What the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of the Greasy Grass taught me about the only independence that matters
Published July 4, 2026 | IndigenousHealing.io
Today is July 4th — the day the United States celebrates its independence.
I want to tell you about three words that have been living in me since I drove home through the mud, more certain than ever of what this work is for.
Sovereignty. Freedom. Resonance.
Sunrise over the tipi village, Little Bighorn, June 2026. Photo: Bunny Sings Wolf.
Not as abstractions. Not as political positions. As living, breathing realities I witnessed from inside a tent at the Greasy Grass — the ground where, 150 years ago, the largest gathering of Native peoples ever assembled fought to protect their families, their freedom, and their sacred way of life.
What Sovereignty Actually Looks Like
Richard Deo Grass understood something the Oceti Sakowin have always understood: that
a nation's sovereignty does not depend on recognition from outside governments. It depends on the nation's own faithful keeping of itself.
Sovereignty — supreme authority and trustworthiness within oneself. The state of being self-governing — not ruled by fear, not ruled by the wounds of the past, not ruled by the divisions others have planted between us.
Richard walked this Sovereignty quietly, faithfully, and without applause for decades. It was Richard the people called when the U.S. government arrived with briefcases full of legal documents and an offer to purchase the Black Hills. His answer has never been walked back:
"The Black Hills are not for sale."
He marched to Little Bighorn to hold Congress accountable to a promised memorial that had been approved and quietly never built. His persistence made it real — the memorial was completed in 2003.
He worked with international lawyers to produce Reclaiming the Black Hills — a legal paper citing every relevant international law precedent for honoring the 1868 treaty as written. It has lived on our Lakota Dakota Nakota Nation website for twenty years, available to anyone willing to read it.
And before he passed, he directed that a website be built — not to ask permission to exist, but to represent plainly and proudly what the Lakota Dakota Nakota Nation has always been: a spiritual traditional international sovereign nation, walking in faithful Sovereignty regardless of appearances.
He entrusted that work to me. I have kept it alive, often on my own dollar, with no grant and no institution behind it — the same way Richard intended: as quiet, faithful Sovereignty in action.
Paul Kahnert who accompanied Richard on that walk in 2001 - walked a different form of the same Sovereignty — as witness, ally, and keeper of the dream. For 25 years, through cancer, a stroke, and a border he could no longer cross, he held one vision: to place a commemorative plaque at the Greasy Grass on the 25th anniversary of that 2001 march. When his body could no longer carry him there, he asked me to carry it in his place.
A promise kept is its own form of Sovereignty.
I said yes.
What I Saw From the Encampment
I arrived early enough to see it quiet — a handful of tipis rising against blue sky, the land holding its breath before the thousands arrived.
The tipi village on the first day — no cars yet, just tipis under blue skies and a few fluffy white clouds. Photo: Bunny Sings Wolf, June 2026.
I also arrived with a fever. I spent most of those sacred days in my tent — unable to venture out, present in the only way available to me. The sounds of drums, of prayer, of languages I recognized and languages I was hearing for the first time moved through the walls of that tent like medicine.
Food was brought at no cost by the various tribes — a first-class operation of tipis, shower facilities, laundry brought in by truck, traffic volunteers moving thousands of cars. All organized by dedicated, loving hands.
Lying there, I kept thinking: this is what 2028 looks like.
This is the model. This is the proof that when people gather in love, remembrance, and resonance, the gathering takes care of itself.
The Plaque — And How It Found Its Way
Before the gathering, I had entrusted Paul's plaque to a respected elder and chief at Standing Rock — one I had the honor of joining at Summer Solstice ceremonies at Mato Tipila just days before. I offered tobacco in the traditional way and asked his help in finding the right moment for the plaque to be received.
Cell service at the camp was one bar at best. The thousands arriving daily made movement between camps nearly impossible. And so I trusted.
I trusted the tradition of a tobacco offering. I trusted the word of an elder. I trusted that what Paul had envisioned — simply to place the plaque on the ground — was already exceeded the moment it was placed in the hands of a Lakota Chief who understood its significance and carried it into the largest gathering of Native peoples in recent memory.
Paul wrote: "I wanted so much to meet you in person and be there on June 25th. The 150th Anniversary. It was so very important to me."
His plaque was there. Carried by a respected elder in an adjacent camp 5 miles away, an elder who knew Richard. Held by hands that understood what that 2001 march meant. Presented to a gathering of ten thousand.
That is more than Paul dared to dream.
Paul Kahnert's commemorative plaque, entrusted to a respected elder and chief at Standing Rock for presentation at the 150th Anniversary gathering. Photo: Bunny Sings Wolf.Freedom — What That Word Means Here
Today the United States celebrates Freedom with fireworks and flags.
One hundred and fifty years ago, the people who fought at the Greasy Grass won the battle. Sixty Lakota lives were lost. Over two hundred cavalry fell. By every military measure, the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho prevailed that day.
And yet — those who won the battle were sent to reservations. Their children were taken to boarding schools. The lands promised in the 1868 Treaty — signed in good faith by my great-grandfather Chief John Grass — were taken anyway.
No one truly wins a war. War has never preserved true lasting Freedom for any nation or people.
Freedom — not freedom from something. Freedom toward something. Toward honesty, toward healing, toward the recognition that no side of a war comes away whole.
What gathered at the Greasy Grass was not a victory celebration. Descendants of those who fought on both sides came together — 150 years later, peacefully — to say: we remember. We grieve. We choose, together, not to let what was lost be lost forever.
That is Freedom chosen, not bought.
Sovereignty. Freedom. Resonance.
Resonance — The Word for 2028
Resonance is what happens when separate things vibrate at the same frequency and begin to amplify each other.
A single voice singing alone in the dark. Then another joins. And another. Until what began as one small sound becomes something that moves through walls, through fences, through borders that keep good people from crossing to place their own plaques on the ground they love.
Ten thousand people at the Greasy Grass were not ten thousand separate griefs and histories and nations. They were one Resonance.
The respected elder who carried Paul's plaque asked everyone at our Summer Solstice ceremonies at Mato Tipila to pray for the 2028 vision — and added one beautiful detail: that each person joining hands around the tower is to hold a small amount of tobacco in their right hand, so that when the circle closes, the ancient medicine of the ancestors' prayers moves through every joined hand at once.
That is Resonance medicine. That is what the Circle the Walk of Peace Path at Mato Tipila is being built toward for Summer Solstice 2028 — not a protest, not a political gathering, but a Resonance event. The circle closing in an embrace. The Resonance amplifying. Livestreamed to the world so that every droplet of this ocean can feel the moment the whole ocean remembers it is ONE living Resonance.
This is what Nature's 4 Steps of Healing look like when thousands walk them together:
Balance — arriving honestly, as you are, carrying what you carry.
Harmony — choosing to stand beside yourself in acceptance, forgiveness, along with people whose history, wounds, and views differ from your own.
Abundance — giving freely: food, ceremony, music, prayer, presence — without competing or keeping score.
Peace — living, resting, at last, in the ground of shared humanity. Living in peace - Or resting in peace?
Either way, peace is where the sovereign journey ends — only to recircle again in the vortex of healing Resonance that continually embodies , through its own checks and balances in Sovereignty and true Freedom, lived in Resonance with the nurturance of all life.
What This Has to Do With You
I am not going to tell you what to think about Independence Day. I am not going to tell you which side of any line to stand on.
What I want to ask — quietly, the way Paul stayed quiet at that ceremony 25 years ago — is this:
What dream have you been carrying that you haven't yet placed?
What circle in your life is waiting to be completed?
What act of loyalty — to a person, a people, a promise, a vision — is your own sovereignty asking you to help make real?
Paul wrote in 2001 that he hoped to see 10,000 walking together. They came.
We are all the ones we have been praying for.
The Plaque Reads:
"Dedicated to the people who marched here from Two Moon on June 25, 2001. To demand a memorial be built to commemorate the victory of the brave people who fought here on June 25, 1876 to protect the women and children of the village from a murderer and his men. This memorial was built in 2003. Placed here on June 25, 2026."
These are Paul's own words, written in his own grief and conviction 25 years ago. They rest now on the ground they were written for. It belongs there. It has always belonged there.
And so do you — in the circle of one global healing family, walking Nature's 4 Steps as one, toward a world healed from the inside out.
If this story moved something in you, come find your human family at IndigenousHealing.io — a free global healing community built around Nature's 4 Steps of Healing: Balance, Harmony, Abundance, and Peace. The circle is always open.
And if you feel called to help build the gathering this story is pointing toward — the Circle the Walk of Peace Path at Mato Tipila, Summer Solstice 2028 — you can learn more and contribute at givesendgo.com/indigenoushealing.
Mitakuye Oyasin — All My Relations.
Bunny Sings Wolf
Ambassador, Lakota Dakota Nakota Nation
Founder, IndigenousHealing.io
www.LakotaDakotaNakotaNation.org | www.IndigenousHealing.io
Ambassador, Lakota Dakota Nakota Nation
Founder, IndigenousHealing.io
www.LakotaDakotaNakotaNation.org | www.IndigenousHealing.io
Photos Paul Kahnert - showing people courageously standing to insist that Congress keep it's promise to build an Indian memorial - Richard Grass, Paul's son, and Paul Kahnert — Greasy Grass, June 25, 2001
From Paul's own letter — published in the Lakota Journal, August 2001:
"We saw and heard many things and I would like to share some of them with you.
I heard from different people that there were no more heroes and no more leaders anymore and it made me sad to see people give up hope. I heard that the Ghost Dance was a "Craze" and that it was futile. It is not crazy for people to have hope for the future and it was not futile. The Ghost Dance was powerful because the Indian people were organized and acting all together. Your enemies recognized that power and moved to end it by outlawing it and then murdering the people at Wounded Knee...
I saw the divisions between Tribes, the divisions within Tribes. Even your factions have factions. The divisions are so thick they hang like curtains in the air. Your enemies brag that they can always get half the Indians to kill off the other half. "
"The divisions are so thick they hang like curtains in the air...
The only way to have power again — power like the Ghost Dancers,
power like the people who fought at the Greasy Grass —
is to find a way to tear down those (divisive) curtains.
You have to find a way to organize and join together...
There must be people in every Tribe and every group who know that this is true. No doubt it will be extremely difficult and even painful,
but it is not impossible...
On June 25, 2001 my son and I had the privilege and the honor
to walk with Tim Night Bear, Richard Grass and his group to the Greasy Grass Battlefield.
There were only 18 of us. I told them that I hoped to see the day
when 10,000 were walking together."
25 years later — it happened!
