memorial day

PINE RIDGE, SD. High on a windblown hill overlooking the Red Cloud Indian School, one Lakota name stands out among the gravestones in the Holy Rosary Church cemetery.
Red Cloud, the Lakota leader and warrior for whom the Jesuit-run educational mission is named, is buried in the school's historic cemetery. Red Cloud was born in 1822 and died at the age of 87 on Dec. 10, 1909.

This is Red Cloud's final resting place, often decorated with tobacco pouches, trinkets and other tributes to the Lakota leader. The old cemetery is closed to new burials now, but the history of that transitional period for the Lakota tribe is written in its granite headstones. The graves tell of a nomadic warrior culture rapidly replaced by life on an arid reservation. There are graves of numerous Lakota men that are also engraved with the words "U.S. Army Scout." The graves of schoolchildren who died while attending the boarding school tell the history of assimilation through the U.S. government's educational policy. The victims of several deadly blizzards that hit in the early 1900s speak of the dangers and deprivations that were part of daily life.

The grave markers document the events of the time. Red Cloud faced intense criticism within his own tribe for his decision to invite the "Blackrobes," as he called the Jesuits and their long black cassocks, to educate future generations on the reservation. The schools were often mean and dirty, offering lille hope for a better life. But Red Cloud saw that the traditional life of his Lakota people was ending and that in order for his people to prosper, their children would have to be educated to walk in both the Lakota world and the white man's world. Today, on Memorial Day, 100 years after his death, when we honor our warriors, Red Cloud's gravestone speaks across the century to the bridges and partnerships he fostered and promoted. Washte, kola.