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Walter “Super” LaBatte, Jr. recognizes a thin veil between the material and spirit world. He believes it is all around us, applying its influence in subtle ways that most of us do not see or inhibit with our actions.
Super, as he has been dubbed ever since exhibiting a childhood feat of strength, spoke with a candid ease about powwows, his art and how the spiritual realm has come to characterize both aspects, defining them as more than just activities but ways of life.
He was still recovering from a weekend wacipi in which the heat wave gripping the country had no doubt made for an exhaustive few days. He alternated between sitting and resting his feet upon the leather terra-cotta couch within his home that, embellished with Native American adornments, wood furniture and floors, gave a warm and natural feel to the space that seemed a reflection of the man.
Super’s recognition, and access to the spiritual contributions on his journey, did not always come as natural to the man as it does today. Before developing his fervor for powwows and Native American craft he had to let go of a vice.
“I’ve been sober for 25 years,” he said. When somebody sobers up it’s either because of the judge or the doctor. “My route was through the doctor.”
Ignoring a physician’s warnings, Super said that he knew he would end up in the hospital on the final occasion he took to the bottle. “I remember standing in the shower and crying out Wakantanka (God), if you’re out there, hear my prayers. I want to quit drinking. Help me, help me.”
As an earnest and honest request, it appeared to Super that the plea was answered. “Immediately a feeling of calmness came over my body and I knew I was touched, so to speak.”
Afterward there was about a year that he didn’t feel like himself. Later, he came understand why.
Talking with his sister Joyce and mother Gabrielle, not long after he had reached sobriety, Joyce commented that the way he talked, his gestures, were just his like his grandpa, Fred Pearsall, for whom he had great respect.
Growing up he said he didn’t even realize that Pearsall was a white man. Known as Wamdi Ska (White Eagle in Dakota) he most always spoke in the native language and adhered closely to what Super called “the old ways.”
I believe that Wakantanka sent my grandpa to take over the reins until I got my sobriety,” he said. “After a year I felt like Super again ... I told a medicine man my story, and he understood. He said: Well did you thank him? And after that night I had a little talk with my grandpa and thanked him for bringing me through that tough time.”
Walter “Super” LaBatte, Jr. recognizes a thin veil between the material and spirit world. He believes it is all around us, applying its influence in subtle ways that most of us do not see or inhibit with our actions.
Super, as he has been dubbed ever since exhibiting a childhood feat of strength, spoke with a candid ease about powwows, his art and how the spiritual realm has come to characterize both aspects, defining them as more than just activities but ways of life.
He was still recovering from a weekend wacipi in which the heat wave gripping the country had no doubt made for an exhaustive few days. He alternated between sitting and resting his feet upon the leather terra-cotta couch within his home that, embellished with Native American adornments, wood furniture and floors, gave a warm and natural feel to the space that seemed a reflection of the man.
Super’s recognition, and access to the spiritual contributions on his journey, did not always come as natural to the man as it does today. Before developing his fervor for powwows and Native American craft he had to let go of a vice.
“I’ve been sober for 25 years,” he said. When somebody sobers up it’s either because of the judge or the doctor. “My route was through the doctor.”
Ignoring a physician’s warnings, Super said that he knew he would end up in the hospital on the final occasion he took to the bottle. “I remember standing in the shower and crying out Wakantanka (God), if you’re out there, hear my prayers. I want to quit drinking. Help me, help me.”
As an earnest and honest request, it appeared to Super that the plea was answered. “Immediately a feeling of calmness came over my body and I knew I was touched, so to speak.”
Afterward there was about a year that he didn’t feel like himself. Later, he came understand why.
Talking with his sister Joyce and mother Gabrielle, not long after he had reached sobriety, Joyce commented that the way he talked, his gestures, were just his like his grandpa, Fred Pearsall, for whom he had great respect.
Growing up he said he didn’t even realize that Pearsall was a white man. Known as Wamdi Ska (White Eagle in Dakota) he most always spoke in the native language and adhered closely to what Super called “the old ways.”
I believe that Wakantanka sent my grandpa to take over the reins until I got my sobriety,” he said. “After a year I felt like Super again ... I told a medicine man my story, and he understood. He said: Well did you thank him? And after that night I had a little talk with my grandpa and thanked him for bringing me through that tough time.”
Lighted Tipi Woman
A few years after he had given up drink, Super began to dance with frequency at powwows in a move that foreshadowed his entry into the arts.
He had graduated from Macalester College in St. Paul and spent many years working in construction before moving back to his hometown of Granite Falls. During that time he had been unaware of the creativity that lie dormant until the sticker shock associated with powwow regalia incited him to see if he could produce an outfit on his own.
He still posseses the red beaded vest that served as first creation. It is special to him as his initial work, but also because it contains the only design that ever came to him in a dream.
“I remember panicking because I needed to come up with something quickly. I went to bed that night, I wasn’t sure I was dreaming or awake, but I saw a picture of a tipi with a yellow circle, like a light. I was thinking, hey, that’s the design. I should wake up and draw it or I’m going to lose it.”
Unable to muster himself out of bed he fell back into slumber and forgot the experience. But as he took up the bead work the following day the dream returned to him.
Five or six years later, he came across a series of writing’s of Wamdi Ska that spoke of his ancestor, Tipi Ojanjan Win, which means Lighted Tipi Woman.
“It was like a bolt of lightning coming out and striking me, he exclaimed. “That’s where I got the design.”
Developing the art
Super learned quickly that commercial leather was tough and much less accommodating to beading. He decided he would learn to tan his own buckskin.
He was in luck as his father, Walter Sr., had knowledge of the practice and walked him through the process of removing the flesh, scraping off the hair and then using the brain of deer to soften the hide.
“The saying is; a deer has enough brains to tan itself... it’s either a stupid or a clever saying, depending on how you want to look at it.”
A physically arduous process to work the brains into the hide, Super makes presently about ten buckskin and three raw hides (which are not softened) a year. Early on he said he made 30 to 50 hides. He wonders now how he ever managed.
The softer buckskin hides are used for regalia and moccasins while the rigid raw hides are for drums.
Super’s regalia and moccasins are remarkably intricate and exquisitely ornate. He says he typically goes in without a specific design plan and that the “10,000 patterns in my head” just sort of flow while he’s immersed in the work.
Beading for 10 or 12 hours a day, it takes two to three weeks to produce a pair of moccasins and three to six months for a vest. A vest alone retails for $3,000.
The drums come quicker. and Super typically fashions them from Douglas Fir wood. Known for its strength, it’s ideal for withstanding the pressure exerted by the hide as it dries and contracts, he says.
Rarely does he take any sort of direction when fashioning his pieces. If something is custom made he says clientele trust his talents and, really, if he wasn’t able to express his own creativity he wouldn’t do it.
“If I didn’t like what I was doing I would give it up ... Part of the joy of creating is that once I begin I want to finish. I want to see how it turns out.”
The joy of powwow
Super laughed heartily as he recalled a spectator’s supposed incite into the Native American tradition of the wacipi. “Hey, you guys are just like Civil War reenactors,” the man said eliciting amusement in his reply, “If that’s all you see, you’re missing 90 percent of what powwow is.”
As with any powwow, Super is looking forward to this weekend’s Upper Sioux Community wacipi. He is gone most every weekend over the summer where he nourishes his soul amongst a community of dancers losing themselves in the beat of the drum.
“Sometimes the drum just comes through your feet and fills and your whole body. It’s a tremendous feeling of ease,” he said. “Powwow is about enjoying some of those old positive ways of being an indian... the spiritual ways of being an indian. We may have to live in the majority way of living for most of our lives but there are some weekends in the summer where we can get away from that and practice some of those old ways.”
When they’re open to it, Super bears witness to the impact of the drum on individuals having undergone a spiritual experience, whatever there heritage.
“I would still dance whether anybody is there or not, but the exposure [to outsiders] is good,” he said. “I don’t care if changes them or not but the opportunity is there.”
What you give
In life opportunities are always there. Sometimes they’re grasped with ease and at others at the behest of life’s afflictions.
For the most part Super has learned how to forego the hard way. And one can only imagine that his powwow dances are as light as they’ve ever been.
“The way I see life now is that, we make life tough for ourselves; we don’t realize that it doesn’t have to be. Our mind is powerful. We can create with that mind we have. We can create those conditions that will make a satisfactory, enjoyable life but a lot of us don’t believe that’s possible so we recreate that same old struggle over and over and over again.
“If you have negativity in your body and you put out negativity, what else can the universe bring you but negativity? If your putting outlove understanding and tolerance that’s what the universe will bring you.
If you smile at someone, are they going to sneer at you? No, they’re going to return that smile.”
The positivity Super exudes is evident in his creations, his dance and even the way he greets a stranger. In this day and age it may seem like something different, maybe something new. But he’d be the first to tell you, he’s just practicing the old ways.
