A Ghost AwakensrnAmerican Indian Nationalismrnby Gregory McNameernIn the closing years of the 19th century, hidians throughoutrnthe American West began to dance. Dervish-like, theyrndanced for hours and days on end, in the belief that their ecstasyrnwould call forth the gods, bring back the dead, and banishrnthe conquering Europeans from North America. A Paiute elderrnnamed Captain Dick explained to a white observer just howrnthis was to take place:rnAll Indians must dance, everywhere, keep on dancing.rnPretty soon in the next spring Big Man come. He bringrnback game of every kind. Game be thick everywhere. Allrndead Indians come back and live again. They all bernstrong, be young again. Old blind Indians sec again andrnget young and have fine time. When the Old Manrncomes this way, then all the Indians go to the mountains,rnhigh up away from the whites. Whites can’t hurt the Indiansrnthen. Then while Indians way up high, big floodrncomes like water and all white people die, get drowned.rnAfter that water go away and then nobody but Indiansrn[and] everywhere game. Then medicine-man tell Indiansrnto send word to all Indians to keep up dancing andrnthe good time will come.rnThus assured, they danced, Paiute and Sioux, Cheyenne andrnZuni, Jicarilla and Washo, hoping to work magic and bring backrnthat good time. Although it promised cataclysm, the dance itselfrnoffered no violence. Even so, the American governmentrntook a dim view of the dancer’s efforts. The War Departmentrndispatched columns of troops to put down the Ghost Dance, asrnGregory McNamee is the author, most recently, of A DesertrnBestiary (Johnson Books).rnit had come to be called, wherever it showed itself. Thousandsrnof Indians died in this decade-long campaign of suppression,rnnotably at a South Dakota center of the insurrection with thernresonant name of Wounded Knee.rnToday, at millennium’s end, in places across the West likernWounded Knee and Pyramid Lake, Ganado and Lodge Grass,rntalk of a new Ghost Dance fills the air. Nati’e prophecies nowrnmaking the rounds hold that the next two years will bring thernreturn of the White Buffalo and an apocalyptic end to thernwhite invaders, who will be driven into the Eastern sea. (Theyrnwill be helped into the ocean, say seers who add a bit of Nostradamusrnto the mix, by a Chinese nuclear strike.) All the Indiansrnhave to do, according to the prophecy, is wait, watch, andrndance.rnThis is strange and unsettling talk, and it has found manyrnwilling ears in the Indian nations. Outside of those nations, itrnis a well-kept secret—not so much because it is withheld fromrnwhites, but because it is not publicized to the outside world inrnthe way of almost everything that happens in Indian country.rnThe dancers are gathering, and thus far thev have not been impededrnb- agents of the federal government, although you canrnbe sure that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureaurnof Indian Affairs are taking note of who comes.rnOne has to travel into Indian country to hear about thernGhost Dance, or, failing that, to turn to Laguna Pueblo writerrnLeslie Silko’s sprawling 1991 novel Abnanac of the Dead, anrnepisodic tale of the Native American retaking of conqueredrnhomelands, to catch bits and pieces of how the new apocalypsernis meant to unfold. Had this talk been aired a quarter of a centuryrnago, all of America would have heard about these latterdayrnGhost Dance prophecies. But today the mainstream mediarnaccords little attention to Native American issues, even thosern18/CHRONICLESrnrnrn