Does anyone know of this man Lessert Moore? He is, apparently, an enrolled member of OST living here in N. California. He sometimes uses the title "Chief Whirlwind". From what I have heard recently he is claiming to be a medicine man and seems to be "teaching" a number of white groupies in my area from his home in Ukiah, CA. It seems like some of the local Woo Merchants list him as a teacher.
http://www.spiritualawarenesscounseling.com/meet.htm
If anyone has any other info on him it would be appreciated.
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http://www.spiritualawarenesscounseling.com/meet.htmSignficant teachers of mine include:
... Lessert Moore, Rick Thomas & Patti Thomas, Lakota Elders ..."
The common thing that all three share is Norbert Running. Norbert made the mistake of trusting people around him. Lessert Moore and Rick Thomas used to insist on occupying prominent places in Norbert's Ironwood sundance. They exploited the easy-going Norbert and the Lakota of Rosebud. Patty Thomas, Rick's sister, later married Norbert and moved him away from Rosebud after Norman, Norbert's oldest son, made life difficult for her. She, like Harold and Alva ("White Horse") Thompson, represented an economic threat to Norman's planned conquest over Norbert's lucrative Ironwood sundance.
Norman ordered Patty out of Norbert's house on Rosebud and Norbert sat there and didn't do a thing. She packed her things and left. Then Norbert moved to Santee to live with Patty.
Norbert later left Patty. He returned to Rosebud but he couldn't return to his own home. One of his daughters had taken it over and wouldn't let him back into his own house, on his own land. Norbert was an easy-going guy. So Norbert moved to a trailer way out in the middle of no-where, near the tribal buffalo range. Lessert saw the opportunity to exploit Norbert's homelessness and sundanceless condition. Over the years, Lessert had compiled mailing lists of visitors, sundancers and supporters when he participated at the old Ironwood sundance and when he saw the opportunity to "legitimize" a plan for his own sundance by exploiting Norbert's old sundance (the same way Albert White Hat, Florentine Blue Thunder and Steve McCullogh had done), he used his mailing lists to solicit money from distant, off-reservation and non-Indian names on the lists and to promote his "Four Winds" sundance. It was held near Norbert's trailer and Norbert occupied a prominent place in Lessert's sundance although Lessert was the ostensible, and visible, big cheese of the whole event.
Lessert even had a flag waving beside the road, like a used car lot, promoting "4 WINDS SUNDANCE". "4WINDS" was on the first line and, without serifs on the "D", it looked like "4WINOS SUNDANCE". The few sundancers who participated were non-indigenous, white.
So, Lessert Moore, like Rick & Patty Thomas, is a self-promoter. But unlike Rick & Patty (who are Dakota and not Lakota), Lessert may actually be an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe.
Enrolled or not, the exploitation of Lakota spiritual traditions for ones own benefit is unacceptable and needs to be publicly condemned.
