Why Pine Ridge?

One month into my stay at Re-Member on the Pine Ridge Reservation, I think it’s time to revisit the question: why Pine Ridge?

Each day is something special here. Although waking up at 6 am can become a struggle towards the end of each week, the realization that by noon I will have made a difference in someone’s life helps to get me out of bed. Whether it’s skirting a trailer in Oglala with winterization materials to help keep a family just a little bit warmer, or roofing a century-old log home in Pine Ridge for Noah and his family, or any of the countless other projects that I’ve been a part of in the past four weeks…

Each day is also stunningly depressing. Not necessarily each day by itself, because the day-to-day work allows one to see the progress they are making, the homes we pull up to that are in rough shape that look just a little bit better when we pull away. It is the amalgamation of day after day after day of “making a difference” that you realize the scope of the poverty and problems that plague the Lakota people.

It’s desensitizing in a certain way, where after four weeks I’ve become slightly detached from the reality that what I am surrounded by is third-world poverty.

I tell stories to volunteers as we drive to and from our worksites in the comfort of our air conditioned vans about a trailer in the valley just past Wounded Knee where a dozen kids were living in a space suited for two at the time that Re-Member brought bunk beds in for the children to sleep on. I walk through homes that don’t have functional plumbing, running water, working electricity and other amenities that we consider to be “modern” and find myself thinking only about our task at hand, blocking the sights and smells out of my mind until after I leave.

At times, the schedule we keep our volunteers on – one that has them busy from 6 a.m. to somewhere around 9 p.m. is a joy, in that it also keeps me busy, always trying to be one step ahead of the groups from across the country that come here to help. In another sense, it’s too much, in that I rarely find the time for myself to decompress, to process, to think and to reflect.

Then again, the Reservation itself has a certain way of making sure that you are reflecting all the time. It might be a person you meet, or a scenic panorama that you pass by, but it is damn near impossible not to find yourself thinking, all the time, about the Rez when you are here, and to find a certain comfort when you cross back onto Pine Ridge after a trip that takes you elsewhere.

For now, this is home, and as crazy as it sounds, if I spend a day in Rapid City or Nebraska, when I cross back onto the Rez, it can put a smile on my face, in spite of everything that is so wrong about this place, because of the people and the places that make it good. That is why I'm here.