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KEVIN MCKIERNAN: To get there, you head west and south out of Rosebud Village, the tribal headquarters of the Brule Sioux. Running parallel on a line 25 miles above the Nebraska border, where the reservation stops, you twist downward through the draws and gulches on a rutted two lane blacktop past ghost hawk park, where the road becomes a gravel washboard. Then west into the hot afternoon sun along the curving little White River.

You cross the two strike bridge. Above you, on the right, is a steep pine studded hill. At the top, from a wooden tree pole, a solid red flag flies in the wind at the gravesite of Frank Clearwater, the 47-year-old Cherokee killed last year at Wounded Knee, 90 miles to the west. He was brought here to Crow Dogs when the government refused to allow his burial in that occupied village.

Down the hill, across the road, is Crow Dog's paradise, 160 acres, now an Indian village of over 1,000-- 1,000 camped in preparation for the sacred Sundance. As you pull your car into line for registration under a mammoth log teepee, which straddles the dirt driveway, the sign next to it says "All vehicles subject to search. Alcohol, drugs, weapons, cameras, and recorders will be confiscated."

You sign a red registration card. If you're not Indian, it's $25 a person collected by the six-man security force, the young braves with clipboards who operate the swinging barricade gate. Tourists aren't encouraged. In fact, there was somewhat of a bitter division among Indians as to allowing whites to attend the annual religious rites. But old Henry Crow Dog, on whose land it is, wanted it open. "Only the spirit matters," he said. Still, there are few whites here.

Hundreds of cars and trucks. Indian people here from as far away as Vermont and California, whole families here for four days of singing, dancing, and eating. The tepees and tents stretch hundreds of yards from the road back to the shallow, fast-flowing little White River behind. And they circle the log cabin and tar paper shacks in the center, where Crow Dogs, generations of medicine men live year-round.

On the eve of the start of the Sundance last night, the campfires burned and the powwow drums beat late into the evening, cows were butchered, Indian fry bread cooked, coffee beans roasted. You awake at sunrise in a bedroll under cottonwood trees by the river. It's the first day. The sweat lodges at dawn, many of them.

Skins and tarps pulled tight over the bound branches, which form the round skeletons of the low slung huts. Eight or 10 naked people huddled on the earth inside each one. Water ladled into a dugout pit in the middle filled with fiery rocks which have been cooking for hours outside in a bonfire. Pipe smoking and prayers in the hot, steamy darkness.

And then afterwards, outside, your lungs bursting in the cold morning, feeling your breathing pure oxygen through every open pore. And then breakfast, but not for the sun dancers. No food or water for four days if you dance. You fast and you pray. This is your own calling. No one forced you here.

This year, there are 38 male dancers, 19 female. At 7:00 AM, they begin dancing. East of Crow Dog's house, there's a giant arena 75 to 100 yards in diameter. The dancing begins. The women in heavy fringed leather, the men in colored skirts, everyone barefoot, they all wear anklets, bracelets, and crowns of woven sage.

Two eagle feathers atop their heads, an eagle bone whistle clenched in their teeth. They inhale and exhale flute-like sounds in rhythm to the pounding drum. All day, they dance in the circle. They are broken into four groups. At the south end, there are two sticks bearing white flags. On the east, two yellow flags for the sun. On the west, black for darkness. On the North, red for Indians came from the north.

Between the black flags on the west is an Indian altar, a buffalo head, herbs, medicines and pipes. In the center of the large circle is a tall poplar tree stuck deep in the ground and festooned with a dozen solid colored flags. The four races of man, black, yellow, white and red, plus a blue flag to represent the sky, a green one to symbolize the earth.

By afternoon, the temperature is in the high 80s and the dancers are covered with sweat. Their arms are outstretched toward the sun, feathers, ringlets of sage or sacred pipes in their hands. Many of the pipes were held by their grandfathers when they danced here.

Around the circumference is a circular arbor of shade provided by a log canopy filled with pine needles. Underneath are the spectators and the old men who take turns singing and playing the omnipresent drum chants. It's even hot in the shade, but the onlookers have water jugs. The dance stops and begins again. Many familiar faces in the dance.

American Indian Movement leader, Dennis Banks, his third year. Clyde Bellecourt is here. His naked stomach a mass of surgical railroad tracks from a gunshot wound on this reservation last summer. Russell Means is not here. He was jumped by Mission South Dakota police in Valentine, Nebraska, a border town two nights ago, an apparent retaliation for beating up of two officers in the Mission golf club in June. He and some supporters are recuperating now in a Rapid City hospital.

The master of ceremonies talks on the loudspeaker to the sun dancers, asking prayers for Means so that he'll be well enough to dance for the remaining three days beginning tomorrow. It's Means' fourth and final year. The dancers are called back into the hot, dusty circle in front of the drum. The drum has stopped. The old men say they can't go on until, first, they eat. They hold up food and cool water in front of the fasting dancers taunting them.

Medicine man, Lame Deer, seeker of visions walks among the groups divided in the arena in front of the four wind directions. His salt and pepper hair is tied off in long braids. He kicks up dust in his calf, high moccasins, brushes some of the dancers with a red and black eagle feather. They begin to dance. The drum, the bone whistles, the chants start from the surrounding shade.

Lame Deer is an old man pretending to be absent-minded as he chews and savors a piece of golden fried bread on his criss-cross walk through the arena. The sun dance was started by a fellow named Spread out in the Black Hills thousands of years ago. It was outlawed in 1889 after a man died of the chest piercing on the last day of the ritual. It was started up again briefly in 1928.

And then Frank Fools Crow, the 80-year-old chief who sits here under the pine needles canopy by the drum, revived it again in 1958, promising the government that the chest incisions would be shallower. The old master of ceremonies, Matthew King, tells the dancers that in the old days, they had to dance for four days and four nights for the sun vision. He taunts them. Nowadays, you must fast and dance only for four days, he says. But away from the microphone, King tells me that each year since 1958, the chest cuts are deeper and deeper. Each year, he says, the Indians want them deeper in their skin.

75-year-old toothless Henry Crow Dog who opened his land for a staging area for guns, ammunition, and food lifts during the Wounded Knee siege, takes the microphone. "You must be humble for the great spirit to hear your prayers," he says. The outstretched arms of the tired dancers reach for the burning sun. "You must be humbled to get on the good side of the great spirit."

Everyone listens to Crow Dog talk. It's the Hebrews in Egypt under the pharaoh. "We are the chosen people," he says. "We are the chosen people of the Western Hemisphere. We will survive." He says it in Lakota like cadence of his staccato English. And then from last night, you remember Matthew King, who is also Chief Fools Crows' interpreter. The old man, King, talking. "The dancers," he said, "make a commitment a year before the dance to dance four years in a row."

Some vision they ask for. They pray every morning and every evening. They ask for wisdom, wisdom to know themselves, to be whole persons. They prepare themselves. They ask for strength and guidance. No one tells them to do this thing. No one makes them dance. You have to want to do this sacrifice. You pray for God's help for your life.

"We have always been at the bottom," he said, "but we are going to win. This is our land, our country." You have to have faith. You have to believe from the top of your head to the tips of your feet. Then watch the sky. Watch the sky for signs. The Eagles who fly there, they approve. They carry the prayers to the great spirit.

Tomorrow, the sun dancers begin the three-day piercing ceremonies. Their chests are cut open. A length of bone or wood is slipped through two slits of skin. Around the length is fastened rawhide tongs, which are strapped to a 20 foot cord, which in turn is tied to the flag draped poplar tree in the center of the arena.

The fasting dancer cannot touch the wound or cord. He must dance away from the tree, pulling the cord tight until, even if this lasts all day, it succeeds in ripping the flesh from his chest and freeing him from the pierce. No one can help him. No one can help him, even if he falls unconscious. It is, says Matthew King, his struggle, he seeks his own vision alone. At the Sioux Sundance, near Crow Dog's paradise on the Rosebud Indian reservation, this is Kevin McKiernan.