By Layla Burke Kalinen
EAGLE TIMES STAFF
CHESTER, Vt. — Mia Feroleto has spent the past 4 years with the Pine Ridge Lakota Tribe on a quest to repatriate at more 150-piece collection of artifacts from the Founders Museum in Barre, Massachusetts and she says throughout this journey she found uncanny parallels, bittersweet justice and a great need for the the definition of the word massacre to be understood.
“There is a big difference between the meaning of the word ‘battle’ and the word ‘massacre’,” Feroleto said.
The Oxford dictionary defines ‘battle’ as a sustained fight between large, organized forces and the word ‘massacre’ is defined as the indiscriminate slaughter of a group of people.
It was late 2017, Feroleto had been working as a fine artist and had just helped wrap up the last issue of the magazine on indigenous cultures, ‘New Observations’, for the legalization of industrial hemp. Her work led her to meet Alex White Plume, who had served both as President and Vice President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe.
“He is a hero in the industrial hemp movement. He changed the face of industrial hemp,” Feroleto said.
In Mid-July she traveled to Sante Fe to run a booth for the Art Sante Fe exhibition and at the beginning of the quest for repatriation of the Lakota artifacts.
“During the exhibition I went to use the lady’s room,” Feroleto said, “This is where it gets a little strange. I had a vision of an elder chief looking at me just like I am looking at you. He had long white hair, he had white buck skin with colored embroidery, and he said to me, ‘‘The road is clear, you’re protected on your journey, and they are waiting for you there.”
After the exhibition, Feroleto drove up to Pine Ridge to see Alex Light Bloom and beginning at her arrival she said she felt like she was home. As I was striving toward Pine Ridge the feeling, I felt was immense. I definitely felt like I was coming home,” Feroleto said.
Her past fundraising work with the homeless drew an eerie parallel when she found herself at the Pine Ridge Reservation.
“I divided my time staying at the Light Bloom family’s home and with Henry Red Cloud who is the great, great grandson of Chief Red Cloud,” Feroleto said.
According to Feroleto, Pine Ridge Reservation has one of the highest crime rates in the United States.
“The two poorest areas in this hemisphere are Pine Ridge Reservation and Haiti,” Feroleto said.
After a ten-day visit Feroleto left Pine Ridge, came home and packed her belongings and made plans to move there.
“I was back there by Thanksgiving Day in 2018,” she said. “I stayed for a year and since then I divided my time between Vermont and Pine Ridge.”
Four years later, on November 5th, a ceremony will be held in Barre, Massachusetts as The Founders Museum helps to repatriate more than 150 Lakota artifacts.
Then, on November 6th, the great odyssey will begin, as Native American elders and officials escort the artifacts across the country to be returned to the Pine Ridge community for a two-year display.
The artifacts will be available for viewing on December 28th as the Wounded Knee Memorial Riders commemorate the massacre.
On December 29, 1890, the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment attacked and killed an estimated 300 unarmed Lakota women, children and men at the Wounded Knee Massacre, originally touted as the ‘Battle at Wounded Knee,’ by the U.S. Government.
The dead were left to freeze for three days in the snow until opportunists dug their bodies up and collected personal belongings. The U.S. Government awarded 20 medals of honor to soldiers in the regiment for suppressing the predictions of Lakota threats of war misinterpreted through their ritual ‘Ghost Dance.’
The artifacts collected at the site of the massacre have been scattered through collections all over the world.
“America is responsible for what we perpetuate around the world. What we have done in Iraq by dropping dirty bombs and white phosphorus has caused generations of birth defects. We see the horrors there and it’s the same here,” Feroleto said, “The damage is psychological, emotional, traumatic and the wounds are not healed because the dirty bombs and the white phosphorus are coming in other forms. It’s high time we [the U.S.] stop doing that because we are responsible.”
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