BARBARA DILLS

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BARBARA DILLS

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WAKING UP IN PARADISE

WAKING UP IN PARADISE WAKING UP IN PARADISE WAKING UP IN PARADISE



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PEYOTE, SNIPER FIRE, AND THE LAKOTA WAY OF LIFE

Untold Stories from the 1970s

Three weeks after graduating from Smith College in 1974, I was living in an armed American Indian Movement (AIM) camp on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. Two days later, I was served peyote by traditional Lakota medicine man Henry Crow Dog, born in 1899.


After 50 years, it's time to share this story.

READ AN EXCERPT FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

Some of the people and places that inspired this book...

Henry  & Gertrude Crow Dog at home, 1976

A sign like this greeted me in June of 1974. 

With my college friend Louise Erdrich on the South Dakota prairie, 1977

Christine Red Bear, Grampa Henry Crow Dog and me, August 1981

With the Crow Dog kids, 1977

Eric "Redbone" Biggs and Dinah Running at Paradise, 1977 

From Crow Dog friend, Lakota Chief Lame Deer

"We Indians hold the pipe of peace, but the white man’s religious book speaks of war, and we have stood by while the white man supposedly improved the world. Now we Indians must show how to live with our brothers, not use them, kill them or maim them…. We must try to use the pipe for mankind, which is on the road to self-destruction. We must try to get back on the red road of the pipe, the road of life. We must try to save the white man from himself… With this pipe, we could all form again the circle without end."



Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions by John (Fire) Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes, 1972

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