"Long ago, thousands of years ago …"

With those words, Phillip Wright began telling the story of the first sun dance song. He told how a grandpa and the grandson he was caring for - "a little guy, about this tall," he gestured - had to flee for their lives as enemies approached.

As the enemy drew closer, "grandpa sent his voice up to Tunkasila," Wright said, asking that he be taken to spare his grandson's life. "And guess what? Someone answered."

Wright told how Tunkasila helped grandpa and grandson escape. How Tunkasila gave grandpa the Sun Dance ceremony. How Tunkasila sang the first Sun Dance song - a song Wright then sang with his father, Kevin Wright - to grandpa as he danced the first Sun Dance.

Wright was one of 16 students from area schools who participated in the first Lakota Nation Invitational Storytelling Competition on Wednesday.

A seventh-grader at Lower Brule, he told the story of the Sun Dance song the same way his grandfather had told him. The same way his grandfather's grandfather had passed the story on to him years before. The same way stories and history and legends have passed from generation to generation of Lakota for centuries.

"He put all the detail in there," Wright said about his grandfather, Harry Charger. "I wanted to share the stories with the people."

Preserving that storytelling tradition is the main goal of the competition, which is expected to become an annual event.

"Something like this preserves our oral traditions," said Lydia Whirlwind Soldier, who evaluated the contest for the South Dakota Humanities Council. "The grandparents are not telling those stories like they used to. … This is really a great opportunity."

The humanities council, along with South Dakota State University's Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, sponsored the event.

Many participants, like Wright, told traditional Lakota stories. Others told contemporary stories. And some, like Nellie Two Elk, shared their own family legends.

Two Elk, a sophomore at Todd County High School, didn't need a script to tell the story she heard from her grandmother. She knew it by heart: How a small band of Lakota led by Chief Big Foot struggled through a harsh South Dakota winter to take refuge with Red Cloud's people at Pine Ridge. How 7th Cavalry Soldiers opened fire, killing nearly 300 men, women and children. And how her great-great-grandmother, Maka Oyate Win (Earth Nation Woman), saved five grandchildren, including two elders in Two Elk's family.

"Can you imagine the terror?" Two Elk asked listeners. "We as Indians of Sioux blood can hear those screams."

So did Maka Oyate Win, who ran to the tipi where her grandchildren were sleeping and helped them flee when the gunshots began. As they ran away, they came across relatives already dead. Grandmother and grandchildren covered themselves in the blood of their relatives "just to seem as if they were dead," Two Elk said, so the soldiers would pass them by.

Grandmother and grandchildren escaped. "The moral to my story is you should never forget who you are and where you came from," Two Elk said.

Later, Two Elk admitted that she had to struggle a bit to keep from crying as she told the story.

She grew up hearing stories about her relatives, many of whom fought the U.S. government. The version she told Wednesday was adapted from an oral interpretation piece she had performed.

Many of the student storytellers' performances were unpolished. A lot of them read from written scripts. Most forgot to make eye contact. Few used hand gestures or facial expressions.

But they took part, and that was the first step.

"I think it's a good start," said Jerome Kills Small, a professional storyteller and SDSU instructor who is originally from Porcupine. He hopes the contest will make students think about how storytelling can be more than a class assignment. "It's more than a grade," he said.

Kills Small, who spent nine summers performing with the Great Plains Chataqua Society, also gave a storytelling performance Wednesday.

Mary Arnold, head of SDSU's journalism department, worked with Doris Giago, an associate professor of journalism at SDSU, Kills Small and others to develop the competition. They say it is especially appropriate that LNI is in December, because winter was storytelling time for many tribes.

And they are happy with the interest students have shown in the storytelling contest.

"Since this is the first year, we're tickled," Arnold said. "We were delighted with 16. And we anticipate that it will grow."

Contact Heidi Bell Gease at 394-8419 or heidi.bell@rapidcityjournal.com