Hokahey. It’s a sad time in the United States of America these days, and particularly last Friday. Twenty-five years ago, on September 11th, 2001, a coordinated terrorist attack by Al-Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people in the beloved USA. This summer, during our country’s 250-year Fourth of July celebration of freedom, my red dog RoZie and I journeyed to another seemingly tragic site in American history: The Little Big Horn Battlefield. There, on two scorchingly hot days in southeast Montana, Sunday, June 25th and Monday, June 26th, 1876, the Northern Plains Indians, the indigenous people of America, took a stand to preserve their sacred, ancestral Way of Life.

Known to the natives as The Battle of the Greasy Grass, the fight occurred in the valley of The Little Big Horn River, where heavy morning dew and moisture on the tall grass left a slick, shiny and greasy sheen, coating the peoples’ moccasins and their horses’ bellies. Custer’s calculated attack was met by a collective force of thousands of Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors. The rest, as they say, is history. “The Battle of the Little Bighorn continues to fascinate people around the world,” reads the park brochure. “For most, it has come to illustrate a part of what Americans know as their western heritage. Heroism and suffering, brashness and humiliation, victory and defeat, triumph and tragedy — these are the things people come here to ponder.”

A big part of our LIBI experience, in Alpha code of the National Park Service, was connecting with the coolest, most authentic, traditional modern scholars of the Little Big Horn Battlefield. Her name is Olivia Rose Williamson, Chieftain of Indian Battle Tours. You can look her up on Facebook. Rose is the real deal.

I have a bit more to say on what inspired our cross-country trek to LIBI, our first Fall 2026 Vision Quest weekend, spring 2027’s Vision Quest weekend, our cool, new workshop WWSBD? What Would Sitting Bull Do(?), based on the principled leadership of the great Hunkapapa Lakota Chief, and a bunch of other fun stuff. For the moment, I’ll turn it over to Battlefield Rose in the following videos and look forward to conveying more soon. Toksha