The Future Generations Ride of the Lakota Sioux.

AbstractOn 29 December 1890, an unanticipated but malicious massacre of Lakota Sioux took place near Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. In advance of the centenary of this tragedy in 1990, a commemorative midwinter horseback ride was organized by members of the Lakota Nation who are now largely confined to reservations and suffer from a poverty rate of 50% and an unemployment rate of 70%. The modern trek was staged intuitively from the outset as a pilgrimage event, commemorative in nature and as a solemn procession to a site of mourning, much as secular pilgrims visit sites like the Atocha train station in Madrid, Guernica in the north of Spain or Ground Zero in New York. The Big Foot Memorial Ride concluded annually on the anniversary of the tragedy and covered some 200-300 miles, the approximate number of Indian deaths in 1890. The 1990 mourning ritual has been supplanted by a redesigned communal event enlarged and deepened in scope, the Future Generations Ride. Crafted as a youth event, it teaches Lakota history, values and prayer forms to a new generation of teenagers who make this difficult trip as a rite of passage, often in deep snow and freezing temperatures. The Future Generations Ride has become an iconic event that draws the attention and solidarity of many thousands who follow it through the news media. Across modern America, journeys of exile and tragedy forge identity through remembrance, the Future Generations Ride converging with the Underground Railroad, the Trail of Tears and a score of other memorial pilgrimages (Greenia, 2014a, b).