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Chief Ernie Peters Longwalker: Medicine-Man Youth Worker |
| Section: CURRENT ISSUES / PEOPLE IN THE NEWS |
| Author: Robert R. Selle |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 4/1/2003 |
| Size: 1,742 Words, 10,751 Characters |
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Chief Ernie Peters Longwalker got his name from his 1978 cross-continent walk aimed at defeating congressional legislation that would have dissolved the Native American reservation system. The protest began with ceremonies on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, then moved for the start of the trek to Sacramento, California, where about 25 people set off, a number that swelled to tens of thousands of concerned citizens by the time it hit Washington, D.C., five months later. Midway through the walk, the column of marchers took fully half a day to pass beneath the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.
The legislation died, even though it had considerable popular support. The outcome, however, was no surprise to Longwalker, a full-blooded Mdewakontonwan Dakotah (Sioux) medicine man, who had been chosen by his fellow Native American chiefs to lead the peaceful protest march. He says that if one lives the truth--by living honorably, purely, and righteously--the power of the Great Spirit will be manifested. And manifested it was in the downfall of the antireservation bill...
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...he ceremonies, plus they're getting good [Western-style] educations. They're graduating, they're going to college. But they know who they are, what their foundation is. They're twice the people they would have been had they just got Western education. They have no doubts of who they are, where they came from, or where they want to go. They're valuable to the system now, because of that knowledge."
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
comprehensive academic resource that encompasses a broad range of
articles by scholars and experts in the areas of Global Studies,
Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
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