Sep 6, 2018 - World Celebrates Crazy Horse Day by Chase Iron Eyes
On this day, September 5, 1877, Sung Gnaskiyan, Tasunke Witko, Crazy Horse as he is known, was assassinated at Fort Robinson, Sioux Nation territory.
Today we honor CrazyHorse who was back-stabbed on this day 141 years ago. Crazy Horse was all action, in addition to conducting mounted guerrilla warfare with such tactical brilliance that his methods are still studied today by military academies, Crazy Horse was as brave as humans have ever been , repeatedly dismounting mid-battle to improve shooting accuracy; he made many dare-rides (riding broadside in firing range of soldiers to empty their ammo and embolden his warriors), including the most pivotal during the Battle of the Little BigHorn in 1876 that prevented Crook, Reno and Custer’s soldiers from uniting, it turned the tide of that battle. Crazy Horse orchestrated the Fetterman fight as well, a complete rubbing out of soldiers. Crazy Horse had many horses shot from under him and is said to have learned to shoot from the underside of his horse(s) while running. Crazy Horse was only interested in protecting a spiritual economy and Native Nations’ inherent right to determine their destiny, to live and be governed by their own laws, to be free from militarily imposed “Domestic Dependent Nationhood” which is oxy-moronic and reflects the current state of militarily imposed Federal-Colonial law which was exhibited at the #NoDAPL struggle.
They (United States and Compliant Indians) considered him a hostile because he wanted nothing to do with American encroachment and stayed with the Northern Lakota, as they (Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse’s collective) were known back then, who clung to their way of life. For that he was hated on majorly. Many prominent Oglala chiefs and former close friends turned on Crazy Horse at the prodding of United States agents and plotted his assassination the night before his death. On the day of his death the plan changed from killing him to arresting him; a mass of some 800 Oglala and United States soldiers rode to arrest him, he fled them eventually surrendering under promise that he’d have a chance to explain himself against the jealousy-induced, Indian created, rumors that Crazy Horse planned to kill a high ranking US soldier. As soon as he saw they were simply going to jail him to neutralize him he resisted and was bayoneted by a soldier while being forcibly restrained by other Lakota. The U.S. Soldiers and those that turned on Crazy Horse resented the fact that the people still looked to him for leadership even after he was stripped of his armaments, horses and recognition by the United States (same was true of Sitting Bull). They wanted Crazy Horse to travel to Washington DC to meet the president and negotiate a cession of the Black Hills. Crazy Horse never went; he loved the Black Hills and he was vehemently opposed to the illegal annexation of the Black Hills by the United States as LRI is now #ReturnTheBlackHills. So we keep his legacy ALIVE by fighting our fights, not letting money, recognition or ego divide us, by being unbribable and never backing down. Crazy Horse was born a Lakota but his spirit is universal. They fear their own spiritual awakening represented and lived by Crazy Horse; this is why they are quick to kill, imprison and suppress any indicia of that unconquerable liberation spirit. Our enemies are the same and we must rise on them: the oppressive financial-extractive-war-machine.
As in Crazy Horse’s time, external forces still combine to coerce our docility, our domestic, dependent status, telling us to “be humble.” External forces successfully exploit the deliberately enforced dependency and confusion. External forces produce media that casts the organic movement of the people in a bad light, External forces still criminalize those who are willing to challenge big financial-extraction’s false authority to imprison dissenters, keep us in endless war, commit an ecocide and kill our childrens’ right to clean water and a healthy mother earth. The world looks to the Indigenous Nations for guidance while we stagnate in internal oppression, fighting over who wears the headdress in this or that photo-op, recognition-seeking, jealousy, ego-driven pettiness and poverty, so much imposed poverty we seem to be still content on fighting over who gets to pass out the rations.
Look around Indian Country and see what chiefs are celebrated, who is elected, who controls the land; they allow us to celebrate who they deem fit, who they know will support an assimilation project, it’s the same colonial project ongoing. There’s always federal funding for new youth jails and veteran cemeteries in Indian country. This is the struggle we are all born into as Indigenous yet we must unite with the rest of world seeking the spirit of liberation.
All we want is peace and dignity. Crazy Horse never died. Crazy Horse lives…in the struggle against Kinder Morgan, Line 3, Bayou Bridge, LNG; Crazy Horse lives…in Gaza, in looted Africa, Tibet, in the fight to dismantle the Patriarchy, in wombyn’s liberation, in the spirit of Black Lives Matter, in those considered Illegal Human Beings by Invader States, in all those still fighting in Abya Yala, in all those Europeans who have been separated from their sacred connection to the universe within and without, in the fight for workers’ rights, in the fight to deconstruct the logic and institutions of capital, yes Crazy Horse lives here, the spirit adapts, evolves, strengthens, strategizes in the changing times, surroundings, technologies, methods and concepts of the day. Truth must precede Conciliation as Justice must precede Peace.
