Why this is Important: the protocols were written by white men in the New Warrior Network, and were never based on Lakota ceremony, though the structure is similar to those used in sweat lodges, Finnish saunas, and virtually every culture in the world has used circular structures like this. What Chief Lone Hill gave us was not permission, but an OK that this was VERY different from what Lakota inipis do, so we are not appropriating. ED.
I attended the New Warrior Training in July 1992 at the inaugural training in the Washington DC Area.
By invitation, or perhaps my insistence, I conducted the Sunday Morning Ceremony using the standard All Nations protocols and went way over time, not realizing that the Ceremony was supposed to fit in as part of a schedule of events.
In the ensuing year I spoke with the Training Leaders and Founders who came through town for subsequent Trainings. Permission was given for a Council of men interested in the Ceremony to gather in late summer 1994. More than 90 men attended. This Council advised that representatives from the different Training Centers gather the following spring to develop a Protocol for how the Ceremony should best be conducted. This Protocol Council met and composed a document that has remained largely unchanged to this day. The Protocol Council authorized a delegation of men to travel to Chief Lone Hill’s home on Pine Ridge and submit it to him for his consideration.
This was done in the summer of 1995. That it was OK for MKP/NWN to use this Protocol was confirmed in Ceremony with Fools Crow’s final pipe, in front of witnesses from both the family and additional New Warriors.
In February of 1996 the New Warrior Network Council approved the Protocol, the establishment of the LKS with a voting seat on that Council, and gave the care of the Protocol to the LKS.
We are in possession of an Affidavit signed by the family in September 2021 attesting to the original Authorization and confirming their ongoing support for the use of the Purification and Renewal Ceremony on the New Warrior Training. There is video of the Signing Ceremony.
As a final note in this section I would like it to be known that included in the OK was the express approval of the four songs. Two of them are traditional vocables used appropriately. One vocable was a gift from a white man. The final song has words in Lakota. It was a gift given to a different white man with instructions to give it to New Warriors as a way to express their gratitude for the gift of their relationship with the Chief’s Lakota family.
We are currently developing songs by New Warriors for the process we now do, in honor of those who have complaints, though we insist that the truth is that we were given the old songs in a proper manner in congruence with cultural appreciation. ED.
Email the Author
truthbetold@spiritprotect.org
Thank you for taking the time to create this.
Curtis, thank you for your brilliant translation of the innocence in the original interpretation of Native American tradition as per New Warrior. You have duly exposed the “leadership” of MKP in ineptly denying its integrity in sharing indigenous traditions. MKP had never taken advantage of Native Traditions. I was a Co-leader of the first NWTA along with Leader Rich Tosi in Washington DC and remembered Curtis Mitchel carefully gaining Lakota backup in performing the first Sweat Lidge. I suspect no other organization with your leadership has so lovingly supported Native traditions.
Hi David. Great to hear your voice again.
Jud Lawrie
Sturdy Oak
Haimowoods, 1991