EL PASO de ROBLES, Calif.—The wife and children of Chief Ernie Longwalker Peters recently gathered to share reflections on the great life and legacy of the revolutionary freedom fighter, spiritual teacher and leader, who passed away at age 92, on September 25.
Even though they are mourning, his revolutionary wife Warrior Woman, daughter Hana, and son Bobby, opened their home and hearts to The Final Call newspaper to share memories and reflect on the longtime activist.
Warrior Woman, his devoted companion of over four decades, said that Chief Longwalker, the beloved Mdewakontonwan-Dakota (Sioux) from Minnesota and South Dakota suffered a knee injury in the Korean Conflict in the 1950s and that, plus the brutal punishment he and Native people endured in the U.S. and Canada, ultimately took a toll on his body.
But to the very end, his mind and communication were sharp, said his wife and daughter. She laughed a little, thinking about her husband, who was still teaching to the end, even to his nurses, she said.
“They traumatized Indian people and they’re barely talking about it now,” said Warrior Woman talking about Chief Longwalker’s younger years. “He said he wasn’t going (into the U.S. service). And when they were 18, the government just came and picked them up off the reservation and took them into the service.
The parents didn’t even know. His parents didn’t even know that he was taken into the service. And, he was hurt in the service. That’s why he always had a cane, because of his knee,” she stated.
Chief Longwalker impacted so many people around the world during his rich, beautiful life. He received his name in a ceremony during the Longest Walk in 1978, from Alcatraz Island, California to Washington, D.C.
He was honored by 56 nations because those nations joined him in the walk for freedom and justice, stated Warrior Woman. They started with 25 people in Alcatraz Island and ended with thousands by the time they reached Washington, D.C.
The “Longest Walk” was a nearly 3,000-mile trek for Native American justice and to block proposed legislation that would threaten Native American land, hunting, and fishing rights, according to the Global Nonviolent Action Database.
“… we said this was going to be the last and final walk for the Indigenous. Well, it was the last walk for us, because in that walk, we picked up every color. We thought we stood alone. We were feeling sorry for ourselves.
We were wrong. We found a race of humans out there who were ready to join us and felt the same way regardless of their color, their age, their sex or their religion,” stated Chief Longwalker in his remarks in 1984 during the Nation of Islam’s Saviours’ Day convention in Chicago.
The walk led to the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA), which defeated over 11 proposed bills that would have eradicated the Native reservation system, and much more of their culture than had already been destroyed. In 1978 the AIRFA was made law, but before then, all sacred ceremonies and aspects of their traditional religions were prohibited.
It was then that Warrior Woman met West Coast A.I.M. (American Indian Movement) Director Ernie Peters, through Wauneta Lonewolf (“Wak’iya Lu’taw’in” Red Thunder Woman), she said. Chief Longwalker was rallying and organizing people, calling them to action to join, she said
Working on behalf of his people
When Chief Longwalker and Warrior Woman acquired their land some 30 years ago, they created Red Wind, the Sovereign Indigenous International Inter-Nation, in Atascadero, California as a sacred space for healing, prayer, and teaching to bring visitors back to Mother Earth, she explained.
Chief Longwalker helped start the First Sundance and brought the First Sundance to South Dakota, with the elders, stated Warrior Woman. He was honored in 1973 as Sundance Chief by Rosebud Lakota Sioux and traditional medicine man Henry Crow Dog (Crow Coyote) and Bill Eagle Feather in Rosebud, South Dakota.
He was the first to put the first sweat lodge in California and the first sweat lodge in Terminal Island, but other people received recognition for that, also, stated Warrior Woman.
But, Chief Longwalker was a humble man, said Warrior Woman. “He didn’t care for recognition. He didn’t care for material,” she continued.
His other work and sacrifice on behalf of Native people included the occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, with other members of A.I.M. in February 1973, who were protesting the historical injustice by U.S. government troops who gunned down approximately 300 unarmed Lakota Sioux men, women and children on December 29, 1890.
Among Chief Longwalker’s many other accomplishments is helping the Diné people (Navajo), at the Fairchild plant as part of their struggle against unfair labor practices. In 1980, he blessed the grounds of Milton Keynes in London for Buddhist Monks (Peace Begonia).
And, in 1983, he helped to coordinate the 1st Indigenous Conference in Libya through the assistance of revolutionary activist Kwame Ture, formerly known as Stokely Carmichael.
Chief Longwalker and Warrior Woman founded the Four Directions, which started in 1978 after the Longest Walk. Through that effort, they worked to educate others and to combat the mass sterilization of Indigenous women and men, and to combat the stealing of Native culture, land, and resources.
At their Red Wind Sovereign International Inter-Nation situated on 240 acres of land, they would teach, and conduct sweat lodges, and teach about its role in healing through their Red Wind University for Higher Education.
Unity of the Black and Red
“We are the majority. The Red and the Black man. If you people would take time to look at Mother Earth and all her children, you see the red and the black ant. One part is red. The other half is black.
That’s the only creation, and the ants are the ones that bring us so much medicine. If we could live like them, the ant is a lesson but it’s too long to talk right now. It takes a lifetime to understand the power that the ants possess, and the leisure and the beauty that they have when it’s time, when they rest.
They work all summer, in other words, and rest all winter,” said Chief Longwalker, during an interview at Oyate (Red Wind), in April 2021, conducted by Sanders Trent -Dis-Placed titled, “Who is Chief Ernie Longwalker?”
“I know my mom didn’t really want to share that he had passed, and I was trying to keep quiet about it, but I realized, we all need to have be allowed the space to mourn. There’s other people that need to mourn,” said his daughter Hana.
“Well, that’s what the Minister said,” added Warrior Woman, referring to the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan. “He (Minister Farrakhan) goes, ‘you know, we know you loved him. You were the wife and your children, and you were everywhere with him. But he belongs to the people,’ and it’s true,” said Warrior Woman.
Hana stated that it is important for more people to know how close Minister Farrakhan and Chief Longwalker were as comrades, brothers and friends. “I mean, they went to Libya together, they were with (Colonel Muammar) Gadhafi and (Yasser) Arafat. They were with other presidents and other countries.”
Hana added with a bright smile, “The Minister was saying that dad was like a brother to him. And they’re very close in age … born right around the same time. They’re a year apart.”
Minister Farrakhan, his family, and his delegation traveled to stand with the Native people in Navajo land in Arizona. The Nation of Islam and Native American tribes united to thwart the U.S. government’s attempt to illegally steal their sacred land.
Lots of people are being raised in a culture outside of their tradition, which strips their confidence in themselves and who they are as a Native or Indigenous person, Hana pointed out. However, Chief Longwalker constantly taught and shared with Native people, particularly youth, the importance of their history and who they are.
“My dad was letting them know they can be proud of who they are, their culture, their traditions. And there’ve been quite a few people who that’s what they needed in their life. That’s what they were missing,” she said.
“They can’t go to the schools and find to be proud of who they are. They can’t turn on TV and see themselves, you know? So, my dad was offering that option for them to come and be proud of who they are,” Hana said.
Minister Abdul Akbar Muhammad, International Representative of Minister Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam told The Final Call that he first met Chief Longwalker during a trip he made on behalf of Minister Farrakhan and called him, “a very good brother.” Chief Longwalker also represented Native Americans/Indigenous people in overseas meetings said Minister Akbar Muhammad.
The impact of Chief Longwalker on galvanizing the Native American people was great and important. “We took him to Libya, a couple of trips to Libya, with us and met with Gadhafi, so his impact and the Red Wind when the White man was getting the Indians off the land that he wanted to get oil, it was Longwalker who stood up against them,” Minister Akbar Muhammad recalled.
“Chief Ernie Longwalker took Minister Farrakhan to his first sweat lodge (Inipi) and taught him a lot about our spirituality. Chief Longwalker, Warrior Woman and my mother have been very supportive and loyal to Minister Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam for many years and traveled internationally with him to develop some of the key friendships we still have today.”
YoNasDa Lonewolf, daughter of Wauneta Lonewolf, an Oglala Lakota from Pine Ridge, South Dakota. Wauneta Lonewolf stood strong with Chief Longwalker, Warrior Woman, and Minister Farrakhan and helped to bridge the gap between the Black and the Red.
Chief Longwalker and Minister Louis Farrakhan conducted the marriage ceremony for her parents in 1976, because they wanted to show the strong bond between the Black and Red nations, YoNasDa Lonewolf, also a longtime activist, told The Final Call.
Chief Longwalker’s impact is also remembered through the unity he fostered, which included working to bring the Red and Black communities together which he saw as prophetical.
According to YoNasDa Lonewolf, many Native tribes have such a prophecy, and Chief Longwalker believed that prophecy and used his lifelong work to make it happen.
His kinship with Minister Farrakhan enabled him to unite the Black man and the Red man on many occasions, including traveling together to Libya to meet with the late Col. Gadhafi and to conduct Indigenous conferences.
YoNasDa Lonewolf reflected on Chief Longwalker’s relationship with Minister Farrakhan, which she said was a beautiful brotherhood. Chief Longwalker unapologetically spoke the truth about what other Natives may have been thinking but were too afraid to say, she said.
A man of love
When Nation of Islam Western Region Student Minister Abdul Malik Sayyid Muhammad and a host of other student laborers went into their first sweat lodge with Chief Longwalker and Warrior Woman in 1997, his eyes swelled with tears listening to the history of the Native people.
He felt a kinship, he said. Student Min. Abdul Malik Sayyid Muhammad was impacted most by Chief Longwalker’s love for his people, the Earth, and every creature on the Earth.
“They are very much caretakers of the Earth and, his and their high respect in regards of women, to me, the Native Americans are one of the greatest examples of, I would say, how they revere and respect the woman and her role,” he said.
“Our brother was the epitome of the nature in which Allah (God) has created us. He was a Muslim all the way to the bone, even though, in the Native American experience, they don’t call it Islam. But I saw him in total submission,” said Student Minister Abdul Malik Sayyid Muhammad.
Chief Longwalker taught him the name of God in his Native tongue and about Native and the Aboriginal people, he said. “And his love for the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, I mean, that man loved those two people,” he stated.
YoNasDa Lonewolf also spoke on Chief Longwalker’s treatment of women. He amplified women and his responsibility as a man, explained YoNasDa Lonewolf.
“I would say that sometimes some men amplify the woman on public stages and then treat their woman horribly at home, but Chief Ernie Longwalker, he amplified the woman on public stages, and he amplified the woman in his home, and I saw that firsthand,” she said.
“When it comes down to a stand-up man. He is one. He was one of them, alongside the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan. He always loved the woman, and he always amplified and exalted the woman,” she said.
“I thank The Final Call newspaper, I thank the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan for wanting to honor his brother … and so to honor him in the way that we are honoring him, we’re honoring him because he is family,” she added.
A more public event to honor Chief Longwalker at a “Wiping of the Tears” ceremony on Red Wind Nation or Oyate (“The People’s Land”) is planned for Sep. 25, 2025.
