Memoir of discovery of family history involving the massacre of Native Americans at Wounded Knee. It starts with a road trip to Sturgis Bike Week and ends in the Nepal Himalayas.
An antiwar book that starts with Motorcycles and Native Americans: The Lakota Sioux once ruled the Black Hills of the Dakota Territories on horse back. Now, in August the Black Hills are filled with the roaring iron horses of bikers riding to the Bacchanalia of Sturgis Bike Week. Jeff Rasley set out for Sturgis to whoop it up with his biker friends. An unplanned detour through his family history led him to the site of one of the worst massacres in U.S. military history, Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
One of the author's ancestors fought in the Sioux Indian Wars in the Black Hills. Another helped the last of the Potawatomi survive a harsh winter in Indiana. Lt. James Mann of the 7th U.S. Cavalry was one of the few whites to die from wounds in the massacre at Wounded Knee. Valentine Berkey was given a beaded deerskin vest as a token of friendship from the Indians with whom he traded and aided.
Discovery of the different ways his ancestors treated with the people who were on the land before us began on a road trip to Sturgis Bike Week in South Dakota. A wrecked Harley motorcycle and bull-riding strippers sent Rasley on a Pilgrimage to Wounded Knee to discover the dark side and light side of his family history with Native Americans.
Rasley was forced to ask, to what tribe do I belong? No longer welcome in the Biker community at Sturgis, Rasley sought refuge among the Sioux in Pine Ridge Reservation. He didn't find the reconciliation he sought. Instead, his confrontation with the history of his ancestor's participation in the massacre of the Sioux people at Wounded Knee sent him off on another spiritual journey.
"Pilgrimage: Sturgis to Wounded Knee and Back Home Again, a Memoir" takes the reader on a motorcycle road trip without a bike. The road from Sturgis, South Dakota to Wounded Knee led to a spiritual dead end. The trip didn't end there. The pursuit of a pathway to understanding the shared roots of all humanity then took the author across the wide Pacific to a remote village in the Nepal Himalayas. Enlightenment came on the way back home. Enjoy a ride of discovery to the source from whence we all come (God ?).
Excerpt
One ancestor fought in the Sioux Indian Wars for thirteen years in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Another helped the last of the Potawatomi survive a harsh winter in Goshen, Indiana. Lt. James Mann was one of the few U.S. cavalrymen to die from wounds in the massacre at Wounded Knee. Valentine Berkey was given a handmade beaded vest as a token of friendship from the Indians with whom he traded and aided.
Discovery of the different ways my ancestors treated with the people who were on the land before us began on a road trip to Bike Week in Sturgis, South Dakota. A wrecked Harley motorcycle and bull-riding strippers sent me on a Pilgrimage to Wounded Knee to discover the dark side and light side of my family history with Native Americans.
Professional Reviews
Moving Memoir
"Jeff Rasley moves us into a different type of history: incidents which occurred long ago but nevertheless retain all their relevance today. ... Jeff discusses his family's connection to one of the most shameful events of America's past and describes how a recent trip to South Dakota helped illuminate some of its modern-day repercussions." Synchronized Chaos Magazine Feb. 2013 synchchaos.com/?p=7470
Stop Exploitation!
"I just finished reading Pilgrimage: Sturgis to Wounded Knee and Back Home Again, a Memoir by Jeff Rasley and I agree with him almost entirely, especially about the communalism and spiritualism of the Native Americans. Like me, he wonders how much better off our environment might be if we'd learned to live with them rather than killing them. ... Rasley describes his visit to the Pine Ridge Reservation, one of the bleakest places in the U.S. Not only is the land the Whites "gave" them some of the most barren I've seen, the people who live there deal with a scourge of alcoholism. ... On the whole, I appreciate his acceptance of cultures that are different from his own, including that of Indians, and his work to make people's lives better on the other side of the world. I just hope that American Whites will let go of the assumption that the Indians' struggle ended at Wounded Knee. There are still opportunities for redress of the wrongs our ancestors did to the indigenous people of this continent, or at least to stop ongoing exploitation." March 4, 2013 by Faith Ann Colburn, People Who Are Different From Us
faithanncolburn.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/people-who-are-different-from-us/comment-page-1/#comment-92
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