Marty Stuart

Marty Stuart

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A TRIP TO THE BADLANDS

Marty Stuart Uncovers the Sorry History -- and Present -- of the Lakota Sioux
In Badlands, Marty Stuart offers a brave examination of the Lakota Sioux -- from the triumph at Little Big Horn to the horror of the Wounded Knee Massacre to today's struggles on the Pine Ridge Reservation. It's a moving portrait of a proud people whose spirit remains inviolate even in the face of the government's malignant indifference to their plight. Part polemic though it may be, Badlands never forgets to be musical, and on that count it's one of Stuart's most stirring works, ranking alongside his masterful interpretation of country music history, The Pilgrim. Chatting from his Nashville office, Stuart spoke with Barnes & Noble.com's David McGee about the road that led him from Wounded Knee and the Pine Ridge Reservation to the studio, and offers his observations on the Native Americans' plight.

Barnes & Noble.com: From the liner notes it sounds like this record was a long time coming.

Marty Stuart: Yeah. I think it really started back where I came from in Mississippi. Philadelphia, Mississippi, was a tri-racial community. Of course, there was black culture down there and the whole world knew about that, due to the incidents that happened. The Native Americans would come to town usually on Saturday morning. They would come up to the courthouse lawn and just sit around and sell baskets. They wore their traditional dress and just struck me as a beautiful people, and a different people. And they were always this thing that was different out on the edge of our town. I respected them and I admired them. So that was kind of the start of it. But it never really crossed my spirit until I played a concert at St. Francis Mission. And on that night in 1983, I was told that the reason we were there is because we were helping out the inhabitants of the poorest community in the United States of America. But what I saw that night beyond that was some of the most beautiful people I had ever seen, some of the most noble and dignified people I had ever seen in the face of all this. And that just got in my heart.

B&N.com: I like how the past and the present coexist on this record. It's not just about the history of the Sioux and their great warrior legacy. You also talk about what's happening here and now with these people, and some of it's not so pleasant to hear about.

MS: When I go up there I always stay in Rapid City, and it's about 120 miles or so from there to the reservation. It usually takes me just about that amount of time to shake off the fact that I have not been to a Third World country when I leave the reservation. And the lingering question always is, as the great United States of America, the powerhouse that we are, I understand rebuilding nations -- I understand going to other places and doing business in that fashion -- but what about the core of our own nation and the original Americans? It seems we have a big crack in our armor right there.

B&N.com: They're the forgotten the people in our country. You address that in the song "Broken Promise Land." Again, you don't talk about all the broken treaties from the 1800s that deprived them of their opportunity here, but instead you talk about President Clinton making a trip there in the late '90s, meaning it's still going on, the promises are still being broken. Nothing's changed.

MS: Nothing's changed. That song has the line "nothing has changed but the leaves on the Hawthorne trees." That's about the truth. I wasn't gonna write that song. It was on the docket to maybe write. And I thought, You know, the last thing I need to do is bash the president. Because in truth, so many of the probleA that keep those people where they are, are internal. And at the end of the day, I'm a white boy, you're a white boy, the president's a white boy -- there's a lot of things that can't be done. But if you remember the late '90s, President Clinton -- and I figure in good faith -- took his American Poverty Tour from the Appalachians to the Delta to the reservation, and I thought, I'm not gonna bash the president. I visited the president a couple of years later, and the Oval Office was full of American Indian artifacts, and we had a long talk about it. His heart was there. I think he ran out of time and whatever. But -- here's what I'm getting to -- I wasn't gonna write that song, but I went back up there on one of those follow-up trips, and the headline in the paper, as I got off the airplane in Rapid City, was "Another Dream Shattered." There was so much promise when President Clinton was up there, but the only thing that changed, there was a lady named Geraldine Bluebird that got a house trailer and the government gave the Indians a seed crop of I think 1,500 buffalo. And that's all that happened. So I thought, Well, I gotta write the song.

B&N.com: I like the line in "Badlands": "the second coming of the red man is closer than it's ever been." We're seeing examples almost every day of how global warming is affecting our planet, and whenever I see those I am mindful that if ever a people knew how to live in harmony with the natural world, it's the Native Americans. There's still a lot to learn from them.

MS: I thought that line was the most important on the whole record, in fact, and I'm proud you picked up on that. I think I could have written that one line and forgotten the rest of the album. You would think that after this much time the people would have vanished and blown off the face of the earth. But it seeA to me there is a chance coming for some things to change. I just saw a vision one day of some children playing on a playground, and I thought, There's a leader in there somewhere. If not this playground, there's one where God will put his hand upon it and I think these people will come out of this misery. Natural circuAtances I think will prevail. An old-timer up there told me -- and this led to the song "Listen to the Children" -- he said, It's not about Crazy Horse and Red Cloud and our elders anymore; it's time for us to be quiet and listen to the children.

B&N.com: Two other songs that also comment on issues that affect the Native Americans today are "Casino" and "So You Want to Be an Indian," neither of which paints a too-flattering portrait of the people. Casinos, of course, were once seen as the salvation of the Native Americans. Hasn't necessarily happened.

MS: I think the original vision was a lot more on target than reality has panned out. I think the original vision was to take some of the proceeds and profits, divvy it up, and spread it around for health, education, and welfare. That much money has a way of getting contaminated. When you put that much tax-free money out there, it's not gonna always find its truest mark. So I'm of the opinion that it was a great concept. Some casinos have absolutely lived up to it -- as a matter of fact, there's one little casino up on Pine Ridge, and they've not bowed down to liquor. They still don't serve liquor, and it keeps 'em kinda in the ditch financially. But their concept is to take what little profit they do make and spread it around. I know that for a fact.

B&N.com: The song "Trip to Little Big Horn" is incredibly evocative. That's an amazing place -- the curve of the land, the sweep of it when you're on top of the hill and you can look down and see the markers where some of the soldiers fell. If you know who came from where and when, and in your mind's eye you can see it all unfolding, it's an amazing experience.

MS: It was kinda surreal. The first time I went up there in the early '90s, we had played a concert in Billings or somewhere the night before, and had a day off the day after and I had this caravan of people that took me up there. It was toward the very end of the day, the sun was starting to set, but they let us in. I had a quick tour, and I'm like you, I felt it. They called it "The Battle of Greasy Grass," and I could feel the sliminess of that place sometimes. There was mist on the ground. And when I got toward the end of the tour, here comes this park ranger, this Crow Indian, and he says, "Mr. Stuart, you have to leave now, it's time to close the park." So we started walking out together, and as we were walking toward the front of the park, by the big monument where all the names are, there's a manhole cover. I stopped and kind of laughed and said, "What's down there?" He said, "Custer's still in hell. Forget you ever came here." I said, "Awright!" That's the other thing a lot of people miss: These are some of the funniest human beings on the planet. They're comedians.

B&N.com: It feels like beginning with the Country Music album, you're really on a roll now. You must be feeling good about yourself right now.

MS: I started feeling good about myself with The Pilgrim -- that, All the Pretty Horses soundtrack, Country Music, Soul's Chapel, and there's a Ryman bluegrass record coming in February, and I've got about four more up my sleeve that I'm gonna do the first of the year. I just feel like what I've been looking for all my life is finally happening.

October 2005

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