A Life Review - LaDonna Brave Bull Allard died on April 10th The historian and campaigner for Native-American rights was 64

The first time they drove up to Whitestone Hill, in south North Dakota, LaDonna Brave Bull Allard had to ask her husband to stop. She could hear grief coming out of the ground, crying and screaming. She had to lay down food and water there, as well as prayer-ties of sweet willow-bark tobacco that could soothe and heal the spirits of the dead. Whitestone Hill in 1863 had seen a terrible massacre, when hundreds of men, women and children had been herded into a ravine and shot by the United States Army. They had been members of a large camp of tribes, mainly Sioux, who had been meeting to prepare for winter by hunting buffalo and arranging marriages. Among them was her great great grandmother Mary Big Mocassin, then nine years old, who felt the sudden heat of a bullet tear into her hip. She survived, but had shivered in a field for hours crying for her mother. Her voice, too, called from the place.