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Traditional Lakota Games Day set for April 5 (March 28, 2008) - The Center will present “Lakota Woskate,” a day of traditional Lakota games activities and demonstrations, on Saturday, April 5, with Lakota artist Mike Marshall of Rosebud, S.D. The program will be free and open to all ages. Registration is not required. “Lakota Woskate” will begin at 10 a.m. with a games workshop led by Marshall. Participants will learn how to craft a traditional game, using materials supplied by the Encounter Center. The artist will discuss how the game is played, who played it and its significance to the Lakota people. At 2 p.m., Marshall will demonstrate a variety of traditional Lakota games, including: winged bones, hutanacute; the webbed hoop game, takuda cangleska; and catching deer bones with a needle, tasiha unpi. He will invite visitors to participate in games play using reproductions commissioned by the Center.
In consultation with Fr. Bucko, the Center commissioned more than a dozen reproductions of traditional Lakota games pieces crafted by Marshall and based on artifacts preserved at the Buechel Memorial Lakota Museum at St. Francis Mission, St. Francis, S.D. The Center’s display of traditional Lakota games is expanding as part of its mission to commemorate a history of encounters that occurred before and since Lewis & Clark. Traditional games were an essential part of Lakota life before the introduction of European and American non-Native games in the late 19th century. Some games were played only by adults or only by children. Some were for girls, some were for boys. Games could have social, economic or spiritual significance and many generated humorous stories. All games promoted skills and values important to the Lakota, including competition, sportsmanship and risk-taking, says Fr. Bucko who is director of Creighton’s Native American Studies Program. The Lewis & Clark journals describe and illustrate a number of games played by Native people, including the hoop and pole game played by Mandan chiefs and warriors in December 1804, and hand games played by the Shoshone in August 1805. The Buechel Museum houses the collections of Fr. Eugene Buechel, S.J., who lived with the Lakota on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations for more than 50 years. Thanks to Lakota participants and non-Lakota researchers, including Fr. Buechel, many game pieces and written descriptions are preserved today. The Buechel Museum collection contains games given to Fr.
Buechel by Lakota people and pieces he
commissioned from Lakota artisans as part of
his work to help preserve Lakota culture.
Unlike preservationists who sent their
collections to distant museums, Fr.
Buechel’s materials have remained at St.
Francis on the Rosebud Reservation. www.siouxcitylcic.comm or call 712.224-5242.
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“Lakota Woskate” promotes the Center’s interest in the
traditional games of varied cultures in
Siouxland. “Games bring people together,”
says Fr. Ray Bucko, S.J., the Center’s
cultural outreach advisor and Chair of
Sociology and Anthropology at Creighton
University.