatest defeat at the hands of the Indians, should be given to the Crow tribe, the Apsalooka, who had provided Custer with his best scouts. The victorious Souix and Cheyenne were "given" the more barren reservations in South Dakota well east of their sacred Black Hills. |
| Until recently, the Native Americans have never needed a written language. They had no reason to fix or control the meanings of the world with textual naming. Their histories were carried on through narrative traditions of storytelling, dance, performance, sign talk, and drawing. Their voices and movements connected their knowledge and experience to the significance of life. |
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