Valentina "Tina" Merdanian explains the significance of the Native American medicine wheel and shares the often untold side of Wounded Knee (Little Big Horn) massacre of the Lakota people by the U.S. Cavalry in 1890.
She is a community leader from the Red Cloud Indian School on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota & a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe....
Pine Ridge is home to Wounded Knee, the site where an 1890 massacre of at least 150 Lakota by U.S.Cavalry marked the end of the country’s Indian Wars, as well as a famous 1972 American Indian Movement occupation that called to public attention the failure of U.S. governments to honor its treaties with Native peoples.
To many,Pine Ridge is a symbol of American governmental perfidy. But today, as Ms.Merdanian and her colleagues Father George Winzenburg,Tashina Banks,Robert Brave Heart and Colleen McCarthy explained, it can also be a symbol of hope.
Tina Merdanian, director of institutional relations at Red Cloud Indian School, feels that being Lakota and knowing your native language go hand-in-hand and that the language is at the heart of being a Lakota person.
As a child growing up on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Tina Merdanian promised her grandmother she would share their people’s culture and beauty, which she heard about in her grandma’s stories.
“Grandparents raising you is a very special connection,” said Merdanian, a Lakota woman who directs institutional relations at Red Cloud Indian School.
She is a community leader from the Red Cloud Indian School on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota & a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe....
Pine Ridge is home to Wounded Knee, the site where an 1890 massacre of at least 150 Lakota by U.S.Cavalry marked the end of the country’s Indian Wars, as well as a famous 1972 American Indian Movement occupation that called to public attention the failure of U.S. governments to honor its treaties with Native peoples.
To many,Pine Ridge is a symbol of American governmental perfidy. But today, as Ms.Merdanian and her colleagues Father George Winzenburg,Tashina Banks,Robert Brave Heart and Colleen McCarthy explained, it can also be a symbol of hope.
Tina Merdanian, director of institutional relations at Red Cloud Indian School, feels that being Lakota and knowing your native language go hand-in-hand and that the language is at the heart of being a Lakota person.
As a child growing up on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Tina Merdanian promised her grandmother she would share their people’s culture and beauty, which she heard about in her grandma’s stories.
“Grandparents raising you is a very special connection,” said Merdanian, a Lakota woman who directs institutional relations at Red Cloud Indian School.
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Fantastically educating article!
Thank you!
Awesome accounting of a nightmare happening in our history, must never be forgotten.