He never made a big deal of it, but whenever Garrett Wilson sat down for a meal, he would set aside a bite of food on his plate. His friend Armin Schmidt once asked him why. "Oh, that's for the spirits," said Wilson, a Sisseton Dakota elder.
Wilson died Dec. 23 of natural causes in his home. He was 79.
"The spirit world was always right there with him," said Schmidt, former executive director of the Council for American Indian Ministry. "That kind of gave him the orientation and bearing, that sense of connectedness he always had."
Wilson, whose Dakota name was "Do Not Stand in Front of Black Buffalo," was one of the last few Dakota first-language speakers in the state.
"He was an international dignitary and a beautiful, benevolent leader in our community," said his son Jim Rock, an astronomer-educator at the Minnesota Planetarium Society. "But I think the things he would want to be most known for are the things he did every day, steadily, for others."
Born on the Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota Reservation in South Dakota, Wilson didn't speak English until he was 8. Tall and lanky, he was a star basketball player at Flandreau Indian School, and he wanted to be a coach someday. Those plans were derailed when he was injured while a paratrooper during the Korean War, said his wife, Lynne Young.
He worked industrial jobs in Milwaukee before moving to Minneapolis in the early 1970s, where he became quickly known in Indian circles as wise and gentle.
A recovering alcoholic, he would have marked 36 years of sobriety on Jan. 12. The day he became sober was the only day he ever prayed for himself, Young said, adding that all subsequent prayers were for others, living and dead.
