Abstract
Oglala Lakota ethos manifests a pre-Socratic/Heideggerian variant of ethos: ethos as “haunt”. Within this alternative to the Aristotelian ethos-as-character, Oglala ethos marks out the “dwelling place” of the Oglala Lakota people. That is, the Oglala Lakota ground their cultural- and self-identity in the land: their ethology, in effect, expresses an ecology. Thus, an Oglala Lakotan ethos cannot be understood apart from its nation’s understanding of the natural world—of its primacy and sacredness. A further aspect of the Oglala Lakotan ethos rests in the nation’s history of conflict with EuroAmericans. Through military conflict, forced displacement, and material/economic exploitation of reservation lands, an Oglala Lakota ethos bears within itself a woundedness that continues to this day. Only through an understanding of ethos-as-haunt, of cultural trauma or woundedness, and of the ways of healing can Oglala Lakota ethos be fully appreciated.
Highlights
Before Europeans came to North America, over 500 distinct cultures inhabited the continent, each with its language, practice, traditions, stories, and geographical region
For the typical EuroAmerican, this would negate any understanding of the Oglala who continue to suffer the wounds from Wounded Knee and other legal and cultural abuses
American Indians, such expression has been of wounds
Summary
Before Europeans came to North America, over 500 distinct cultures inhabited the continent, each with its language, practice, traditions, stories, and geographical region Suggesting that these groups were culturally the same only reinforces the EuroAmerican view of American Indian peoples.. Other aspects of the EuroAmerican narrative are rife with misinformation Contributing to this cultural trauma is the EuroAmerican’s general ignorance of what the Oglala and other American Indians endured during the conquest of North America, including breaking of treaties, intentional genocide, forced relocation, and cultural erasure.. EuroAmerican popular culture fails to recognize American Indian cultures as having their own histories—histories that predate European colonizer settlements These histories include mytho-historical narratives as well as oral histories and an indigenous wisdom that, until recently, has not been seen as “scientific”. For more discussion of this issue, see Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Wall Kimmerer (2013), The Savage Mind by Levi-Strauss (1966), and Sacred Ecology, in its 4th edition, by Berkes (2018)
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