The thick insulated walls of the Tilsen house guarded the heat of the downstairs woodstove last night. We arose and cooked a breakfast of scrambled eggs as the sun shone on the brown short grass prairie hills outside. It was phenomenally warm outside and we all ventured out in the gentle air. I took off on a run down through a gulley and then up over the surrounding hills. Other group members walked out over the expansive rolling hills behind the house where the only signs of human presence are the occasional barbed wire fence and a couple of distant cows.
When we came back inside, Mark Tilsen spoke with us for over an hour while he polished his boots for work later that day. Mark worked on Pine Ridge to get Tom Daschle re-elected: “I never worked so hard on something that utterly failed.” Mark pointed out that the Democrats only care about the Reservation during election season: “They try to cram 4 years of political grassroots organizing into 3 weeks. Republicans and Democrats don’t really care about us. I mean, returning stolen land? That’s political suicide out here.” Mark works in the local jail but treats people with respect. He rebels in subtle ways, like sewing the Lakota Nation flag over the heart of his uniform where the US flag is supposed to go.
Much of Pine of Ridge falls in Shannon County that has recently moved from the first to the sixth poorest in the US. We asked Mark about military recruiting on Pine Ridge and he replied, “Just in the schools. You can’t really blame [the students who join] because it’s a good job, good money. It gives native men and women a chance to have a warrior profession. All you can do is hope they get back in one piece and with their sanity. I wish we had an alternative to the military out here. People associated discipline with being hit by priests and nuns.” Mark explained the reference to the abusive boarding schools Indians were forced to attend until the 1970s. He continued, “If you gave these people a way to fight and live for their own community, I think they’d have more pride in their nation. Sometimes it’s easier to go off and fight a clearly defined enemy than to change yourself.”
Nick and Kim Tilsen joined the conversation. They are both in their early 20s and their activism for their people has taken them all over country. Kim managed the Indigo Girls for several years, then managed The Lounge--a club in Minneapolis--and has returned to Pine Ridge to work as a small business success coach and accounting advisor. Her services are free. “I meet with them and assess them and within 5 minutes I can tell what’s wrong with their business. It was hard, hard, hard when I first started. I looked different,” she said, referring to her urban styled clothes. “I talk different but when I meet with my clients they say nobody has ever asked them how their business is going. What makes you love what you do? What makes your passion?” The non-profit’s name is Wawokiwe, which means ‘to give something without expectation of anything in return.’ “The problem is that there’s no infrastructure here,” Kim said referring to a grocery store that wanted to open up but had no access to water. Kim has kept books for businesses since she was fourteen. She explained that Indian students never get financial training in school. Kim has worked with a class and had them all open checking and savings accounts to practice for later.
We asked if these new micro-enterprise ventures were connected with the restoration of Lakota culture and the response was mixed. Mark explained that the major economic lynchpin of Lakota life was the buffalo. “In the past thirty years native populations in the US have doubled and so have the buffalo. I like to think that they’re connected.” Mark took us to “Common Cents” country store to buy some potatoes and smore fixings for dinner. Then we drove out to a remote plateau where they hold the Sun Dance every June. We piled out of the van onto the windy bluff and gazed at an enormous cottonwood tree bedecked in tattered flags of all colors. The tree looked like a mighty sunburst amidst a brown and dry landscape. The tree has big ropes dangling down from it where Sun Dancers pierce their backs and swing until the piercing branch breaks. Mark explained that this ceremony (among other things) symbolizes taking on the pains of those who suffer. Surrounding the beautiful tree is a circular ring of logs tied together like a trellace. The symmetry of this place, against the backdrop of jagged windy canyons and spear-like rock outcroppings of the badlands put us all in awe.
Below the Sun Dance area is a sweat lodge by a running creek and a steep canyon wall. We saw two bald eagles speeding along the cliff sides. The sweat lodge’s door faces West because it is the lodge of a dream visioner. Outside the door is an alter with a buffalo skull and offerings. Mark explained that a big fire heats rocks, which are brought inside; water is poured on them to produce the steam of the sweat lodge. Men and women both participate in this ceremony, which used to be only male, like Sun Dance. They hold two sweat ceremonies every week at this one lodge on Pine Ridge.
Back at the house, we unpacked ten pounds of organic ground beef that David Johnson had bestowed upon us in addition to his eighty pounds donation to the Sue Anne Big Crow Boys and Girls Club. We each decided to try to make our burger patty as our mother would’ve made it. We grilled up eighteen mismatched burgers; fried potatoes; made salad; and chowed down as we perched in various places around the small dining area. We convinced Kim to stay for smores. Six year old Brisa and Nick went outside a dug a fire hole to mitigate the wind gusts. Kim told us how Pine Ridge formed the first Native American chamber of commerce three years ago which works to promote small businesses on Pine Ridge. The Tilsen kids’ father helped start the Lakota Fund, the first and only Native American CDFI (loan fund). This fund has been fully tapped. They’re hoping for a 2 million dollar kellog grant to replenish the fund to help entrepreneurs on Pine Ridge. The President of the World Bank is coming to Pine Ridge in April, and Kim is planning the event as a fundraiser for the Lakota Fund. Kim hopes this will generate lots of press for Pine Ridge and the efforts underway here.
Our conversation turned to lighter subjects as we gobbled up the smores and more of the amazing Panamanian coffee was brewed. We shared ghost stories as the wind whistled outside in the dark hilltops. Nick and the other Pine Ridge folk shared us genuine encounters with ghosts. Their friend Virgil laughed, “There’s more ghosts here than people.” Chief Bigfoot and his band surrendered less than half a mile away and their doomed band of Minneconjou Indians traveled over this ground before US cavalry slaughtered them at Wounded Knee in 1890. Nick is quite the storyteller. He acted out how he conspired to freak some of his friends out one night. “It was actually kinda too far because one guy blacked out from fear.”
