Johnson Loud (left) and Robert Two Bulls shared art and culture with the community February 28 through March 3 through an event called Seen Through Native Eyes, a collaboration between Spirit of the Wilderness Episcopal Church and the Grand Marais Art Colony. Loud is Ojibwe and grew up on the Red Lake Reservation in Minnesota. Two Bulls is Oglala Lakota and grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Both are well-renowned artists and both are Episcopal priests.
Robert Two Bulls and Johnson Loud are good at building bridges. They’re not road and bridge contractors or engineers, although Loud started college intending to become an aeronautical engineer. They both have a special set of attributes, gifts, training, and experience that allows them to make connections with people and to help other people make connections with each other.
Two Bulls is Oglala Lakota and grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Loud is Ojibwe and grew up on the Red Lake Reservation in Minnesota. Both are well-renowned artists and both are Episcopal priests, Two Bulls with All Saints Indian Mission in South Minneapolis and Loud with Church of the Messiah in the Prairie Island Indian Community. They came to Grand Marais February 28-March 3 to build some bridges. They were invited by Spirit of the Wilderness Episcopal Church and spent much of the weekend discussing art and culture at various community events and conducting workshops at the Grand Marais Art Colony.
Dakota 38—rising to reconciliation
The first night they were in Cook County, Two Bulls and Loud presented a documentary called Dakota 38 at Cook County Higher Education. The website of the company that produced the 78-minute film, Smooth Feather Productions (www.smoothfeather.org), describes the movie this way: “In the spring of 2005, Jim Miller, a Native spiritual leader and Vietnam veteran, found himself in a dream riding on horseback across the great plains of South Dakota. Just before he awoke, he arrived at a riverbank in Minnesota and saw 38 of his Dakota ancestors hanged.
“At the time, Jim knew nothing of the largest mass execution in United States history, ordered by Abraham Lincoln on December 26, 1862. ‘When you have dreams, you know when they come from the creator… As any recovered alcoholic, I made believe that I didn’t get it. I tried to put it out of my mind, yet it’s one of those dreams that bothers you night and day.’”
In the film, Jim Miller says that he saw his mother, who died when he was 10, come out of fire and tell him he needed to make this film. “We’re going to be the first ones to forgive,” he said. “Let’s rise to reconciliation.”
The production company’s description of the movie goes on to say, “Now, four years later, embracing the message of the dream, Jim and a group of riders retrace the 330-mile route of his dream on horseback from Lower Brule, South Dakota to Mankato, Minnesota to arrive at the hanging site on the anniversary of the execution. …This is the story of their journey—the blizzards they endure, the Native and Non-Native communities that house and feed them along the way, and the dark history they are beginning to wipe away.”
The journey is about healing. It follows the path of the 38 who were hanged, and it has been retraced every year since 2008. One person who had watched the video left this comment on the website: “This is one of the most important films ever made. It should be required viewing for every American citizen from middle school through old age.”
Two Bulls explained that before the execution of the 38 men, Native people were being taken from their traditional home areas and placed on small pieces of land that did not provide enough hunting ground to feed them. They were promised rations that did not arrive, and they began to starve. When the leaders were told, “Let them eat grass,” they revolted, killing 500 white people within a fiveweek period.
At the urging of Bishop Whipple, an Episcopal priest who advocated for the Native Americans, President Lincoln pardoned 265 Native men who had been sentenced, but 38 were still executed. Thirty-seven of them were baptized Episcopalians. One of them said before he died, “I expect to travel directly to the house of the Creator and to be happy when I get there.”
The life-giving power of art
Two Bulls and Loud continued the weekend by offering insights into the life-giving power of art and the potential it has for spiritual expression and healing.
Loud talked about the connections that he has made from New Zealand to Hawaii with the Anglican Indigenous Network. Although pottery is the art form nearest to his heart, he has a painting of Enmegahbowh (also known as John Johnson), the first Native North American to be recognized as an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church, displayed in the Smithsonian. Loud likes to use “found objects” in his artwork, and he showed an example of how he used the imprint from a fly swatter on the side of a vase, giving it an elegant, lacy design. Another of his vases has a finish that looks like a watermelon, a result of carefully selecting the type of ash used in the process.
Robert Two Bulls showed slides of his paintings, many of which have Native and sacred themes. His own logo is that of a yellow buffalo bull. Two Bulls talked about asceticism and mysticism and the relationship between the artist, the artist’s work, and the viewer. He likened the artist to an ascetic and the viewer of the art to a mystic and suggested that the difference between asceticism and mysticism is like the difference between rowing a boat and sailing it.
The Minnesota Historical Society has a painting by Two Bulls entitled The Thirty Eight Tears of Bishop Whipple. In it, Bishop Whipple, who appealed to President Lincoln to pardon the men who were sentenced in 1862, stands among 38 tears, made of little blue nooses, falling down like rain all around him.
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