Friends of Pine Ridge Reservation

It's been nine years since I made the mission trip to Pine Ridge with my sister Becky, my niece Rachel, and the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church.  I have not been back to Pine Ridge since, nor kept direct contact with anyone I met there or from that church.

However, I've become involved with an online group called Friends of Pine Ridge Reservation, run by a woman named Chris who lives in California.  The group coordinates year-round charity drives and other things involving many organizations on the rez who are there to help the people. 

 http://friendsofpineridgereservation.org/

My favorite drives involve holidays like Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Easter, and the school supply drives which they recently had, and sometimes the clothing drives.

There's also an online group for Friends of Pine Ridge through groups.yahoo.com.  Recently on one entry Chris told the story of how she came to organize the group.  Sometimes people will post articles or videos or TV show links concerning Pine Ridge and its people.

 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FriendsofPineRidgeReservation/

Sometimes I think of returning to Pine Ridge, maybe to tutor or to teach, but I've grown somewhat sickly over the years--walk with a cane, developed diabetes--and I'm afraid I couldn't survive in zero-degree winters with poor heating systems.  Once in a while I'll go to the Museum of the American Indian in lower Manhattan or attend a Labor Day Weekend powwow at Shinnecock in Long Island or other powwows.  Becky is involved with several Native American websites as well.  Rachel graduated from college and headed a theatrical group while in college.

http://nmai.si.edu/visit/newyork/

http://nmai.si.edu/home/

http://shinnecocknation.com/ 

If you want to follow my exploits, you could look at my Facebook page.  I'm still working in the CUNY system, and I'm still attending New Life Fellowship in Queens, NY.  

http://www.facebook.com/#!/melanie.lee.3781

http://newlifefellowship.org/

So, what have we learned from all this?
This is adapted from my diary entry, Thursday, July 31, 2003, 8:50 pm Mountain Time:

I can feel myself divorcing from South Dakota, getting in the mode to depart. What have I learned? That encouragement and teamwork go a long way. That I carried a lot of myself with me: the evangelistic business cards [which I get made up at Vistaprint.com], singing, the Internet, including the weblog--heck, I even added lyrics to my "chamber opera" script last night! [I'd brought the script with me, but didn't look at it until a later part of the week, to get "perspective" on it.]

I learned about South Dakota and Lakota history--and that spirituality can take on many forms, many of which can truly serve and respond to God. That to see the Lakota carry on their traditions reminded me of the Italian giglio, African-American pride, and that their problems reminded me of "ghettoese".

Could I live here? Probably yes, for a time.

"Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly..." [from Romans 12].

"As a Christian, we shouldn't withhold," Carol just said. "Do you give generously to God?" Margaret just said.

[I must have written this during a vesper meeting, where we read a scripture passage and reflected on it, writing and speaking, seeing how the passage related to our experiences of the day.]

Vista Print
http://www.vistaprint.com

I just wanna testify...
Boy, did I have to labor over this testimony. I tend to intellectualize, and Drew, who was co-ordinating the testimonies, told me to concentrate less on insights and more on feelings.

Here's the final draft (which I strayed from a little). Remember that I was restricted to two minutes:

Becky, Rachel, and I went with a group from the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in Manhattan to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. The people there are Oglala Lakota--more commonly known as the Sioux, though Lakota is the more proper term. We painted a church basement and parishioners' homes, and visited historical sites. One place we saw was Wounded Knee, where, in 1890, US soldiers with Gatling guns slaughtered many Native people--mostly women, children, and elderly men.

The reservation is set on the two poorest counties in the United States. The land is of poor quality: not conducive to farming, ranching, or industry. Unemployment is higher than 80%, I believe. (I'm not sure of the exact statistic.) Alcoholism runs rampant, and some young men have taken to forming gangs and committing crimes. The number one cause of death among Pine Ridge teens is suicide.

How awful to live in a place with such lack of opportunity. How sad and disturbing to see oppression and racism break people's spirits, and drive them to despair, fury, and self-destruction.

Yet, in spite of the hardship, I sensed the value of what is good there--a visually stunning landscape, and centuries of culture, oral history, spiritual sense, and identity. There's something blessed, beautiful, and significant about Pine Ridge, that can help heal the people's broken spirits. Their rich cultural history and way of understanding can contribute greatly to the Kingdom of God.

Quite a few people there believe in Jesus, and want to live Christian values while retaining Lakota culture. One was Will Peters, whose Lakota name means Teacher of the Red Way.

At a powwow I met Chief Oliver Red Cloud, chief of the Oglala Lakota, and descendent of Red Cloud. He asked me where I came from, and commented on the many church groups who came to Pine Ridge to help out. I asked him what he wanted most from visiting groups like ours. He answered, "Respect. Respect and love."

***
Rachel reviewed what I'd written and suggested I add this, which I did at the first service:

"One thing we church groups must avoid is having a mindset that says "let's save those heathenistic Indians"; that's just as oppressive as everything else."

After the first service she felt that my presentation was too much like a history lesson (although quite a few people told me they were moved by it), and that I'd missed out on something important: the loving, giving nature of the people and how willing the children were to just come up and play with you. She said Fern and Mary, the girls we met at the powwow, came to the church every day to play in the afternoon play sessions. I hadn't know this at all; I hadn't joined in the children's sessions.

So in the second session I added this:

"Rachel wanted me to mention how loving and giving the people were, in spite of their conditions. At a powwow a couple of girls, Fern and Mary, attached themselves to us right away, and they came every day to the church to play. Rachel is more of a heart person and I'm more of a head person--although we're both intelligent." That last comment got a laugh.

Another person said that we don't see things as they are; we see things as we are. I do tend to shy away from people face-to-face and concentrate more on facts, impressions, and causes. Oh, well.

Our church seems to emphasize that it's not just a matter of our telling people about Jesus, but listening to where they're coming from: to shut our mouths and open our ears and our eyes. (And maybe our hearts?)

Testimony this Sunday
I've been asked by my church, New Life Fellowship in Elmhurst, Queens, NY, to provide a two-minute talk this coming Sunday about the Pine Ridge trip, as part of their Mission Sunday. Many people will be giving short testimonies of mission trips they took this summer. The theme will be about confronting evil. In my case, I'm to focus on the evil of racism and oppression.

I'll work on capsulizing the experience, and I'll probably transpose my testimony here.


New Life Fellowship
http://www.newlifefellowship.org

And where have I been for the past week?
Back home!

We said our goodbyes at Newark Liberty Airport, and Rachel's father Jacob drove her, Becky, and me to his house, where we transferred our luggage to Becky's car (but they forgot my duffle bag which has my toiletries and shoes!).

Becky drove the scenic route along the ocean--bay, really--along Brooklyn and Queens. I could see the Wonder Wheel from Coney Island. As she drove past the shoreline and we could smell the salty air, I called out things I saw which I couldn't (or didn't) see in South Dakota: "Fruit trees! ...Maple trees! ...Palm fronds...no, not palm...fronds! [probably ferns] ...Sailboats! ...Traffic jams!"

I resumed my job as a writing tutor Monday evening, and this week spent much time on the Internet updating "An Open Letter to Dennis Miller", my newest website. Also, I completed--or nearly completed--the first draft of a "chamber opera" I'm writing about contemporary themes. Libretto only; I'm searching for a composer.

Over the weekend I came into Manhattan to attend events of the "Fringe Festival", a festival of avant-garde theatrical productions.

Today while tutoring I placed before me a postcard from South Dakota with a picture of two buffaloes. What struck me most about that place was the varied landscape--and I tell you, I miss the dry air.

Eventually I want to write here "What I Learned From All This", with paragraphs transferred from my diary. However, besides the landscape, what I carry is a sense of a spiritual lesson about inclusiveness, diversity, adaptability. It's well-expressed in something I said to a guest preacher at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church the Sunday before we went to SD.

He was speaking on the church's "2,000-Year Mistake"--persecution of the Jews. Afterward, I said to him, "We offer a cup of water to someone, but that water may not stay in the same cup. It's transferred from one cup to another." This has to do with the truth of Jesus and the gospel in the context of a culture other than the Europeanized Western World.

Why insist on presenting that water in a crystal goblet if they're used to an earthenware cup? However, remember that some of them might like to try that crystal goblet, too! And who knows--someone might invent an earthenware goblet! Just don't forget the water.

Last legs continued
We're in the hotel. Becky, Rachel, and I watched movies on the TV, but I got bored with that. I felt like I was losing the feel of the trip and I don't want to lose that yet.

Laundry took longer than usual and I went late to the powwow. Now the previous night when we had returned, an Atlantan preacher named Ernie, who is currently on sabbatical, had arrived that day, and talked to us about his experiences at Pine Ridge. He's been coming here for 12 years now. At the powwow he was helping out behind a concession stand.

I got stung by a yellowjacket who had flown behind the pages of a brochure I was reading. Becky suggested I put ice on it and the men at the stand gave me some. Becky and Rachel were selecting more presents for relatives. The powwow grounds were not as large, nor the selection as varied, as what I'm used to seeing on the Shinnecock reservation in the Hamptons on Long Island.

Walking back to the retreat center, my sister and I commented on Pine Ridge: it seemed a good, attractive place in spite of its problems. I said, with an aside that I've only been there little more than a week, that I had once thought that I could never live in the plains, that the land would be to flat and dull for me. But it isn't just plain and flat and dull.

The variety of landscape here, even in the ride from Pine Ridge to Rapid City, is stupendous--rolling hills, flatlands, oases of trees, moon-like mesas and craters, crags and cliffs, the Black Hills, grasslands. On the ride this afternoon we saw the Badlands from a distant--a stark pinkish dry contrast to the grounds before it.

Something about this land--Pine Ridge, that is--seems blessed despite its being the economically poorest in the county. It may have something to do with the spirituality of the land and its people.

But I remember the pastor Ernie saying that the number one cause of death among the teens here was suicide. He can tell by the lost look on their faces who is next in line for that. They have no hope, he said. Which got me to thinking: does Pine Ridge have a library? I remember passing by at least twice, either in Pine Ridge or a nearby town, a sign about a library fund, right next to a boarded-up-looking building that looks like it could be the library. I wasn't horribly poor growing up in the Ravenswood Projects of Long Island City, NY. I had access to a community center and a library. Even now with my currently four-figured salary, I have access to libraries, inexpensive Internet cafes, and many free outdoor activities. I wonder if even the homeless in NYC have it better in some ways than an average person in Pine Ridge. However, the Pine Ridge people to hundred of years of oral history and culture and spiritual sense, which can tell them who they are in the face of oppression and adversity, the way the Jews have the Bible.

I could imagine myself working out there as a teacher, tutor, reporter, copy editor or some kind of language or "mainstream culture" specialist. I'd have to learn how to drive, though. Also, how well will my leaning toward written or electronic word or media rather than face-to-face with people serve well out there?

During the week during evening meetings--which they called "vespers"--we read from a sheet of Bible quotations from Romans 12, and were asked to reflect on it in the light of the days activities, though one night we did this on our own with no meeting.

For Friday:
(19-21) Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.' No, 'if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.' Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

How can a so-called Christian country like ours have laws against "giving aid and comfort to the enemy" in light of the Scripture above?

One of the women on our trip pointed out how at the powwow last Sunday they had treated the American flag with such respect, a flag that had done them so much harm, terror, and evil. American flags abounded this day, too, en route to the powwow, and they abound in Native American artwork.

Folks, just because someone criticizes this country's policies or even opposes some of its actions, this does not mean we do not love it. Love does not equal carte-blanche approval. In fact I'd even say that's not love; that's toadyism. That's spoiling the other person. The last person who deserves to be spoiled is a person in leadership.

Respect and love coming from each side to the other is crucial in establishing reconciliation and true justice.

Okay, I'm platituding, so I should sign off now. It's possible Bill Maher's show might be on the TV now, if Becky will let me watch it, and I've missed a quarter of it already!

Last legs
We're leaving the Pine Ridge Retreat Center today, and will leave South Dakota tomorrow.

Wheeeeee-splash! We finally got to Evans Plunge! Rachel and two or three of the women got on the slides into the indoor and outdoor pools. Paulette said she did all three slides (not counting the kiddle slide in the shape of a frog, I suppose). Last year I had a bad experience with a closed tubelike slide at Dorney Park; I had a headache for a least ten minutes afterward. I might've gone on the open slide, but I would've had to remove my glasses, and I had them fastened on with an eyeglass strap and didn't want to go through the hassle.

In the outdoor pool you can see the red cliffs dotted with pine trees. The water temp is 87 degrees, not exactly "hot"--"Tepid Springs!" I said, too loudly, then more softly, "I wonder how many locals I insulted with that one!" At least you didn't have to get acclimated to chilly water! However, when the wind blew over your head--brrr!

The indoor pool was warmer, and bigger, with two adult-sized slides, the kiddie frog slide, swinging rings over one section, a basketball hoop, and a section set aside just for lap swimming, which I enjoy doing, though I'm not very fast. I was singing "Please Mr Custer" low to myself while swimming in the main pool, then remembered the 1960s syndicated cartoon series Marine Boy. (Child of TV, aren't I?) I saved the lap swimming to the end; did eight laps. This was my first swim of the summer; for someone who loves swimming, I let some summers go by without touching the water. Why do I do that to myself?

On the road we saw a donkey and we were going to take pictures, but it turned its rear to us. We didn't want to take pictures of an a$$'s @$$! We saw horses and cattle, and the fenced-in buffalo sitting in the sun, but no wild buffalo.

After our evening meeting eight of us, including my family, walked to a nearby rodeo. We saw bucking bull riders, about seven of them. Two horsemen with whips would corral the bull after each ride. The audience was maybe a couple of yards away, and I've never been that close to a bull before, except with a very tame bull at the 1964-5 World's Fair in Flushing, NY, if I remember correctly.

Right now several of us are putting finishing touches on the basement, and I'm on laundry detail, washing the retreat center's sheets and towels that we used. We're going to a powwow in Pine Ridge before we leave.

(links later)

Painting churches--final chapter?
Cheni announced that the Pine Ridge Presb Church admin thought we had finished the job and that one coat was enough. She also said that Becky was going to visit the local hospital and invited others to join. However, many of us felt they wanted to complete the basement painting to their satisfaction, including second coat, and painting the pipes, bathrooms, and tops of the walls. I opted for the hospital.

Five of us went, including Becky, Cheni, Rita, and me. I had an idea we might be visiting patients, but we didn't. A woman gave us a tour, and explained the mission and special needs of the hospital--treating diabetics, for instance. When she learned Becky was an intensive care specialist, it seemed to me she was practically begging her to join their staff!

I saw a flyer on a bulletin board about a Grammar and Proofreading Day coming up, and I asked about opportunities to teach or tutor English. Our tour guide suggested the Oglala Lakota College, which has a tutoring program.

The hospital walls were decorated with carvings and paintings of Native American themes. On one door was a poster of the Seven Laws of the Lakota, and the woman made copies for us. One of our group said that the drawing at the hospital facade was of a medicine man.

We'd been thinking of attempting Evans Plunge again, but the basement may have other ideas. There's also a rodeo starting around here today.

Pine Ridge IHS Indian Hospital
http://www.hospitalsoup.com/rn/asp/HospitalId.17777/pt/ad_hospitaldetails.asp
http://www.hospitalsoup.com/ExternalWebFrame.asp?HospitalID=17777

Oglala Lakota College
http://www.olc.edu/
humanties and language arts
http://www.olc.edu/olc/gjones/LArts%20Home%20Page.html

When we stopped for gas at the local Sinclair station--and I haven't seen a Sinclair gas station since I was a child; I thought they were out of business!--I saw a sign for a company called Rez Dog, which makes Native American-themed T-shirts and other products.

Rez Dog Clothing Company
http://www.rezdog.com/

Wounded Knee, wounded feelings
Chief Oliver Red Cloud, who was supposed to speak to us tonight, could not come because his daughter took sick. Prayers to them.

Becky's team joined us in the church basement this morning. Now I've sung with Becky many times, at home, in the car, at church. As I was painting the wall, I sang the score to Oklahoma. Then Becky started with South Pacific songs and I asked her to sing it in order. People had to go out to buy rollers and things. We finished putting on the first coat of paint, and some of us spackled the bathrooms.

We drove up to Wounded Knee in the afternoon, the site of an 1890 massacre and a 1973 takeover. Loren, one of the pastors here, told us about the first massacre, then told about his part as a US Marshall during the 1973 incident.

Now Rachel had gone up days before with a visiting youth group from Baltimore. "Bring Kleenex," she warned us. She didn't go a second time. However, I was not as moved by the visit as I expected to be. Maybe if Tina the guide from the Red Cloud School had been there telling her impassioned stories, the combination of her voice and the place might've touched me more deeply.

Loren showed us the fence around the mass grave where the Indians' bodies were unceremoniously dumped in 1890. A gray monument marked the spot.

This evening in discussion, a woman said that she also wasn't brought to tears as she expected, but she was moved to write some letters to Sen. Hillary Clinton about removing Wounded Knee from a banner of honored battles. Another woman said she felt Wounded Knee was "unfinished", that a monument or memorial like the Vietnam Memorial might spark some healing and remembrance.

Without naming specifics, there were also some hurt feelings about how some of the projects we worked on turned out, and about unexpected expenses. Well, there's never a human endeavor without some glitches. We prayed that God would work out an equitable, fair, or even better-than-fair solution to our little controversies.

(add links later)

Stargazing at last!
Around 9:30pm last night Cheni drove us in the van out to the plains, near a big green sign that told about Crazy Horse. There we saw stars for days! I recognized the Big Dipper, of course, and I may have seen Scorpio--something that looked like a pitchfork or three-pronged rake. Someone pointed out a satellite to Rachel; you can see satellites from there! Becky spotted this pink star and wondered what it was. A guy drove up and thought we may have been stranded, but we explained we were just stargazing. His name was Jerry and I believe he said he sold jewelry.

Before that, we had a visit from Will Peters, whose Lakota name means "Teacher of the Red Way". He spoke mainly about Christian and Lakota spirituality. He believes in Jesus, but doesn't like what many Christians do with his teachings. One thing I'm hearing a lot around here is that Lakota don't like to argue about God. He said many were going around here with broken spirits; they don't know who they are or where they came from. He also spoke of the need for men to honor a woman's dignity. He said that men's prayers are eloquent, but women's prayers are deep.

Much of what he said would be hard to communicate here without some serious digesting and absorption first.

We plan to visit the site of the Wounded Knee massacre this afternoon.

Will Peters
http://lists.critmass.org/pipermail/critmass/2001-March/000092.html
http://users.telenet.be/gohiyuhi/articles/art00091.htm