Pipe ceremony returns to Heart Mountain

Posted 7/27/21

As members of the Apsáalooke (Crow) tribe gathered at Heart Mountain for the first time in two years, it was a time for celebration and sadness.

Hubert “Burdick” Two Leggins …

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Pipe ceremony returns to Heart Mountain

Posted

As members of the Apsáalooke (Crow) tribe gathered at Heart Mountain for the first time in two years, it was a time for celebration and sadness.

Hubert “Burdick” Two Leggins performed a ceremonial pipe lighting in the shadow of Heart Mountain. The peak is a sacred place for the Crow, but the annual trek to the mountain — known as Four Top’s Father by the tribe — was canceled last year due to the pandemic. 

It was also the first time the tribe returned to the mountain since the passing of tribal elder Grant Bulltail, the previous Lodge Erector and Pipe Carrier. Bulltail died from complications of COVID-19 on Oct. 1. 

Returning to the mountain is always a happy occasion, said event organizer Noel Two Leggins, but this visit was dedicated to Bulltail and tears flowed over the loss of dozens of tribe members during the pandemic.

“We lost about 60 of our elders to the virus in October,” he said.

Bulltail had reached the highest position in the Nation’s Sacred Tobacco Society before retiring from his duties in 2019. Tribal elder Burdick Two Leggins replaced Bulltail, raising the pipe before members of the tribe and area guests hiked to the summit of the 8,123-foot peak between Powell and Cody.

Two Leggins prayed in his native Apsáalooke language that all humanity would care for the earth “the way they take care of the land here” at Heart Mountain, as translated by Marine veteran Andrew Stump. 

“He also prayed for prosperity, health and happiness,” Stump said.

The Nature Conservancy owns 13,000 acres of the land surrounding the peak. Crow ceremonies returned to the sacred site after the conservancy first opened an interpretive cabin at the base of the mountain in 2011. 

Laura Bell, northwest Wyoming program director for The Nature Conservancy, said the group is organized around protecting the lands and waters on which all life depends.

“That means the eagles, the grizzlies, the salamanders, the sage grouse and also us, the human community,” Bell said while leading off the event. “I feel like Heart Mountain nurtures all of us in different ways.”

Other speakers at the ceremony included Laura Schrieber, associate professor of anthropology at Indiana University, and Hana Maruyama, a Ph.D. student at the University of Minnesota who is researching Japanese American incarcerations. She previously worked at the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation.

Maruyama’s grandmother, Fudeko Tsuji Maruyama, was incarcerated at the Heart Mountain Internment Camp during World War II. She died from complications of COVID-19 on Christmas Eve last year.

“COVID steals the people we love,” Hana Maruyama said.

She spoke of the first time she visited Heart Mountain — the inspiration for her current research. Her grandmother wanted to return to the area of her incarceration in 2002, bringing Hana to the region for the first time.

“I had expected to see the ruins on the landscape so big that it couldn’t be missed. But there was very little that remained,” she said. “In that moment it felt like our history, my history, had been erased.”

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