by Jim Bailey

Reserve, Wisconsin (Akiing)

Three members of the Keepers of the Sacred Tradition of Pipemakers recently returned from a 10-day trip to Germany where they and others who accompanied them did their best to boost moral of American soldiers who had been wounded in Iraq, mostly during the battle for Fallujah. They were there Nov. 8 through 20.

The group’s president, Bud Johnston, his wife Rona Moore, step-son Pascal Quarrella (all of Pipestone, Minnesota), Lila Lindberg of Granite Falls, plus three Native American men from Oklahoma were met in Germany by Gary Harrington, president of the Native American Club at Ramstein Air Force Base.

Johnston has worked with Harrington many times in the past decade to bring Native American dance groups to Europe, but this is the first time they were allowed to perform.

Harrington had married a German woman and moved there, living in a town outside of Frankfurt called Kaiserslautern. He works for the military doing web design.

It was also the first time they were permitted to distribute pipestone turtles to wounded soldiers. In both Ojibwe and Dakota culture, the icon symbolizes happiness and long life. Bud makes pipestone pipes and has done a lot of shows all over the U.S.

About 10 to 12 years ago a friend of his who makes calendars (and goes to Europe frequently to sell them) called Johnston and suggested that he take a group over to Germany.

“We took a group of dancers and vendors with us to Germany and put on Native American shows. We started doing it for six weeks or so at a time. That went over really big,” said Johnston.

While visiting the wounded, Johnston and his group were permitted to stay right at the hospitals in rooms often used by soldiers’ families, which permitted them to have much more time to interact with the servicemen and servicewomen.

Johnston said that while it was fun to be able to do this for wounded survivors of the war in Iraq, it was also depressing to see the results of the folly of war. By comparison with the war in Vietnam, he said “You see all of those kids torn up. Today, what bothers me more, is that in Vietnam, a lot of people died and a lot got shot up. An awful lot of them who got wounded did die. Today they’ve gotten so much better at keeping them alive, so you see more that have radical physical disabilities. Much more than they ever did before.

“Lila (Lindberg) works as both a teacher and a nurse, yet she broke down after talking with some of the injured at Landstuhl. We’ve gotten so good at keeping them alive that I’m not sure we know what we’ve created. Some of them are going to be hurt for a long, long time… maybe for the rest of their lives.”

While the group was in Germany, they worked with soldiers at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center and at Ramstein Air Force Base, whose name is probably familiar to many Americans. At the very time they were there, a steady flow of injured U.S. military personnel kept arriving from the battle lines in Iraq. During the week they were there 413 more wounded came in.

The Keepers group was very well received. “Once they found out that we were the ‘real deal,’ they asked us to stay another couple of weeks,” Johnston said. “We weren’t able to this time, but I hope to make another trip to Europe next November.”

The military paid for “pretty much everything” except the airplane tickets. The Keepers even did a 9 a.m. performance at the commissary, much to the delight of the staff there. Johnston and his group were given carte blanche to consume anything in the store.

Bud Johnson lived in Ashland during his “growing up years,” and had a lot of family at Bad River. He stayed with his Grandma and Grandpa, Margaret and Dave Marksman. He left home in 1960 at age 17 and went to Chicago, where he worked for United Airlines as a customer service supervisor for 37 years, and he is now retired.

He has also produced three videos, The Pipemaker, Medicine People and The Story Teller.

The Keepers group has about 600 members from 30 different tribes throughout the Western Hemisphere. They work closely with another group, Volunteers in Corrections. They do a great deal of work with both schools and prisons. They go in and show them how to set up a sweat lodge and different ways to use a pipe for saying prayers.

“We do a lot of work with Flandreau Indian School, which has a lot of kids from Bad River. Whenever we’re there, we get a whole cheering section going,” said Johnston.

At each prison or school, they donate one pipe, made from rock that is taken from a quarry near the town of Pipestone, South Dakota, which is where their office is.