The Next Generation: Alyssa Lucio
Tamia (Alyssa’s daughter) with her little cousin.
Q: What is your role in the Sun Dance?
A: I moved in with my mom and grandma when I was about 13 so I've been learning the knowledge from my grandma Beatrice, and my uncles and aunts since then. So I know a little bit more than my siblings about traditional ways and old Lakota stories.
With the Sun Dance, I started learning about that when I turned 15 from my grandpa Earnest Afraid Of Bear, who taught me his way of running the sweat lodge and running the Sun Dance and what it was like for them a long time ago. Traditionally, as for my role, I would probably fall into place with the women who would lead and teach other women about our traditional Lakota background within the Afraid of Bear tiospaye (extended family). The inipi (sweat lodge) is run through the Thunder Beings, so we run our Sun Dance like that. Thunder and lightning come during the summer and we pray and sundance during those times because it’s like a renewal, a clean slate.
My auntie Loretta, the female leader of our tiospaye’s Sun Dance, has been teaching me more these last couple of years because everybody’s getting elderly and it's our generation’s time to take over a lot of things. Pretty big shoes to fill.
Q: Do you have any goals or aspirations that you would like to see fulfilled for your tiospaye in the next couple of generations?
A: Me and my sisters, we have children and we have different ethnicity backgrounds with our children. I would like them to know their Lakota side so that they can share it with their children so that it goes on and on. I also want to learn these ways to a tee like my grandparents knew them and pass the knowledge on to our children and whoever it is that wants to learn them. I’m okay with other people wanting to learn them because it is something that needs to be shared. Our people’s ways are dying and will become extinct if we don’t watch it.
My aunt has sent me names of singers who sing in the inipis. There’s like four different songs that you sing in a Lakota women’s inipi, and that’s something that I want to know, definitely, and be able to eventually pass down.