You can feel the coldness in there

DL: You reminded me of something I saw last summer. I was at the Lower Sioux Agency Building, and I was at what was the storehouse, whatever that is, and it was late September. I can’t describe it, but it did not feel like a place of great sadness. There was sort of a calm. Maybe it was the season, I don’t know what. But do you have that same sense? I mean, as I was looking around, it was really beautiful and the wind was blowing through the grass and it was a warm day. Do you have that same sense from those places? Or maybe is your sense different, since tragic events occurred there?

PH: You know, that warehouse was where they rationed out the – they gave them their rations. And that building is real, real cold. You can feel the coldness in there. But when we first made the management agreement with the Historical Society, and before we even went in there and moved into it, we had a healing ceremony that’s called the Wiping of the Tears, to heal that place, you know, to heal that. A good ceremony. Had some good buffalo, dried corn soup. And so we had a ceremony and a feast and wiping of the tears. So that made that place different when you looked out there, when you’d go there. That son that was in earlier – him and I will go over there and do offerings sometimes. There’s a little spot that we go look out on and do our offering and then sing some songs and pray, because it has that feeling now. It’s not such an ugly feeling when you look at it. You really didn’t see the beauty then. You do now, though. The healing ceremony was important for us to have, and that was good.

DL: And it’s much easier to go back there today than it was early on.

PH: Yes.