“The Old Ones who gave us these songs and dances said that when we do this, they will come and hear our prayers for help and healing,” Buck Ghost Horse told me years ago, inviting me as he did every year to his family’s sun dance. I always found an excuse not to go. I was leery of being an outsider, skittish about what might be expected of me, a non-Indian. So I avoided the anxiety and expense of travel, and missed the benefit as well–that is, until my daughter Annalee’s well-being was at issue. In 2011 she was instructed at a lowampe singing ceremony to “go to the tree” for healing of a career-ending dance injury that had led to other injuries and two ankle surgeries. We began preparations to go for healing, not only for her physical being, …
