My name is Steve McCullough aka Iktomi Sha. I was married in 1973. We have one son and 3 daughters, 11 grandchildren, and one great granddaughter. I was born in 1953 in Illinois. When I was about 10 years old a Native family from Winner South Dakota Earl and Goldie Bear came to visit with our family in Illinois. In 1967 the Bear family wanted us to come to South Dakota, they took our family on a long journey through several reservations. I witnessed my first Sun Dance on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. It was a place where they were having a carnival and rodeo, ferris wheels and so on. Then just a short walk away to where the Sun Dance ceremony is taking place. In the center of the arbor was a man hanging from a tree. Other dancers pulling buffalo skulls and much more. At that time I had no idea what was taking place. However, something touched my heart very deeply. Then at age 16 I had a vision while wide awake that was so bright and hot it blinded me for several minutes. While at that time I had no idea what it meant it was a Sun Dance vision later being told to me by a medicine man in South Dakota. Then at a later time Earl Bear of Rose Bud gifted me a book written by Dee Brown, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. It had a big impact on me and I made a promise to myself that I would spend the rest of my life to undo all the injustice done to Native People. Sometime later than that my Father passed away in a drowning accident. A couple years later my mother remarried to a Rose Bud Sioux councilman, Gilbert Rattling Leaf from White River, South Dakota. Being that they were now married, the Rattling Leaf brought me into the family. Sometime later my Uncle Hurbert Rattling Leaf, let me know that referring to myself as a white person was very hurtful to their mother, Grandmother Lucy Rattling Leaf. He told me, “you are into our family and Gilbert is your Father not your step father.” He told me I was never to refer to myself as a White Man again. That was the wish from Grandma Lucy Rattling Leaf, who was in her 80’s at that time. Since that time in my life I always identified as being “Indian” (Native American). It was made very clear to me that if I didn’t there would be family consequences. Also in the early 1970’s I was adopted through a Hunka Ceremony into the Chasing Horse Family, Roger Chasing Horse from White River, South Dakota. In about 1990 a Rose Bud Medicine Man named Elmer Running gave me my Indian name Iktomi Sha. Sometime after that Elmer filled his pipe and asked me to smoke it in agreement to bring a Sun Dance to Indiana. I smoked his pipe and agreed to do what I could to make it possible. Salt Creek Sundance was born. Over the years there were a lot of different medicine men that came to our Sun Dance. After medicine man Vernal Cross from Pine Ridge, South Dakota passed away in 1998. Our Sun Dancers brought me a pipe to be the leader and intercessor of our Salt Creek Sundance. A few years later the Chasing Horse family made me a chief and placed a headdress on my head during our Sun Dance. This was also witnessed by the forest service personnel and federal agents who were there that year. The vision I had as a young boy at 16 has led me all my life. Now I am 70 years young.