This interview originally aired on "In the Moment" on SDPB Radio.
Dallas Chief Eagle is a recognized master of the Lakota hoop dance. He is also well-versed in calming the body and spirit. He spends his time sharing his skills with others.
Dallas has been recognized for his Outstanding Service of the Arts to Native Nations with Lands in South Dakota through the Governor's Awards in the Arts.
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Lori Walsh:
Welcome back to In the Moment this Monday on South Dakota Public Broadcasting. I'm Lori Walsh.
Dallas Chief Eagle is a master of the Lakota hoop dance. He's been changing the way people, especially young people, think, feel, and move all through his teachings at his hoop dance studio at the All Nations Gathering Center in Pine Ridge. He's also taken these teachings far and wide. He's being honored with the Governor's Award in the Arts for Outstanding Support of the Arts to Native Nations with Lands in South Dakota. I spoke with him on Friday.
Dallas Chief Eagle:
Well, it feels really, really good to know that I was selected for this award. My family feels good, my friends feel good about it.
We had the pandemic, we had COVID, and then I had a bout with physical illness. Then I'm wondering what the future's going to look like. Well, I heard about this, oh, boy, it just lifted my spirits.
Lori Walsh:
That's wonderful. I was watching the Music Matters interview that you did with SDPB before I called you today. I was so busy, one of those busy days, and here you are with Grandpa Rock and you're holding this rock in your hand, talking about busyness and how to quiet yourself. It meant so much to me, just in the middle of a chaotic day, to have that story from you.
Tell me a little bit about working with kids who are constantly busy and running around in their minds and their bodies, and then using Grandpa Rock to ground them and center them.
Dallas Chief Eagle:
Yeah. Well, we talk about all life forms, but the stones are the oldest in the universe. They've been sitting here on the Earth for thousands of years and not making noise and not moving. I said, "Those are good teachings, so we're going to try to do that."
They don't teach us in school how to manage the way we think and the way we feel and the way we move and how to access that spirit, or some people call it the soul, other people call it the intuition. And how to have the first three sit in the backseat and then just be able to have that spirit or that soul or that intuition available to be the leader in who we are.
So I got little teaching lessons like that around the stone. They're just one-minute exercises, too, so it's interesting that, oh, first-graders all the way up to senior citizens, don't know how to manage those areas in our situations that we go through in life, like afterward. I'll have a six-year-old... I'll say, "When would you use this exercise?" That little, bitty girl next to me says, "Oh, when you lose your pet."
Lori Walsh:
Oh.
Dallas Chief Eagle:
Then I got two boys on the other side, they've got their hands up and I ask one, "Well, when would you use this exercise?" He says, "When you're mad." And the other boy says, "When you're sad." Well, definitely. We don't want to get our brains and our emotions and our bodies to get us in trouble.
Lori Walsh:
Wise, wise, indeed.
Let's talk about the hoop dance. Did you learn this from your father?
Dallas Chief Eagle:
Well, I saw a hoop dance in Colorado. I was traveling with my grandparents and I saw this hoop dancer. I said, "Hey..." I used to be their little Indian dancer, Alice and Jim Black Horse. We'd go around in the station wagon and I saw this guy and I said, "Hey, I want to do that." So I came home and my dad and my grandpa helped me get my first hoops together. Then I started in.
Lori Walsh:
When did you know that it was changing you as a person? That you weren't just learning something, you were changing because of it?
Dallas Chief Eagle:
Yeah. I'd say in looking at the hoop and all.... In the Black Hills, I think, at the horse sanctuary, Dayton Hyde up there, he told me, he says, "You've got to come up here and see these petroglyphs up here on the cave, on the walls of the cliffs. There's hoop dancers up there." I thought, "Well, this must be very old! I'm going to be part of a movement to bring this back into our culture."
Then as I studied more about the hoop and how it fits in our culture, I knew that I need to repair my own hoop, too. So that became my life's quest. I'm still working out, still repairing my hoop today.
I want my sensations, all my sensations, physical sensations, and my breathing. I learn how to breathe better, learning how to see my visual sensations, my hearing sensations. I try to get them all involved in the activity in my own activities.
So I found out I can see more clearly. I can hear more clearly. I can make better decisions. I can get rid of my fears and my frustrations and just really live a really calm, peaceful, and loving life. I'm thinking, "Our people must have did this long time ago."
It always brings me back to our people were artists when it comes to relationships with nature and one another. So that's part of my quest in life is to look at ways in which we can meet those challenges we face or overcome some of those barriers that are in our way or some of those wounds or whatever that come up for us. So that became a challenge for me. That's why I got into the arts.
Then in the arts, I was a non-verbal person. I wasn't very verbal. I was more into working with my hands. Then I went back and went to school and got my Master's in Counseling, and I became my first client there. So I got to put these educations into my hoop dancing career and travel around. Anyways, it's turned out to be...
I studied art therapy and I went to Washington DC one time and went to Art Therapy Association National Conference. 99.9% of the people there were women. I came back with a whole, big pile of books because I didn't understand that.
Well, anyway, I started looking at their methods and their philosophies, and they got a lot of their teachings from our people. So that really moved me and made me very proud.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah.
Dallas Chief Eagle:
Yeah.
Lori Walsh:
Oh, you said so much there.
Tell me a little bit about the All Nations Training Center, because I'm hoping you might share, how do you share this with other... You're always doing this work on your own life and your own self, that's never ending. But yet then also, you have this opportunity to come home and say, "We're going to create a place and a space and a relationship to help others and pass this on."
Tell me a little bit about that, if you would.
Dallas Chief Eagle:
Yeah. We wanted to create some opportunities for men, for women, for couples. We've had weekend experiences for them. We've had Isnati ceremonies where the girls turn into women and what they need to know as when they go through this transformation. Then, same way with boys to men.
Then we've had different conferences here for, let's say... We had a UFO conference where all these authors came together over here and talked about UFOs. Here, we found out some of our own people had some experiences with UFOs too. So that was quite exciting to hear all those people talk about UFOs.
Then we had silent retreats here now for, oh, this is our second year sitting like a stone. Then working with horses and having a silent retreat with horses.
All along, we're sharing aspects of our culture, as well, and have some of our elders and some of our cultural teachers come in to share some of their knowledge and wisdom and compassion.
Then we're getting back on the roll again. So we're getting going this summer again, after COVID hit and so forth.
Lori Walsh:
How do you create a space where people can be open and in relationship with each other about everything from something that they've never told somebody they saw to a life experience that they have that might be traumatic? How do you create a safe container for those kinds of conversations in community?
Dallas Chief Eagle:
Well, we have to have a safe place and we have to have a place where we can provide some examples of different people transforming.
Many of us, we're weighed down by a lot of brain stuff and emotional stuff, is what you're saying is we're carrying a big load around and you want to create a space where you can take that load off.
How to take your sadness, your madness, and your hurt and your pain and your suffering, how to put it aside for a little while? And create a space for your spirit, your soul, to just... Where we want our soul or our spirit or our intuition to be the leader. So those other things can get in the way.
A couple elders, they told me, "Hey, we heard a stone could teach us in a minute how to be who... Help us." I said, "Yeah." "Well, would you do that?" So we did. I took them at the powwow, we went down, left the powwow and sat over there in a private area. We sat with the stone and the stone taught them how to not think, not feel, not move, and allowed their spirit to be the mover. They were still in their regalia, too. Afterward they felt pretty good, they said.
Then later on, I wasn't dancing at that powwow, but I was sitting in the bleachers and they called me down. So I went down there and they said, "Chief, watch us while we're dancing!" So I said, "All right." So I went up there in the bleachers and I was watching them go around the dance arena.
I seen her, they were dancing together in the same direction. Normally, the men go in one direction, the women go in another direction. They were dancing together. Then I seen them hold hands, too. Then I seen her grab something from her head and threw it behind her. Then I seen him do it, too. Then I seen them talking. Then whatever was in on their mind, they were putting it behind them. Then they reached into their heart, and as they were moving around to the drumbeat, and they threw that emotion or that experience behind them that they were carrying around. It looked like they were getting lighter. Then I noticed that they were grabbing their knees and elbows, and then they were grabbing them and throwing up behind them. I don't know if it was a physical arthritis or whatever. Then I saw their faces, they were getting shiny and they were shedding tears out there to the heartbeat of the drum as they were moving around the arena.
Then I started shedding tears because I saw exactly what they were doing, and I followed their direction. I thought, "Maybe that's what these powwows used to be for a long time ago, is to come together, to remove those loads and remove some of that pain and suffering and some of those things that weigh us down, whether it be guilt, shame, hurt, pain, whether we've been the instigator or the victim or whatever. Let's put it behind us and then allow our spirit to move us forward."
Well, that was a big lesson for me, is I had some elderlies that showed me how things can be.
