Steve McCullough aka Iktomi Sha & Salt Creek Sundance

[muse]

if anyones intrestead thier going to hold thier sundance on private property this year down by the little town of catarac in my neck of the woods i know the people who own the land, i was invited thought about going just to see for my self whats going on.

[Defend the Sacred]

Looks like Steve fooled the hippies at Stonehenge (England) into giving him a photo op. At least a few different people filmed this, and are promoting him as a Lakota and a Chief. There's a whole series of videos of him on YouTube, leading weird prayers in English, and spawning whole new crowds of English pretendians.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1ZLPd5YwiE&feature=share

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fip_DUboOPI

In this one you can see the creepy spear he's been carrying around:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=abaArWaDs_o

[Walks Proud]

Does anyone know why the sundance was moved and to where? Are the same people still heading it up?

[Superdog]

Looks like Steve fooled the hippies at Stonehenge (England) into giving him a photo op. At least a few different people filmed this, and are promoting him as a Lakota and a Chief. There's a whole series of videos of him on YouTube, leading weird prayers in English, and spawning whole new crowds of English pretendians.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1ZLPd5YwiE&feature=share

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fip_DUboOPI

In this one you can see the creepy spear he's been carrying around:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=abaArWaDs_o

Just watched the third video.  How anyone can believe this guy is legitimate anything is beyond me.  His behavior on camera is very odd.  The thing that stuck out for me....the sweetgrass won't light for him.  To me, that's a strong sign that something's wrong.  The comments pretty much say what others on here have said and so far has more dislikes than likes.  I'm wondering how long it'll stay up there.

Superdog

[Defend the Sacred]

They're doing it again this year. Here they are listing it publicly on the Internet, on a mainstream site:

http://littleindiana.com/event/21st-annual-salt-creek-sundance/2012-07-12/
_________________________________________________________________

21st Annual Salt Creek Sundance
Welcome to the current edition of the 2012 Small Indiana Town Festivals and Events!

If I have missed your Indiana town festival, event, town wide yard sale, church chicken dinner, and so on, please let me know.

« Back to Events   

Event:
    21st Annual Salt Creek Sundance
Date:
    July 12, 2012
Category:
    Indiana Events   
Organizer:
    Chief Steve McCullough
Phone:
    812.201.0664
Updated:
    March 7, 2012
Schedule:
    Every day, recurring 8 times (See all)

[Walks Proud]

The sundance has moved. The new location is on private property down at the Indiana/ Kentucky boarder.  5037 Millstone Rd Cannelton IN 47520

There are burn bans out so I don't know how it will be able to happen. It's not in as much as a secluded place as the last one. You can see a pic of the property if you google map or mapquest and do the satellite shot.

One thing about this place they don't have to have an enrolled member of a tribe sign off to DNR giving him permission to have the dance. 

[Ogichidaa]

Friends,

I am watching and reading all this and really appreciate the attention to detail and follow up that has been done to document Steve's circus and sideshow. I met Steve many many years ago, he always introduced himself as the "only white man at Wounded Knee". He always told the story that he was the son of a Christian minister there. From all reports of people who were on the ground there at the time Steve took pictures and film alot. He deserves to be commended for what he did at that time as a good WHITE ally doing what was asked of him.
Sometime around 1991 Steve started telling people he was Shawnee. In 1992 at he announced at Uniontown KY that he was bringing medicine men to Indiana to perform the sundance at Salt Creek to "honor the ancestors" desecrated at Uniontown? Why? That is a couple of hundred miles away. Why would he do that? Well the reason is that Uniontown was an AIM event and he knew the American Indian Movement would never go along with that. In fact at the time there were many who said "why do you want to bring the sundance outside of Sundance territory"? 
The people desecrated here were not Lakota. The elders who performed the reburials at Uniontown and since at other desecration sites have been from nations that were once here who have been moved to Oklahoma. Not the Lakota.
This "Ask Me" says "have you ever witnessed on of his ceremonies? My answer is yes, I was sent to witness for AIM and reported back the fiasco I saw there. I know fo ra fact that the first year he did this thing the American Indian Movement called him to a regional meeting in Cincy Ohio where Vernon Bellecourt and every Indian there Lakota, Ojibwe, Cherokee, Navajo and many others demanded he shut it down. He then said he "must finish out the 4 years and then he would be done. That was over two decades ago and he is not Chief Red Spider and the Spear of Destiny. Folks this is how a small thing gets out of hand.
I have a question and I do not mean to be rude to my Lakota friends nor anyone else but I feel as I have been meeting recently with Pokagon Potowatomis and others who have original tribal ties to the Ohio Valley and the state of Indiana. My question has been backed up by Rosebud and Pine Ridge friends I have met with face to face recently.

Why are Sundances being conducted outside of Sundance territory at all?

I think this is a fair question. I think that those conducting ceremonies outside Sundance territory have lost site of something a good friend from Rosebud pointed out recently. You travel to Sundance territory much like a pilgrimage if you do not live there. Those grounds stay sacred year round and are guarded by the people. Ilive near the Salt Creek site and I can tell you that White hunters and fishermen come there on a regular basis and drink and do all sorts of things on those grounds in between Sundances. I can tell you that the people of the nations who inhabit Indiana the Pokagon and others in Oklahoma who used to are watching all these dances curiously to see what the elders in Sundance territory will do. Many Pokagon find what Steve is doing in their territory to be offensive, as do Miamis, Shawnees, Delaware, and others. This is for certain the land of the 20 tribes who fought at Prophetstown, where the Potowatomi death march began that sent many West.  Steve needs to realize that the people of this land are watching and after watching politely for many years are ready for he and his circus to go away, Momfeather Ericson the fake who proclaims herself a Cherokee elder, and the rest who charge money for ceremonies at their "Wisdom of the Elders" event in September in Marion KY need to stop their charade. They proclaim themselves protectors of the Mantle Rock sacred site there. I can tell you we are at that site on a regular basis and are watching closely. We see the players in their pictures with Steve, Momfeather, and even or or two native people supporting them and are disturbed. They now call themselves the Overhill Cherokee group when just a year ago they called themselves the "Southern Cherokee Nation of KY".
All of this will be opposed. It is not going away. Now we know that now many in Indiana are calling themselves the Metis Nation of Indiana http://usmetis.weebly.com/ and that they are printing fake enrollment cards to make money and cover their asses. We are hearing rumors that Steve is now calling himself Metis but do not have direct confirmation of that. We do know of a group calling themselves the United Metis sponsoring a powwow in Bluff City Indiana near Rockport in September that is very troubling and found this article about one previous. http://city-countyobserver.com/2010/08/21/bluff-city-pow-wow-at-lincoln-pioneer-village-rockport-in/
We are hoping some light could be shed on any knowledge of this group? Anyway the cowchips are getting deep and ridiculous.
Thank you for all the due diligence that has been paid to detail here. I will tell you as someone who has opposed Steve's activities from the beginning that most of the claims folks are making about him are true. Except the ones by this "Ask Me". I can tell you we were very happy he was not able to get his permit at Salt Creek again and will work extremely hard to see it does not get renewed again.
His activities in Europe have been absurd and I hope now people are paying attention. I think the most disturbing thing I saw in 2 years was his appearance alongside Wes Studi, Gary Farmer, and many other celebs at the DreamCatcher awards in Canada where he was an honored Indian Chief there.
http://www.exposay.com/chief-steve-mccullough-2011-dreamcatcher-foundation-heart-and-soul-gala-fundraiser/p/51243/1/?f=Chief+Steve+McCullough
We need to stir up quite a ruckus about this as now he is being passed in Indian Country without opposition as a chief alongside our legitimate artists. It must be stopped.
Let me also mention that we have the original applications for permit at the National Forest where he is listed by the title Medicine Man? Alongside Mr. Cross printed name. We know the Cross family is adamantly opposed to this. He needs to stop and realize he is a retired coal miner who took some great pics at Wounded Knee.

Migwetch

[Ogichidaa]

Johnnie Thanks for starting this thread in 2007. We are working on this best we can We need a statement out of Rosebud or Pine Ridge or both. It would make fighting him so much more effective.

[Johnnie]

Salt Creek Sundance Update

        We, the American Indian Movement of Indiana and Kentucky once known as the A.I.M. Support Group of Indiana, would like to announce a small yet major victory against New Age Frauds and Plastic Medicine Men in the state of Indiana.
             After years of pressure from this office and outside agencies along with calls and letters from the Native American community at large in and out of Indiana, the special use permit that was issued to Mr. Steve McCullough for "his" Sundance was finally denied.
             We would like to thank the American Indian Movement Grand Governing Council for standing behind us all these years and encouraging us to continue fighting. Also Mr. Arvol Looking Horse for his words of wisdom, prayers and blessings. Most of all we would like to thank the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Oyate from Indiana to Rosebud and from Cheyenne River to Pine Ridge for all your support. We stood strong and firm and our voices were heard "Stop Abusing Our Ceremonies!!!!"
            Let it also be known that every time Mr. McCullough applies for the permit we will be there to oppose him.

Thank You,
Albert RunningWolf Ortiz
Indiana Chairman
And
Thomas Pearce
Kentucky Chairman

[Cetan]

Glad to hear this (officially) - and good to see you posting Johnnie

[Defend the Sacred]

Good to hear! Thank you for all your work on this!

[Johnnie]

I am writing an article for an online journal about all this, so been reading the archives.  Will keep you posted.  And thanks.

J

[tahcha_sapa]

Steve is a fraud and his family -- his wife & kids -- know this.  He's a man with serious psychological problems and he needs help.  It is pointless to try to convince him and, those around him, of this.  Because he can appear lucid and rational, the only ones who may be able to help Steve are his wife and his children.  They were there, at the very beginning, when he was dealing with a work-related injury and his psychological condition began to deteriorate and his delusions began.
They do love him, though, and they may have allowed this to cloud their memories.  After all, as their thinking may go, he was injured while he supported them and thus he deserves their loyalty: regardless of how ill he has become and continues to grown, and how they, too, are left to suffer with the confusion that his outright deceit is producing in them.  They were a rural family when this all began.  First in South Dakota then Indiana.  They lived in a small house, on his father-in-law's land, in IN.  That kind of isolation is stressful and compounded the suffering his declining mental health created.
He is sick.  I'm not trying to make excuses for him.  He is exploiting the Native American spiritual practices as a way of dealing with his delusions.  The only ones who can save him now are his wife and his children, unless he has incapacitated them, too, from critically thinking about how his condition is creating an enormous amount of suffering for everyone he comes into contact with while he is still sick.
Apparently, the video below was made this past year.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abaArWaDs_o&feature=share&list=PL8Vyini29wniOjwEuUDqHEFooNnvLcY7D

[Defend the Sacred]

Apparently, the video below was made this past year.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abaArWaDs_o&feature=share&list=PL8Vyini29wniOjwEuUDqHEFooNnvLcY7D

Just noting for anyone new to this thread, the people in that video with McCullough, who are also speaking and singing at Stonehenge, are not any kind of traditional people, and that is not a traditional ceremony. It's a group of English Wiccans and hippies. The "non-religious prayer" they did is eclectic Neo-Wiccan. It's not surprising Steve was able to fool them and be welcomed there; I doubt they care any more about frauds from the US than do about the other white, English frauds at the event.

I don't recognize anyone in the video, and the lot that go to Stonehenge is very diverse. However, based on the videos of that event, I'm going to hazard a guess here: As we see with lots of the white people who want a token NDN (or any token Person of Color), they *love* it when there's a white person they can claim is a POC. That way they don't have to challenge any of their cultural or political biases. Frauds like McCullough are welcomed by those sorts. For those unfamiliar with the appropriative nature of Wicca, we discussed it in this thread: http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=3687.0

[tahcha_sapa]

Why are Sundances being conducted outside of Sundance territory at all?

Hello Ogichidaa, as almost anyone who has lived around Lakota reservations in South Dakota may know, there really is no one tribal authority on these reservations that legislate these kinds of events.  No one answers to anyone else when it comes to the Lakota sundance; or to cultural property such as traditional spiritual songs, language or art.  The White Christian agenda for destroying Lakota traditions has been complete.  This is what they wanted.  This is what they got.  Although their presence on the reservations may be diminished, the White Christians maintain their control via their proxies, the Lakota Christians who seem to believe that it's a true testament to the power of their Christian faith that the Lakota sundance is now riddled with frauds and corruption and is thus evil at worst or foolish at the least.
As to why the Lakota sundances are now conducted outside of the traditional Lakota domains, part of the blame has to lie with the "traditional" and enrolled members of the tribe who initially collaborated with non-Lakotas in order to provide the leadership, active participation and the misleading appearance of a tribal-sanctioned event.  Their motives?  Who knows?  Some kind of self-aggrandizing percieved power?  Status?  Women and sex?  Money? 
A big part of the problem is that there are no tribal laws to create or enforce such laws, so there is no tribal authority with power to punish those who fraudulently violate and/or corrupt tribal authority.  But the Lakota sundance seems to have been singled-out by the US and it wasn't until the late '70s that Nixon authorized a "Freedom of Religion" that allowed the Lakota to practice the sundance, although it had been practiced "underground" at various places on the reservations long before then.
Unfortunately for the Lakota people, as long as Lakota tribes refuse to assert a legitimate interest in controlling cultural property, such as the Lakota sundance, the Steve McCullough's of the world will continue to exploit this unwillingness to assume and enforce authority.