NEBRASKA CITY – The life journey of Dorothy Kiyukan Zeigler  is being honored with a long-distance horse ride between her birth home in Kansas to the cultural testing grounds among the Lakota Sioux.

 

Cante Waste' Win Wiconi Icumani Ecun is the ride’s name. It means “The good-heart woman does journey of life.”

Dorothy, known as “Scootie,” died of cancer on Jan. 7 and her husband Tom of the Lower Brule Lakota Tribe in South Dakota wanted a ride to honor her for her accomplishments, which included horse camps at the Yankton Sioux Reservation.

Ziegler: “She tried to bring the horse nation back to all the culture, the native American culture.”

 

Ziegler: “We had horse camps there, so we teach the youth how to care for a horse, how to take care of their feet, how to ride. She did all that. She had a lot of horses and her whole life was about horses, health and wellness and education.”

Kelly Daniels met Scootie when she was unexpectedly given a horse to ride in the South Dakota long-distance ride in remembrance of the Wounded Knee massacre. Daniels said she was not a horse rider, but reached out for advise and found Scootie herself had made the nine-day ride in the middle of winter.

 

Daniels: “She was willing to train me for endurance riding. She gave me two extra horses, a trailer and a truck so my sons could go with me. They are very giving people. They will give the shirts off their backs to just give to anyone. Like, that’s their culture, is to give and to be kind, even if they are poor.”

In South Dakota, the Wounded Knee and Chief Bigfoot Memorial rides follow the paths people actually took, and the ride for Scootie symbolically traces her own life journey.

Daniels: “There is meaning to these rides based on the people and where their journey was, so her journey was between Pottawattamie and Marty, S.D., because those are where her lives where.”

Daniels: “It’s really important to honor the lives of people and to return to tradition. So tradition is the horse nation and Scootie was very much an amazing horse woman and she brought that back to the youth. That was her way of reunited them with their traditions and who they were and where they came from.”

She said they were disconnected from a lot of tradition. In fact, it was illegal for them to sing their songs until 1970s.

Daniels: “They are still healing. They still have a lot that they are dealing with from intergenerational trauma and so this is one of their ways of healing is riding these horses for long distances.”

 

 Tom Ziegler, who carries an eagle staff in honor of Vietnam Veteran Francis Burney,  said the ride is pushing about 30 miles a day. After stopping in Auburn on Wednesday, they switched to fresh horses at Nebraska City, before going on to the Union.

Emma Trucco was among the people who had learned to ride from Scootie and Tom. She commented about the recent days of rain since the ride started on March 22.

Trucco: “The rain is hard. I like the cold and snow better. It definitely takes its toll on the body, but we have a purpose for the ride so it makes it easier.”

Daniels said the ride has already been a success of endurance and honor.

Daniels: “This ride, particularly, is about healing. It’s about helping the community heal, the people heal, helping them return to their traditions ,but also about eating better food and gaining awareness about organizations that will help.”

The ride is scheduled to reach Marty, S.D., on April 4.