Cultural Continuation- Reflections from South Dakota to Santa Fe

A few months ago, mitakuye oyasin, I attended the Legacy of Survival re-union of the Dakota Oyate in Flandreau, South Dakota.  I went there, a Chinese Jewish, non-Indian, to explore issues of social justice with real living Indians.  Old and new friends, including J.B., a tribal officer, Elaine Magree, an out of town actress from California performing in the Minnesota Fringe Festival, and Maggie, a friend and fellow alum, and also my boss who gave me time off and good blessings on the journey.
This re-union happened to remember the history of survival lived by the Dakota people- within the context of European, colonialist attempts to remove their culture and people from the land- as well as to develop a platform for restoring Dakota culture and developing an accurate picture of Dakota life and struggle from the past and present.
Truly, I don't know why I ended up in Flandrau, South Dakota during this time.  I am a city boy from Boston, son of a loving pragmatic mom, a wild, unstable father, and I take risks entering new communities and places often developing deep relationships, but also sometimes causing harm to others and myself :(.  I want to know more about my own cultural, sexual, and gender identity, but at the same time, my identity is inseparable from my relationships to All living and still life, to all communities,people,and circumatanes and present.  Hence, I say mitakuye oyasin!  A Lakota prayer phrase spoken at the beinning or ending of addresses, exprssing mutual appreciation and dependence with all relatives and historical, present, and future creation.
I am writing now, from Santa Fe, fresh off a party with Pueblo and European people,talking and singing with each other.  Considering what does it mean to continue culture, how it will happen, and why it is so fucking important to replace a global ethos of violence and destruction with an indigenous-European ethic of reconstruction and co-creation.  From, the Indian-Japenese-Korean-Chinease-Vietnamese-American Zen Buddhist tradition that I am a part of there is a story about a master who teaches a student the essence of the tradition by holding up one finger in silence.  The teacher could have sang a prayer, bowed, or maybe posed a question, but he holds up one finger.  The student wanting to communicate this teaching to a visitor again holds up one finger in displaying the experience of his master's teaching.  For this, the student loses a finger.  Whatever the message of the teaching, share wholeheartedly and make it your own!
I've thought about this as I try to communicate my experience in Flandreau as well as my push for intimate community that strives for justice and co-creativity in partnerships, schools, familias, pueblos, and inter-nationally.  So, at this event, speakers, singers, and dancers shared a lot: shared personal stories of trauma,memories of connection with ancestors who were killed during the Dakota war,  critical research on genocide committed against Dakota people; the Dakota shared medicine, in the form of plants and roots, medicine for broken connections, reconnection via documentaries and a massive intergenerational, co-ed Lacrosse match, shared in solidarity, prayer, protest, and return home as walkers crossed state boundary lines back into Mni-Sota (the Dakota name for the state of Minnesota) defying the Winnebeago and Sioux-Dakota exclusion Acts, which were created after the Dakota war to forcibly remove tribes of "defeated" nations from Minnesota; this legislation still stands.
As an outsider, I have critiques of the event.  There could have been more dialogue and more female and youth voice.  Rather than sustinance consisting of cigarettes, soda, and meat, there could have been Dakota-sewn, healthier options.  Events and times should have been more clearly posted!  But, I have more questions than criticism- how can culture be preserved and adapted at the same time?  How can continually manifesting  forms of oppression whether they be colonial, patriarchal, or human, be transformed?  And how does this type of gathering supplant current systems of isolation, individualism, mono-colonial-culturism, unvoiced and perpetual trauma, eco-$ide (capitalist generated genocide of the environment), and violence?  It does!  We love, we create, we live!  How diverging communities negotiate cultural preservation and adaptation given social changes and pressing needs is a struggle.  As Apache artist Bob Haozous writes, "I would so much prefer describing my own sunset instead of attempting to create parallels or descriptions of the beauty to my father's father's sunsets.  My sunset as with my culture exists with me today.  I would prefer to explain with my art what is of my own experience rather than portray a romantic Western historic or tribal historic experience that has been reduced to superficial layers of Contemporary Indian identity... We need the constant reminder that are cultural inheritance must serve as the cornerstone of any meaningful change."  We are products and producers of our times; this cultural impetus, is awareness and inspiration for being who I am amidst all my relations tarnished and evolving.