Shellmound • Who am I? • Dullknife Battle

Free Land Excerpt 1 Shellmound By Ariel Luckey Copyright 2008

like a DJ scratching archival records I dig in crates of the past, searching for the perfect beat, like geologists reads rocks to tell time in reverse, this land holds history carved in its flesh, stories submerged in its structure, starting at the surface and digging down
into the unknown history of my homeland, digging down, digging down, digging down

2008
I stand on this land, this shopping mall owned and operated by Madison Marquette, easy to forget where I am in the glittering glass of american gluttony, shiny and new and on sale, 400,000 square feet of retail, Banana Republic, Bank of America, Barnes and Noble, Victoria Secret, Old Navy, H&M and The Gap, 284 apartments, 82 townhouses, 16 movie screens, 230 hotel rooms, 2000 parking spaces, adjacent Ikea, thick slab of pavement over earth packed hard and heavy, dead in the screaming silence of the past, digging down

1999
down beneath sidewalk and street, mall construction disturbs buried bodies, Ohlone ancestors sleep for thousands of years wake up to the sound of blaring bulldozers scraping their souls into steel boxes, some bones so toxic they feel like rubber, so drunk off chemical cocktails they’re handled and disposed of as toxic waste, others buried in unmarked mass graves, hundreds removed from their resting place to create space for the foundation of the new mall, city council calls desecrated cemetery progress and stonewalls local Ohlone and community members who demand respect for the dead, corporate officials play their game to win, offer losers a fake 50-foot Shellmound filled with white washed history, adding insult to injury, saying nothing about Ohlone burials, nothing about the hundreds of bodies already removed nor the thousands that remain, nothing about the vibrant Ohlone community alive today, digging down

1981
amidst rusty industry and economic decline this land’s assigned federal designation as a Brownfield, soil fully saturated with hydrogen sulfide, arsenic, lead, DDT residuals and petroleum hydrocarbons, the ground bubbles with acid as volatile heavy metals seep into buried bones, bleed through Temescal Creek, run red into the Bay, muddy water poisoned before I was born, digging down

1924
this land is sold to Sherman-Williams paint company, their Cover the Earth logo depicts a paint bucket pouring over blue green globe, blood red paint suffocates the planet as business men drive steam shovels clawing and ripping the largest Shellmound down to ground level, archeologist notes 692 bodies found and haphazardly destroyed, arrowheads, knives, spearheads, mortars, pestles, ceremonial pipes, all devoured by hungry metal mouths crunching through hundreds of years of history, Shellmound material calcium rich from shells and bones, used to pave Oakland Berkeley streets, College Avenue, Dwight Way, I-80, white people pave their modern roads with bones of Ohlone ancestors, paving the roads with bones, walking on a people’s history without regard, digging down deeper still

1876
the year Custer was killed and blood rained down on the Dullknife Battlefield, an entrepreneur established an amusement park, Shellmound Park, with horse track, carousel, train station, bowling ally, shooting range, restaurants, bars, and a dance pavilion placed directly on top of the Shellmound, wealthy white people flock from big city across the Bay to dance polkas, Irish jigs and fast waltzes on the graves of Ohlone men women and children, literally dancing on Ohlone graves, drunk and dancing on their graves until prohibition slows the stream of amusement seekers to a lonely trickle, Ohlone land littered with broken beer bottles and empty bullet shells, digging down

1850
the story expands, Shellmound land part of territory colonized into California, Golden State feeding gold rush seething with 300,000 forty-niners gold rushing to mine rivers bleeding gold, immigrant greed speeds Native genocide, disease and murder explode like gunpowder as state leaders pay white militias $1 million to hunt for Native scalps, $5 a head, over 4000 Native children kidnapped and sold into legalized slavery, San Francisco Bay economy swells exponentially as Shellmounds scream in silence, digging down

the land passes hands from US to Mexico, from Mexico to Spain, digging down,

1769
Father Junipero Serra stabs the earth with Spanish flag pole, European invaders establish Mission system slavery for Ohlone manual labor, kidnap and convert children to save their souls from a Christian devil, Ohlone backs broken by guns and bibles, survival wrung like water from stone, a people’s home gutted and burned, beaten bloody and bruised bodies, women raped by Spanish soldiers, fatal diseases surge in waves of widespread death
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I’m just a white boy attracted to the color
disconnected from my roots so I reach for another’s
I’m discovering power and beauty in Lakota culture
like the sacred eagle but I feel like a vulture
dancing on their graves, stealing their songs
I just want a community where I belong
and there’s something here that I feel in my core
but I can’t really call it, haven’t felt it before
wasn’t present in my synagogue or in the church
maybe its what I’ve been looking for, on my search
a spirit, an energy, connection to the land
but why don’t my people have it, I try to understand

my family sold their culture for American whiteness
assimilated to make it suppressing what was inside us
changed our names and our language, even our religion
in exchange for the privileges white people are given
but the cost of what was lost can not stay hidden
and now I hunger for spirituality and tradition
and I listen to these songs and I want to sing along
but there’s something missing, it feels all wrong
I’m standing in a room filled with empty picture frames
and I don’t know the languages, the stories or the names
I can’t see my own reflection, nothing is clear
Who am I? What am I doing here?
Where do I come from? And what does it mean?
Is this what they wanted in the American dream?
I need to color in the blank white faces
fill the void with memories, dates and places
I’m lost without this knowledge of self
I’m sick and tired trying to be like everybody else
If you don’t have roots than how can you grow?
I’m a dig for the truth, fuck it I need to know
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And then I found it. Within ten miles of my family’s ranch is a National Historic Site. The Dull Knife Battlefield. This was it. This is what happened on that land, the story no one ever told me.

Tall Bull
Walking Whirlwind
Hawks Visit
Burns Red
Four Spirits
Walking Calf
Crow Necklace
and all those whose names were lost or forgotten
who died in the battle of Chief Dull Knife
fighting for their freedom
against the United States Army
November 25, 1876
rest in peace

from the darkest depths of night, comes a hint of light
shivering thru snow in a world of winter white
just before dawn when a day is born
in Powder River country in the Little Big Horns
if you listen close, you can hear it in the wind
the whisper of spirits the distant cries of men
come with me to the bitter end of life
at the clandestine campgrounds of Chief Dull Knife
nestled in a valley of sage and evergreen trees
herds of horses, fire pits and tipis
families sleeping the sun begins to rise
as the morning quiet is murdered in deafening surprise
storming thunder of hoofs and battle cries
war songs echo as the first bullet flies
US soldiers riding out of hiding guns blasting
attacking the Cheyenne village in fast action
total chaos the tribe awakes in
the warriors shaken stumble from their tipis naked
with ammo in one hand a rifle in the other
people running up ravines behind the rocks to take cover
a young girl runs to the hills until the sudden thud
of a bullet ripping thru her chest spills her blood
she falls in the mud screams in agony and torture
the last thing she sees a horse galloping towards her
a battling warrior charging for the soldier who shot her
cause the young girl was his daughter
the father aims his rifle just as a bullet tears thru his torso
he feels his life go he silently slips from his horse slow
the slaughter of war knows no remorseful
the troops hunt men, women and children
the valley stinks with the stench of killing

the cost of Free Land
can you imagine the cost of Free Land
the cost of Free Land

as the morning sun light is shattered by the gun fight
Chief Dull Knife’s men defend their groups
they shoot and the troops of General Mackenzie
people screaming frantic in the frenzy
thru the woods past the river survivors run for their lives
while the army burns the village and their winter supplies
with surprise on their side the soldiers ride to prevail
force the tribe to flee deep into the wilderness trails
that night the temperature plummets to thirty below
they huddle in the snow hungry dirty and cold
the frost biting their bodies hurting the old men and women
they kill some ponies put their hands and feet in ‘em
then in the night 11 babies freeze to death, 11 babies
11 babies freeze to death in the arms of their mothers
with no food no shelter no cover they suffer
the Cheyenne walk and walk thru the mountain range
every step in pain with the ghosts of the slain
the icy storms makes it hard to stay on track
as many die from the cold as in the army’s attack
but a desperate few by sheer force navigate their course
thru the snowy trails to the camp of Crazy Horse
their arrival draws on intertribal
help of the Lakota to support the survival
the last of the tribe struggle to stay alive
with no supplies they have to make a compromise
that spring they surrender at the Robinson Fort
blood on the white man’s hands in the Indian Wars
if you listen close you can hear it in the wind
the whisper of spirits the distant cries of men
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