PAUL WAR CLOUD

Paul Grant was a model student.  His manner was extraordinarily quiet.  His eyes seemed always to examine scenes around him.  Father Justin Snyder, OSB, saw the artist in Paul.  He asked John Saul, a mature artist from Fort Thompson, to come to our school. Immaculate Conception at Stephan, SD, to teach Paul and other boys, the boys with gifts and personalities like Paul.

Paul graduated from Stephan in 1942.  War time.  As Dakota boys did, Paul immediately volunteered for service.  His soil, his soul, was under attack.  He left the school and the Reservation to defend “himself”.  In camp, among warriors, this artist warrior, for the first time in his life felt the sting, the insult of prejudice.  The words and the taunts tore at everything he felt about himself and his world.  His world fell apart.  He became furious.  He became a drinker and a fighter.   An Alcoholic.

Out of the Army he traveled the highways selling his art for alcohol.  He came to the back door of Blue Cloud Abbey.  At that moment God put me at the back door.  Paul saw me, “Father, I need help!”  “You’ve got it, Paul.”  Paul stayed with us for over six months. 

He became sober.  He finished his Dakota dictionary.  He wrote the talks he was asked to give at the University of Oslo, Norway.  The fury of his alcoholic painting softened to the quiet of prairie colors.  He prayed and asked for guidance.  Two responses came.

First, “Father, I’d like to have my name back.  When they took the census of our Tribe, the man could not spell our name in Dakota.  He told my grandfather, ‘This is America.  Your Indian name is no good around here.  I’ll give you a name.  It’s Grant, and that’s the way it’s going to be.   Grant is the name of a President.  That’s something you can be proud of.  Now you are a real American.’ 

“Father, I want to have my name again.”

We went to Sisseton, to the Court House, and Paul got his name back.  War Cloud.  From that day on there was a new light in Paul’s eye.  His shoulders straightened.  He had grounds for confidence.  He had his own identity and the talent which WAKANTANKA, God, the Creator had given him.

One day in the studio that we had set aside for him Paul turned to me.  His second dream.  “Father, since I’ve been here I’ve been remembering you and Father Justin and all the Sisters at Stephan.  Like Sister Anaclete.  I’ve been praying.  In the Army it was terrible.  I never knew that people could be so hateful.  They didn’t even know they were hateful.  That’s the bad thing about it.  Hateful people don’t even know it.

“I’ve been to Pierre, and they took me to the Governor’s office, and they showed me that wall painting in the Governor’s waiting room.

“Father, what it is is that a man with a plow is digging in Mother Earth and is grinning, it looks to me like, and he is tearing the earth apart, and he has his foot on our head, and he is pushing us down out of the way into the torn grass.  We Indians, people that God made and put here hundreds and hundreds of years ago can be stepped on, and our faces pushed down into the worms.  And people call it beautiful.  That makes us feel bad.

“Father, I’d like to say something about that, and I want to say it my way.  I’ve got to say it like a prayer, with my gift, while I put it onto canvas.   Jesus is the main figure.  Do you think any body will listen?  Maybe they will think we have no right.  But I want to say it anyway.  Maybe some body will know what I mean.  Is that OK?”

Paul told his whole story of hurt and despair and of near suicide.  I was silent.  I dared not disturb the inspiration, the spirit that spoke to him.

See the painting 8 feet by 8 feet.   In 1972, in Governor Kneip’s administration, it hung in the Governor’s ante-room, hiding the original, the plow tearing at South Dakota sod.

The painting is now in the Museum of the South Dakota Historical Society.  Its story is as graphic and as strong as ever.

In the lower panel, creation in harmony with itself.  Next panel, the first human, with moccasined feet, touching the earth, hardly bending the grass.  Next panel, division. One people one way, the others the other.  Once they were all children of one Father, one Creator.  Now they are in tension. 

How to repair the rupture?  Paul’s answer, Jesus, the Christ.  Jesus takes two hands, one Indian, the other white, and joins them.  What God has joined, let no one put asunder.

So much has happened since 1972.  We, who walk closely with the Dakota Nation, know the cost of each step forward.  But life is worth it.

Paul died of sudden pneumonia on December 17^th, 1973, while in Tulsa introducing a young artist, Tino Walking Bull, to the world of Art.  Paul’s life-work endures.

                    08/10/05                     fr. stan                Turtle Mountain Times