Our first stop of the day was the SuAnne Big Crow Boys and Girls Club where we delivered approximately 90 pounds of organic beef from David Johnson, the farmer with whom we spent Friday evening. After we delivered the meat, the club’s staff offered to give us a tour of their facility. The woman who gave us a tour of the Club said, “I think this (club) is a bright spot on the reservation,” and mentioned how much her son enjoyed it. Once we saw their beautiful facility, we all agreed with her. Kids and teenagers from all over the reservation can enjoy using a pool, a gym, a workout room, computers, an arts and crafts room, a small library, a 1950s themed restaurant, and a recreation room. An area just for teens has a dark room for developing photos and a room with musical instruments.
The building is dedicated to SuAnne Big Crow, a girl from the reservation known for her great athletic abilities as well as her leadership in helping reservation youth stay away from drugs and alcohol. She died in a car accident in 1992, and since then her family has carried on her legacy by providing reservation youth with a safe place to hangout -- the Boys and Girls Club. A grant from the Bill Clinton administration provided the funding for constructing the building.
After the Boys and Girls Club, we visited the Red Cloud Indian School. We met with Peter Hill, a Carleton alum who has taught social science at the school for the past 4 years. The Red Cloud School is a private, Jesuit high school. Originally, it was a boarding school, but Peter Hill said, “It’s an entirely different institution now.” According to Hill, the school was transformed during the 1970s. The combined influence of priests with more modern beliefs and pressure from the reservation community caused to school recognize and celebrate Lakota culture. Nonetheless, Hill pointed out, “That’s part of the history of the school, and it needs to be acknowledged.” As we learned in White Earth and here at Pine Ridge, boarding school days have left a lasting influence on Native American culture.
Red Cloud Indian School requires all students to Lakota culture and Native American issues. Students are not required to study the Lakota language, but Peter Hill wants to change this. He has been studying the language since he moved to the reservation. Although he estimates that half of the reservation’s population is under 19, Hill said, “You’d be hard pressed to find a few dozen [young people] that speak the language fluently.” In the past decade or so reservation youth have taken a renewed interest in Lakota spirituality, and Hill hopes that in the future they will take more interest in speaking the language.
Our conversation with Peter ended as students started to file into his room for their geography class. We headed over the school’s Heritage Center, which is housed in the original boarding school building. The Center houses a collection of Native American artwork dating from the 1870s to the 21st century. We saw quilled and beaded moccasins, baby carriers, shirts, and gowns as well as paintings, graphics, and sculptures. One of the most interesting exhibits was a replica of a 1940s Red Cloud School classroom.
That evening, we visited Alex White Plume, the Vice President of the reservation’s tribal government and a friend of Winona La Duke. He talked to us about his industrial hemp project and his efforts to lead his family and nation back to the traditional Lakota ways.
White Plume told us, “[after I retired], I made a vow to pull my family together.” Family is highly valued by the Lakota people. He wanted to find a way for his entire family to live off their land. He had been ranching buffalo since 1983, but in 1995, the family met and decided they needed to farm some sort of crop. They looked into corn, wheat, and hay but eventually decided that industrial hemp would be the most profitable. Although the family first planted hemp in 1998, they did not have a successful crop until 2000. In the summer of 2000, their plants grew 22 feet tall and the family was expecting a good harvest. Then, on August 24, the FBI and the Department of Agriculture raided their field. Since industrial hemp and marijuana are identical except for the fact the industrial hemp does not produce the drug THC, its production is restricted. White Plume is currently fighting in court for the right to grow industrial hemp. He feels that industrial hemp is a material with a lot of potential, and that this court battle is ultimately a way to advance the sovereignty of the Lakota people.
White Plume spoke to us about the difficulty of living in between the world of American culture and the world of the Lakota. He said that currently, Lakota people are constantly moving back and forth between these two worlds, although people like him and his family are trying to live in the Lakota world as much as they can. Supporting his family by living off the land is one way he tries to return to the traditional way. For example, the only meat the family eats is buffalo meat from their herd, and many of the building materials for his house came from his land. As Vice President of the tribal government, he hopes to restructure the reservation’s government and economy so that they are based around family clans, the traditional Lakota structure. He thinks that this will reflect Lakota values and because of this, “families will pull together for [economic] development.” Individuals, he said, will work harder for the advancement of their family than they would for themselves.
Although White Plume wants to return to the traditional ways of the Lakota, he also recognizes a need for culture and spirituality to adjust to changing times. He told us that as a Lakota person, he believes that every 200 years or so Earth shifts and the Lakota people must adjusts themselves so that they can live easily and naturally on Earth. He hopes that studying the old, traditional ways will guide the Lakota people to an understanding of how to reform their society so that it is in-tune with their past and present reality. Similarly, he encouraged us to study our heritage so that our past can guide us as we search for our paths in life.
One of the changes White Plume wants to see is forgiveness between white people and Lakota people. “Someday we need to come to impasse and make that forgiveness happen,” he told us. He feels that in order to solve the societal and environmental problems of the reservation and the world in general, indigenous people and young people like us need to become allies.
Alex White Plume’s words provided plenty of fodder for our thoughts. Dinner was quiet as we mulled over our experiences of the day, but latter that evening we enjoyed chatting and sharing jokes and ghost stories with Mark Tilsen, one of our hosts.
