Dakota-Lakota Journal
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November 2 0 0 6
World Champ on the Rez
Undefeated WBO Champion visits Cheyenne, Lakota and Crow Nations to film a documentary about the “Native Bono” that will bring international attention to the federal government’s continued neglect of Indian Country.
By NICOLE WAR EAGLE
It’s not everyday that a WBO, WBF and WBU World Champion can be seen on the Northern Cheyenne Nation but that was the case when undefeated cruiserweight champ Johnny Nelson recently visited with tribal members there, a scene that was replicated on the Lakota and Crow Nations.
Nelson, a star of the division once dominated by Evander Holyfield, was in what he called “the real America” as part of a BBC TV crew that was filming a documentary about the life and work of indigenous author, photographer and orator, Serle Chapman. Nelson is narrating and presenting the film.
“The Cheyenne, Lakota and Crow people I met were very friendly, approachable, and unbelievably humble,” said Nelson, who was also deeply impressed by the beauty of the land and culture. “To be honest I was shocked, I never expected such magnificence. This has given me an insight into an America I never imagined still existed,” said the boxer from Sheffield, England.
By contrast, Nelson said he found some of the socioeconomic conditions and material poverty on the reservations to be shocking. “It is a scandal,” he said. “It is unbelievable that America is the richest country in the world but that it continues to neglect the indigenous people of this land.”
Serle Chapman, the subject of the documentary, is not only recognized as one of the Native communities foremost authors and communicators, but as somebody who contributes at a grassroots level to affect positive change within reservation communities, while also influencing policy makers through his writing and presentations.
2004 US Presidential and Vice Presidential candidate, Senator John Edwards, is one such national figure. Edwards, who political analysts expect to seek the Democratic Party’s nomination for President in 2008, said he has sent some of Chapman’s work to “the Center for Promise and Opportunity, a 501(c) 4 I helped start to study poverty.”
Edwards remarked that Chapman should be thanked “for everything” he is “doing to make our country a better place.” Nelson Mandela and President Bill Clinton are amongst world and national leaders who have also commended Chapman’s work in the indigenous community. President Clinton said he was “honored to write the foreword remarks” to Chapman’s We, The People.
“Serle is the Native Bono,” Lakota hip-hop artist Sequoia tells Nelson in the documentary, likening Chapman to U2’s philanthropic frontman. Sequoia’s “Code of the West” is to be featured on the soundtrack.
In addition to Sequoia, the documentary includes interviews with fellow Lakotas, Chief Alfred Red Cloud, Wilmer Stampede Mesteth and Ernie LaPointe; Northern Cheyenne tribal members Barbara Braided Hair, Ruthie Shoulder Blade and Rowdy Alexander; Kennard Real Bird (Crow), and Chapman’s agent, Jeanette Sassoon, former wife of salon mogul Vidal Sassoon.
As well as Chapman’s work the documentary explores the Chapman family’s journey from London to the Straits of Mackinac in the 1820s and how, as traders, the Chapmans entered into Ojibwa, Dakota and Cheyenne culture through marriage.
Ruthie Shoulder Blade describes Chapman as her nephew and in the film she explains to Nelson the extended family’s common ancestry and lineal descent.
“The Strange Owl family and the Chapman family are related, and in the Cheyenne way that means Serle and I are brother and sister,” says Barbara Braided Hair in the film.
“I was raised by my grandma, Grace Strange Owl, and she always stressed how important it was to respect ourselves and our relatives. Grandma would say, ‘We have come a long way to be here in our homelands and family is how we were able to survive as Cheyennes,’” Braided Hair continues.
Chapman describes himself as Kalderas, his mother’s people. “I was born indigenous, a Kalderas, and brought up to believe that we are who are mothers are,” he explains. “For years I did not know my Cheyenne kin, or the extent of that bloodline on the Chapman side, and I could not be prouder of that heritage and my Cheyenne relatives.”
Johnny Nelson believes that one of the striking things about Indian Country is how important family is. “Most cultures have forgotten that because of modern distractions, but tribes have fought hard to hold on to it,” he said. “On the reservations material things are not so important, it’s family that matters.”
Braided Hair says that she is proud of Chapman “for teaching us about our history and knowing the details of our history, not only for us, but for others who are interested in our culture, so they understand better who we are, what our values are, and that family is the priority.”
Chapman’s latest, award-winning book, Promise: Bozeman’s Trail to Destiny, includes a beautifully written and detailed account of Cheyenne history from Sand Creek through to the signing of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty.
Chapman’s writing and presentation of history is praised by all of those interviewed on the film. “I think Serle is the best historian, writer and cultural interpreter we have,” says Chief Alfred Red Cloud in the documentary. Red Cloud also contributed to the Lakota perspective in Promise.
Chapman’s effort to right the historical record of the Cheyenne and Lakota people is a reoccurring theme in the documentary. Ernie LaPointe, the great-grandson of Sitting Bull, explained to Nelson how he hopes that a book he is working on with Chapman will “straighten out” a lot of the confusion and dubious claims that surround Sitting Bull’s lineage.
Chapman’s books have been published in different languages on three continents and in 2004 the Associated Press reported that he was considered to be “one of America’s fifty most influential writers” for bringing historic and contemporary Native issues into mainstream America.
Nelson said he wanted to know why the Lakota and Cheyenne reservations he visited, and other Native communities he’d read about, were “more like the Third World than America,” and that Chapman and Red Cloud had provided him with historical context and contemporary perspective.
“We are still the landowners,” Red Cloud tells Nelson on camera. “The Black Hills is not for sale, never was for sale, and was never sold,” insists Red Cloud.
Chapman criticized the IRA government system. “The IRA system was flawed when FDR signed it into law and it hasn’t improved with age. IRA governments were not made in the peoples’ image and they are never going to be unless the people take them back and remake them so that their governments will represent them, their culture and their values.”
Chapman says that although tribal members are “disenfranchised and understandably disenchanted” with the system, people need to participate to change it and to rein in “some tribal presidents and administrations that seek to control or influence virtually every aspect of their peoples’ lives by quasi-Stalinism.”
Chapman also urges tribal members to participate in national and state elections to “change it from the inside out.”
“The indigenous community needs to be heard to first get onto the agenda, and then to influence the agenda. Vine (Deloria, Jr.) showed what could be achieved on an academic and political level when he was active in Washington, DC and Ben (Nighthorse Campbell) did likewise from the inside,” he said.
Chapman’s forthcoming book, Vine in Conversation, focuses on the life, heritage and work of Vine Deloria, Jr. Ben Nighthorse Campbell has written the book’s foreword.
“A sincere tribal president would seek to empower their people by providing real opportunities for all tribal members to familiarize themselves with the tribe’s Constitution. The people would then realize that the Constitution could be changed by the will of the people, namely their will. But many tribal governments are not interested in the will of the people, because if the people are empowered many elected officials will be unemployed,” said Chapman.
The documentary is set to air on the BBC to an estimated TV audience in excess of fifteen million.
“Native people are kind hearted and have not forgotten what really matters,” says Nelson. “There’s a lot we can learn from Native people and we should make the effort to do that.”
