1. Rich Man’s War, John Trudell (AKA
Graffiti Man, 1992)
Rich man’s war
• Industrial streets, class lines, money talks.
• Turning language to paper pieces.
Rich man’s war
• Free man’s society--raging in violent insecurity.
• Nuclear man, nuclear woman--unclear how to act.
Rich man’s war
• Pershings cruising Europe, America, Russia,
• governmental nuclear views.
• Industrial allies cutting the world,
• as though they can not see blood flowing.
2. Rich man’s war
• Central America bleeding--wounds
• same as Palestine and Harlem,
• Three Mile Island in El Salvador, Pine Ridge in Belfast.
Rich man’s war
• Poor, starving for food, starving for land, starving for
peace, starving for real
• Attacking human, attacking being, attacking earth,
attacking tomorrow.
3. Rich man’s war
• Thinking of always war, thinking of always war.
• With machines for ancestors and new unborn
generations,
• chemical umbilical cords are only wiring.
• In your electrical progress humans are burnt offerings
to the God--Greed.
• With lies for ancestors, there is no truth in some
futures--yours and mine--
• feeding the next generation’s souls to the control
machine.
• Sacrifice ritual for the profit technology.
• With isolation for ancestors, there’s only the present,
bought by the credit of material youths, forged in
chains binding you to destruction.
• The compliments of your deities--the industrial
priests.
• Transcribed by Sandy Bigtree
4. The Meaning of Gold
• Primary reason for the extermination of the
Lakota and Native Americans
– Gold Rushes 1830’s to 1870’s
– Black Hills gold
• Sacred place for the Lakota
• Site of industry for Americans
• Why does gold make wasichus crazy?
• Is gold intrinsically valuable?
6. Wasichus in the Hills
• 1874 George Custer explores the Black Hills
and discovers gold
– 6 years after the 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty
– “… that said our country would be ours as
long as grass should grow and water
flow.”[15]
– Congress withdraws the Treaty in 1875
– Lakota knew they were in the way
7. Consequences of Gold
• BE’s father said”...Grandfather at
Washington wanted to lease the
Black Hills so that the Wasichus
could dig yellow metal,and that the
chief of the soldiers had said if we
did not do this, the Black Hills would
be just like melting snow held in our
hands, because the Wasichus would
take that country anyway.” [67-8/81]
8. Split between Lakota people
• Red Cloud’s band “hang-around-the-fort
Indians”
• Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull stayed away
from the fort
• Crazy Horse, 2nd cousin to Black Elk
– Great personal power
– Odd fellow who stayed away from his people
– The only way they could kill him was
with the lie
9. Sioux Wars
• Attack on Crazy Horse’s village on 16
March 1876
• BE’s family joins CH rather than RC
• Wasichus return to Bozeman Trail
– Closed with 1868 Treaty
• Battle of Little Big Horn, or Greasy Grass
– 17 June 1876
– Solstice
10. The Rubbing Out of Long Hair
• ”We were in our own country all the
time and we only wanted to be let
alone. The soldiers came there to kill
us, and many got rubbed out. It was
our country and we did not want to
have trouble.”[88]
• BE’s vision helped him in the battle
11. Walking the Black Road
• ”Wherever we went, the soldiers came
to kill us, and it was all our own
country....That was only eight winters
before, and they were chasing us now
because we remembered and they
forgot [the treaty].”[112/134]
15. Going to Grandmother’s Land
• BE’s family went to Canada to join Sitting
Bull
• His vision makes him aware of bison herd
– Food saves his family
• ”I could not get along with people
now, and I would take my horse and
go far out from camp alone and
compare everything on the earth and
in the sky with my vision.”[134/160]
• Black Road tells him to perform his
vision
