Reflections From The Rez

The past 24 hours pretty much sum up the best and the worst on the Rez. On Monday night, we attended a powwow in Porcupine. The event concluded the first day of a housing summit on the Rez, being co-sponsored by Re-Member. During the day, various speakers presented updates and new ideas on promoting affordable, adequate and sustainable housing options on the Rez. After a crazy thunderstorm the sun poked through the clouds, leaving us with the perfect night (in other words, it wasn't 90 degrees any more) to watch a traditional powwow with dozens of dancers. As the night concluded, and we made the drive from Porcupine back to Pine Ridge, I had a chance to reflect on my time here so far: the good and the bad, the improvements and the things that have become worse. Wednesday morning I awoke and was assigned to a work crew that was traveling to a house about 45 minutes away from Pine Ridge. I drove a van of volunteers out, and was able to talk to them as we made the drive. Many had been...

How does one paint the side of a trailer without a ladder? You stack tires laying around the yard on top of one another to stand on. Welcome to Lakota problem solving 101. Working on a wheelchair ramp at a house that must have at least 10 or 15 kids inside. They don't have running water, so they use a van to shuttle water from up the road.

Photos from the Pow-wow last night are on Flickr, I'll update with a blog entry today or tomorrow... http://www.flickr.com/photos/corytrue/

Tom (the Executive Director) brought up an interesting point during the orientation for the group here this week as they were introduced to Re-Member on Saturday afternoon. Many, including Tom, describe the poverty on Pine Ridge as being that of "third world" levels. Tom noted that earlier in the season, he was challenged in this definition, with the suggestion that the term "developing nation" is now used as a more descriptive term for locales that experience poverty today. The reality is, Pine Ridge is not a developing nation. Earlier this year, I visited Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. As I experienced Honduras, it is easy to see how one would deem the poverty I saw there to be that of a developing nation. In Tegucigalpa, the capital city, streets are lined with chain restaurants, factories, growing neighborhoods -- as well as run down businesses, abandoned homes and slums. Outside the capital, as one moves further into the rural...

New photos up on my Flickr page, http://www.flickr.com/photos/corytrue/ Busy day on Monday, which will end with a pow-wow in Porcupine. Update soon.

I’m here! In spite of the best efforts of US Airways, United and Frontier Airlines, I finally arrived at Re-Member at about 10 p.m. on Friday night. The trip out was eventful, as always. I left home at 3:30 a.m. on Friday morning, caught my first flight from Portland to New York, and had sixty minutes to make a connection at La Guardia. Shouldn’t have been a problem, but I had to change airlines and terminals, and go through security again. Despite my best efforts, I was two minutes late arriving at the ticket counter, and was told I would have to bump to another flight. Little did I know that the random henchmen at the Frontier counter were booking me a first-class ticket to Denver, to make up for the fact that I was going to have to sit in the terminal from 9 until 2 in the afternoon. So yeah, seat 4A was a good time. I boarded with all the businessmen who were wearing sports coats in my shorts and flip flops. Lunch was a step up from economy class (a $6 “snack pack) as we were serve...

Didn't sleep last night. At all. Left home at 4 a.m. Quick flight from Portland to La Guardia, but it was too quick. Sat on the taxiway waiting for our gate... I was two minutes late for my transfer. Friendly Frontier people quickly rebooked me though, on a United flight at 2 p.m. (only problem was that, at the time it was 9 a.m.) When I checked in with United, I find out they put me in first class. Sweet life. I may be arriving in Rapid 3 hours late, but it will be done with class, first class.

Statistics fall well short of providing an accurate picture of life on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Official numbers, gathered by the U.S. Census bureau, among other agencies, paint a grim picture, but it is important to note that it is both incomplete, and only one representation of life on the Rez. From the Re-Member website : From 1980 to 2000, the counties that make up Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota comprised the poorest of our nation's 3,143 counties. The 2000 census found them the third poorest, not because things got better on Pine Ridge, but because things got worse on two other South Dakota Indian Reservations. The poverty on Pine Ridge can be described in no other terms than "third world." It is common to find homes terribly overcrowded, as those with homes take in whoever needs a roof over their heads. Many homes are without running water, and without sewer. While the 2000 census reported a population of 15,521, a study by Colorado State Univers...

Spring Break 2008 was going to by my first real "vacation" since Thanksgiving of 2007. With all of the opportunities surrounding the 2008 New Hampshire Presidential Primary, I had basically been going nonstop for nearly two years with all-things-politics, and had given up most of my Christmas recess to return to New Hampshire to work for ABC News and the college in the weeks and days leading up to January 8, Primary day. Following the primary, I was looking forward to heading home to Maine to enjoy a few days with friends and family, who I had barely caught up with over Christmas, given the fact that I made it home only three days before the 25th, and was back in NH on January 2 pulling satellite uplinks across the roof of the Center of New Hampshire (oh the things you can say you did as a student at Saint Anselm!) Anyways, the point of the story: About two weeks prior to spring break, which falls around the end of February or early in the month of March at Saint A's, my ...

An old piece (2007) from Al Jazeera, worth a watch.

Two weeks from tomorrow I'll be heading west. Soon, but in many ways, not soon enough. Having graduated one month ago this weekend, I am becoming more and more sure that splitting my time between New Hampshire, and the campus of Saint Anselm, and Maine, at home, was the best possible scenario by which to get through the month and a half between graduation and departure. Although neither locale has offered me the new experience that I'm so ready to embrace, the familiarity of campus and home - combined with the occasional lack of anything else to do - has given me plenty of time to think about my pending work with Re-Member, and what will come after that. Currently, three Saint Anselm students - one who I traveled to South Dakota with in 2008, and two additional students who visited this year with the Spring Break Alternative program at Saint Anselm College are working with Re-Member. As they prepare to depart, I will be heading out with another 2009 SBA participant who will be ...