John Okute Sica

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Okute Sica (* 1890 with Willow Bunch, Saskatchewan ; † 1964 in Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan) (Okhúte Šíča: Lakota "difficult to hit" pronunciation: Okuhte Schihtscha), was a Canadian Lakota Indian. He was a farmer, historian and writer.

Life

John Okute Sica, a great-grandson of Minneconjou chief Black Moon , a Little Bighorn veteran , was born under the name John LeCaine (his mother, a granddaughter of Black Moon, was briefly married to a white man named Archie LeCaine and had the name after she had separated from him. Such "mixed marriages" were not infrequently concluded in Wood Mountain at that time, in order to secure the supply of the family in this way). As an adult, he adopted the Indian surname Okute Sica from his biological father. His actual Indian name was Woonkapi-sni (Woúŋkapi Šni, German "Was not shot down").

During the first nine years of his life, John Okute Sica learned the traditional Lakota way of life. Already in his early years he developed the awareness of being a witness to the demise of a great culture and began to be interested in the history of his people. In 1910 his father took him on a formative journey on horseback that led to the Frenchman River. They toured over 30 places that had been significant during the five years that Sitting Bull had spent with his tribe in Canada: the tribe's winter camps, sun dance grounds, red ocher mining sites, meat depots, vision-seeking sites, sacred objects, and burial sites .

From 1899 to 1906 he attended the Regina Industrial School, where he learned the English language and received training in agriculture and carpentry. From 1907 he lived in Wood Mountain, the place where Sitting Bull had found refuge from the troops of the US Army from 1876 to 1881. From 1909 he was a self-employed farmer. In 1952 he gave his land to the Wood Mountain Reservation, founded in 1930. In 1954 he was appointed chief of the Lakota of Wood Mountain.

John Okute Sica conducted extensive correspondence on various aspects of the ancient Lakota culture, some of which is stored in the archives of the province of Saskatchewan. He is considered the first Lakota historian in Canada. He also wrote a large number of stories in which he tried to convey the most authentic possible picture of the life of his ancestors. He also wrote reports on the course of the Battle of Little Bighorn and the murder of Sitting Bull, as they corresponded to the tribal tradition and which sometimes differ significantly from the official "white" historiography.

In 1963, the German writer and classical scholar Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich visited him . She was so impressed by him that she introduced him as the aged “Harry Okute” from “Wood Hill”, Canada, in her novel Night over the Prairie from the cycle The Blood of the Eagle . With the first name Harry she made the connection to her previous novel cycle The Sons of the Great Bear , whose main hero Harka (Tokei-ihto) was called Harry by the white people. In addition, she named her last novel, The bright face , after a story by John Okute Sica ("Ité-ská-wiŋ", Lakota for "bright face") and also used parts of this story for the plot of the novel. Welskopf-Henrich received the manuscripts of John Okute Sica from his widow in 1965. She planned to publish it in German, which she did not succeed in during her lifetime.

Quote

“The Indian was never really understood, and this lack of understanding brought sorrow and suffering to so many of his people. Everything the Indian loved he lost, and so he went too. Now that the real Indian has left this world, the Indian will be recreated in the image of the White Man. "

Publications

  • John Okute Sica: The Miracle of Little Bighorn - Tales from the World of the Old Lakota . Palisander Verlag, Chemnitz 2009, ISBN 978-3-938305-10-2

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Canadian Museum of Civilization
  2. ↑ T. Poirier (Ed.): Wood Mountain Uplands. Wood Mountain Historical Society, Wood Mountain 2000, p. 78.
  3. ^ E. Lorenz: Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich and the Indians. A biography. Palisander Verlag, Chemnitz 2009, pp. 244–245.
  4. ↑ John Okute Sica: The Miracle of the Little Bighorn. Tales from the world of the ancient Lakota. Palisander Verlag, Chemnitz 2009, p. 219.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME John Okute Sica
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Woonkapi-sni; LeCaine, John (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Lakota, historian, writer
DATE OF BIRTH 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH at Willow Bunch, Saskatchewan
DATE OF DEATH 1964
Place of death Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan