My Trip to the Rosebud Indian Reservation
The children I worked with during the summer of 2000 came from a place that has eighty to ninety percent alcoholism rate among the adult population. Half of the children born in their community suffer some form of fetal alcohol syndrome; many have learning or attention disorders. The ones that do make it through childhood have scars from auto accidents, abuse and neglect. The children often live not with their parents, but aunts, or grandparents. What terrible country do these children live in? The United States. What dark inner city? The sweeping planes of South Dakota.
Their situation is a living skeleton in America's closet. This summer I did an outreach to the Native American children living on a reservation. The children are Lakota Sioux from the Rosebud Indian Reservation. The very same piece of land that Dances With Wolves was filmed on. Their land is beautiful golden and green plains dotted with roaming cattle and wild sunflowers.
We came expecting the worst and found God's grace shining through. The reservation land is about 50 by 75 miles and its residents live in little communities scattered throughout. The town we visited was called Mission after the Jesuit mission built about a hundred years ago. Their situation was a little obscure, but according to one resident, all the businesses in town are owned by white people and the rows of box-like houses that the Indians lived in were built by the government. (The phrase Native-American seems to exist only in our schools and on television.) There is a huge Casino about twenty-minutes out of town. One child told me that his father lost $5,000 gambling.
Maybe so, maybe no, but none of that mattered when we saw the children for the first time. They came piling out of Grandma Theresa's tiny house like clowns out of a circus car. Grandma Teresa is actually a great-grandma who is a link to the old Lakota culture and to Jesus. She and her husband Grandpa Bob have taken in hundreds of kids over the years and host weeky bible studies on their front lawn. The children had names ending with Spotted Owl, Brown Bear, and Charging Elk, but their t-shirts displayed images of Barbie dolls and professional wrestlers. Their chatter was about Brittany Spears and Back Street Boys. A far cry from their own rich heritage that we had studied on before driving so many hours to get there.
The behavioral problems, stealing and short attention spans that we were warned about never materialized. The 6 to 12-year-olds wanted to be hugged, carried around and played with. They looked out for each other and shared everything they were given. One boy found four dollars on the ground and tried to return it. When we told him to keep it, he gave it all away. They were not old enough to share the distrust and bitterness of the older generation.
The behavioral problems, stealing and short attention spans that we were warned about never materialized. The 6 to 12-year-olds wanted to be hugged, carried around and played with. They looked out for each other and shared everything they were given. One boy found four dollars on the ground and tried to return it. When we told him to keep it, he gave it all away. They were not old enough to share the distrust and bitterness of the older generation.
We had come to take the children on a two-day camping trip to a park just over the border in Valentine, Nebraska. Once we got past the irony of taking Indians camping, we had a great time. None of them had ever been camping before, so we brought the sleeping bags and tents. The temperature was hot and humid compared with our temperate weather here in the Northwest. Relief came in the clouds. The thunderstorms blew in every night and cooled the evening air and drove away the mosquitoes.
