I am, or was, part of Lupe and Melda Trejo’s Lakota tiyospaye (tee-YOSH-pay-ay), or kinship circle. A Lakota person described the tiyospaye as several family tipis arranged in a literal circle around a common fire.
The central tiyospaye surrounded the annual Sun Dance held on Red Bear land on Pine Ridge, South Dakota. There were “satellite” tiyospaye, established by committed Sun Dancers, who returned to other parts of North America and established sweatlodge communities. This was the larger tiyospaye, or kinship circle.
I am Creek, not Lakota, and it was one of the outer tiyospaye I connected with, via my hometown (Binghamton, NY) Unitarian Fellowship (in which I was raised), to my friend Jim Holley who ran a sweatlodge and was adopted brother to Lupe Trejo, who was part of the Red Bear tiyospaye in South Dakota.
Being part of this circle still ripples through my life. The people I met there opened up new paths for me, including a literal marriage and the enlargement of my family. It even led me to the Baptist church and indirectly to my work with Indian Voices (but that’s several other stories)
Melda Red Bear Trejo lives on in the memory of all who knew her. Christian missionaries made pilgrimages to meet her. She and her husband, Lupe Trejo, established their Sun Dance sometime in the early 1990s before his departure from this life in the late 1990s.
Lupe himself, of Mexican/Aztek origin, had once aspired to become a Catholic priest. After forty-some years of marriage, fatherhood and farmwork, he became a spiritual community leader of a different kind, leading Sun Dances. However, he still considered himself Catholic throughout his life, and Melda considered herself to be a Christian, despite their open practice in Lakota tradition.
Sun Dance was held on Down East, the Red Bear homestead in Pine Ridge. I served as Firekeeper, picked by Lupe himself for the task. I experienced the most intense of prayer times. I carry that intensity with me when I engage in Christian prayer.
Larissa Petrillo is a Canadian academic who met the Trejos through a couple I had met at the Trejos in the early 1990s. She established a relationship with Melda and Lupe and collaborated on a book, Being Lakota, mostly about Melda but with substantial input from Lupe, who died before its completion.
Petrillo and Melda portray a much more detailed description of Lakota life than I could ever hope to produce, and I recommend Being Lakota for insight into Lakota life in the late 20th century. However, the book validated my memory because everything that Lupe told me about his life he also told to Petrillo. My skills as an oral historian were intact.
Melda and Lupe had several sons my age. There are some stories there, for sure. Lupe liked me and expected me to listen, which I did. I always listen to stories from my elders. Melda’s brother, either Solomon Red Bear, Jr, (or was it Albert) was pleased at my presence at prayer and stated that he was happy to see all races of people, “white and colored,” in attendance. He even offered to introduce me to some local women who “have land,” (half-jokingly) to entice me into staying on the Rez.
I had only one brief one-on-one conversation with Melda. When I told her I was in grad school to become a teacher (she must have asked me, because I would not have announced it), she said I should apply for a teaching position at the local school, “because they need good teachers.”
In the final shot of the 1992 movie Thunderheart, the Val Kilmer (RIP this very week) character pauses at the exit of the Rez, shocked at how different the non-Indian world feels to him after his spiritual transformation on the Rez. That’s how leaving Pine Ridge felt for me, too.
I wanted a few days to contemplate all this, but alas, it was not to be. After 20 hours of driving I arrived home on a Wednesday morning and a temp agency called me to do an interview. The next day, I was on the factory floor, back on the grind. Wakan Tanka, or God, had other work for me to do.
But the human connections I made in my local sweatlodge, and those I made at Sun Dance, continued to enrich my life. My reconnection with my own estranged midwest relatives comes out of my time in the tiyospaye.
My marriage, in-laws and youngest children come from that time. Even after losing contact with the Red Bear Trejos, perhaps I am still part of the outer ripples of the Tiyospaye they created.
For more, read:
Laura Petrillo, Melda Red Bear Trejo and Lupe Trejo, “Being Lakota: Identity and Tradition on Pine Ridge Reservation,” Board of Regents, University of Nebraska, 2007.
