# Sand Creek Massacre: 08 Multigenerational Impacts - Richard E. Littlebear

**Channel:** SmithsonianNMAI
**Source:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onUrEJeKD-8
**Transcript page:** https://www.withtranscript.ai/video/onUrEJeKD-8

## Chapters

- 0:00 — Opening Thanks and Panel Introduction
- 1:10 — Sand Creek and Cheyenne Historical Trauma
- 4:58 — American History and Ongoing Harm
- 9:06 — Tribal Colleges and Closing Reflection

## Transcript

**[0:00]:** our next speaker is dr richard little bear the president of chief doll knife college i had the pleasure of meeting dr little bear in 1999 during the oral history project for the sand creek massacre site location study and his words have stuck with me ever since it's an honor to introduce him thank you alexa

**[0:26]:** it's a great honor for me to be on this panel with all the distinguished and accomplished and renowned panelists that share this stage with me and with the previous ones and ones that are going to be speaking later i want to thank the planners for inviting me to talk about sand creek in particular i'd like to thank alexa roberts for remembering that long ago interview i think it was way back in 2000 2000 that helped me eventually get invited to this symposium 14 years later

**[1:10]:** the following sentences are negatives because somewhere in the world sand creeks are still happening the fact that they occur frequently does not make any massacre acceptable it just means that we as human beings haven't learned anything from them mainstream america must read its own history especially as it relates to native americans what makes the sand the massacre at sand creek particularly heinous is that it was done in a country that supposedly advocated equality for all yet there were massacres they were called massacres when we won and they were called battles when the cavalry won and there was still slavery a big war was being fought for that and there were and there were atrocities visited on the black people contemporaneously

**[2:21]:** at that long ago interviewed alexa with alexa sometime in the year 2000 i talked about the continuing self continuing effects at sand creek washita and the breakout at fort robinson has all has on all cheyenne people even to this day when i first came to chief back to chief tonight college and i was then the new president we had an internship arrangement with the university of montana with the university of montana psychology department the lady who was serving as the intern asked if she could talk to me so we set up an appointment and her first question is was when did ouachita sand creek and fort robinson occur and i told her that they all occurred from 1860 to 1879

**[3:32]:** was really surprised because she said that many of her clients talked about those events as if they had just happened recently and i said those events are still really close to us because many of our relatives died at those places i advised her to read cheyenne history if she was going to deal continue dealing with with us

**[4:07]:** and in the future to read the histories of any minorities that she was going to be dealing with ouachita happened in western oklahoma sand creek in colorado the fort robinson breakout in nebraska and the battle of little bighorn happened in montana

**[4:35]:** all those different state shows shows a stretch of the area that was occupied by the northern child by the cheyenne people and they are all iconic events in the history and in the collective personality of the cheyenne people

**[4:58]:** and those effects are still with us today for mainstream america mainstream america there are kind iconic events are the great western movement enabled by the concept by of manifest destiny settling the west and all of these just unsettled and killed many cheyenne people the westward movement killed a lot of native americans i'm not a psychologist or even an authority on cultural trauma or into intergenerational hurt i only see i only know what i see and feel i see us shy in people suffering from centuries of trauma inflicted on us and no one seems to understand why this is happening i see the trauma working on my people i see the effects of forcible deprivation by a supposedly superior people in their systems and when they are inflicted on this the effect the devastating effects it has on us i send see people self-sedating and self-medicating with drugs and alcohol because of these deprivations

**[6:24]:** we lost a lot of land a lot of culture at all a lot of our languages a lot of our spirituality a lot of our own educational systems and we lost it all forcibly and because we now staff medicaid we are blamed for these losses i believe that once we get through these self-medications the cyan people will be the self-sufficient and reliable people and this and their self-sufficient and not self-reliant as they once were

**[7:06]:** and to this day even when they see on tv some of the atrocities being visited on americans and we pretend that we as americans would never do such things i want mainstream americans to remember what happened at sand creek this country has done done those things on cheyenne people if mainstream america would only read the darker side of american america's history they would understand what i'm trying to say when i saw for instance a few years back our pilots being dragged through the the streets of mogadishu somalia and ice and they and they saw the reaction of mainstream america to such atrocities i immediately flipped it around and said but you've done the same things here you've done that to native americans you parade it through denver with female with artifacts among them female genitalia those are things that we have to remember those are things that this country is not above i know these

**[8:28]:** words are harsh and these words come from me a non-active a non-nate a non-activist native american a cheyenne indian i say these things because i do not want another sand creek to ever occur again i did not want another fort robinson visited on my on my people or any people white black asian alaska native or cheyenne

**[9:06]:** because i see in the future in our association an almost forcible association with mainstream america some positive sides to it and one of those positive sides are the tribal colleges that are now 37 in number throughout the united states and we serve between 30 and forty thousand students and much of our education is rooted in our languages and the promotion of our languages and our cultures

**[11:04]:** sand creek the place where our people were nearly wiped away the killings that took place there are still with all of us today we still mourn for our relatives we still hear the dying cries of babies old women and old men as they were being killed we will never forget that place or what happened there we will never forget our people who were killed there thank you

**[11:48]:** thank you dr littleberry