Leaving Pine Ridge...
My stay on Pine Ridge has concluded, for now. I left the Rez on Thursday, bound for Rapid City and an airplane that would jet me back into a reality that I wasn't quite prepared for. It has been a bit surreal over the past few weeks as I have packed my things, shipped them home, and attempted to prepare myself for the transition back home.
In the last two weeks, as the weather became worse and worse, the requests for help only intensified. In spite of less than optimal weather -- everything from 15 degree days with snow, to 40 degree days with steady rain -- we slogged our way though a project a day at times, in our attempt to help as many families as possible before the end of the season.
I made my last trip to Bette's Kitchen, Big Bats, Sioux Nation and the Pine Ridge Subway with Bryan during the last week, spending the time driving US-18 talking about the transition back home, and joking about how our outlook on day-to-day things have changed.
It's impossible to describe the feeling of leaving Pine Ridge after my 4ish-month stay. As we drove through the Badlands one last time, I found myself repeating the phrase "Mitakuye Oyasin" and thinking of my new friends, my tiospaye, that I leave behind on the Rez, everyone from co-workers (Tom, Mike, Chris, Jerry and Corbin) to our local staff and friends of Will Peters, John Her Many Horses, Val Brown Eyes, Minerva Blacksmith, Larry Swalley and Kevin Poor Bear...among others.
Bryan and I bounced project names off one another, recalling the work we did at each site, and the unique challenges and even more unique solutions we crafted at each site, from "Buckman's" (Noah's house) in Pine Ridge, to the Janis family on Bombing Range Road.
As my plane banked out of Rapid City, passing over the Black Hills one last time, I found myself staring down at the jagged terrain on the horizon to my south, where the Badlands guarded the northern border of Pine Ridge. Fitting, I thought, of the rugged, unforgiving, truly unique terrtain that separates "the outside" from Pine Ridge. Fitting how a terrain that truly is "bad land" but which contains so much beauty is the divide to separate the Lakota Sioux and their reservation from everyone else to the north.
I saw beauty this summer in Pine Ridge: in the landscape, in the people, in ceremonies and rituals and in the hope and determination of people to do good, to Re-Member the wrongs of the past, and of now. I also saw bad, and bad that I will never forget: uninhabitable homes that were home to families with young children and elders. Homes with no food, no water, no sanitation. Third world poverty, in the middle of America. I saw alcoholism that was ruining families and taking lives.
I saw corproate America taking advantage of a people with one grocery store to provide for an area the size of Connecticut charge exoborant prices for everything from groceries to toiletries. I witnessed the effects of budget mismanagement when families in front of me would not have enough EBT funding left a week after their monthly balance transfer to buy a gallon of milk.
I became desensitized, in a way, to working in appaling conditions that would result in the immediate eviction and condemning of any typical American home. Homes with mold, human waste, deceased animals and general sanitation issues that would break every code in the book in our hometowns.
Yet, I have hope, because of the people I worked with, and the organiztaion that I worked for. Pine Ridge will never be suburbia, but it never should be. It is a unique place, but a place that deserves more respect, more help, more civility than it has now. It doesn't need a Mc Donalds and a Wal Mart, it needs more people to tell it's story; to understand what has been done wrong, and what needs to be done to make things right.
Pine Ridge needs advocates, not assimilation. It needs help, not hand-outs.
It needs people that understand Mitakuye Oyasin.
In the last two weeks, as the weather became worse and worse, the requests for help only intensified. In spite of less than optimal weather -- everything from 15 degree days with snow, to 40 degree days with steady rain -- we slogged our way though a project a day at times, in our attempt to help as many families as possible before the end of the season.
I made my last trip to Bette's Kitchen, Big Bats, Sioux Nation and the Pine Ridge Subway with Bryan during the last week, spending the time driving US-18 talking about the transition back home, and joking about how our outlook on day-to-day things have changed.
It's impossible to describe the feeling of leaving Pine Ridge after my 4ish-month stay. As we drove through the Badlands one last time, I found myself repeating the phrase "Mitakuye Oyasin" and thinking of my new friends, my tiospaye, that I leave behind on the Rez, everyone from co-workers (Tom, Mike, Chris, Jerry and Corbin) to our local staff and friends of Will Peters, John Her Many Horses, Val Brown Eyes, Minerva Blacksmith, Larry Swalley and Kevin Poor Bear...among others.
Bryan and I bounced project names off one another, recalling the work we did at each site, and the unique challenges and even more unique solutions we crafted at each site, from "Buckman's" (Noah's house) in Pine Ridge, to the Janis family on Bombing Range Road.
As my plane banked out of Rapid City, passing over the Black Hills one last time, I found myself staring down at the jagged terrain on the horizon to my south, where the Badlands guarded the northern border of Pine Ridge. Fitting, I thought, of the rugged, unforgiving, truly unique terrtain that separates "the outside" from Pine Ridge. Fitting how a terrain that truly is "bad land" but which contains so much beauty is the divide to separate the Lakota Sioux and their reservation from everyone else to the north.
I saw beauty this summer in Pine Ridge: in the landscape, in the people, in ceremonies and rituals and in the hope and determination of people to do good, to Re-Member the wrongs of the past, and of now. I also saw bad, and bad that I will never forget: uninhabitable homes that were home to families with young children and elders. Homes with no food, no water, no sanitation. Third world poverty, in the middle of America. I saw alcoholism that was ruining families and taking lives.
I saw corproate America taking advantage of a people with one grocery store to provide for an area the size of Connecticut charge exoborant prices for everything from groceries to toiletries. I witnessed the effects of budget mismanagement when families in front of me would not have enough EBT funding left a week after their monthly balance transfer to buy a gallon of milk.
I became desensitized, in a way, to working in appaling conditions that would result in the immediate eviction and condemning of any typical American home. Homes with mold, human waste, deceased animals and general sanitation issues that would break every code in the book in our hometowns.
Yet, I have hope, because of the people I worked with, and the organiztaion that I worked for. Pine Ridge will never be suburbia, but it never should be. It is a unique place, but a place that deserves more respect, more help, more civility than it has now. It doesn't need a Mc Donalds and a Wal Mart, it needs more people to tell it's story; to understand what has been done wrong, and what needs to be done to make things right.
Pine Ridge needs advocates, not assimilation. It needs help, not hand-outs.
It needs people that understand Mitakuye Oyasin.
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