Eagle Butte Wrap up!

I'm now back at Rice and...dang that trip was amazing!

Later on Friday night we went to Dairy Queen to talk to the staff and long term volunteers about what we thought went well and what wasn't so great about the week. We voiced our concerns about how we thought the structure of the program and the discipline at The Main could be improved. While Alex (the volunteer coordinator) and the long term volunteers were pretty defensive at first, the dialogue eventually improved (mostly after we returned to our living quarters and talked to them there instead of at DQ) and some agreements were reached. Alex realized that she should have been more clear about how much we were able to discipline the kids, and that the short term volunteers have just as much of a right to send kids home as anyone else, though it still makes it hard to be willing to do that when we've only spent a couple days with them. Hopefully our comments were helpful.

Yesterday was filled with a lot of travel along with visits to Mt Rushmore and Crazy Horse. Liz was really upset about us going to Mt Rushmore and none of us were quite sure why at first. She explained briefly before we got there, and went into more detail after we had left. Apparently the sculpting of Mt Rushmore was a huge slap in the face to the Lakota people for a number of reasons. First, it defiled the Black Hills, which are sacred grounds for the Lakota people and are said to be the birthplace of creation. Not only did the US government desecrate the Black Hills, but they did it by sculpting the faces of US leaders who oppressed Native Americans while they were in power. According to Liz, even Abe Lincoln, right after freeing blacks from slavery, encouraged the elimination of Native Americans. Throughout American history the US government has been doing things to oppress and kill American Indians, and all of the presidents on Mt Rushmore were fine with letting that happen or even encouraging it during their presidency. Absolutely horrible! All four of them were great leaders, don't get me wrong, but they did do some horrible things too.

I think the most imporant thing I got out of the trip is that the Native Americans are a very oppressed people. When people talk about poor minorities and impoverished communities, they usually think of hispanics and blacks in urban areas. They've got it way better than the Native Americans living on the reservations do, or at least the ones in the community that we worked in, which is definitely one of the worst ones in the country, which is why we went there. They need help, and that help isn't going to come from the government, or even from volunteers like us. They need an internal catalyst to start change there to improve their community.
I also realized that a problem I've been having this semester isn't going to be resolved any time soon, and I have no idea what I can really do about it. It's not something I want to discuss a lot on this blog, but I'm going to keep praying about it.

I'm so thankful for the friendships that were formed on the trip. It was an amazing experience for all of us. The food that was prepared by different pairs of people each night was fantastic, the kids were awesome to hang out with, the other volunteers were awesome for the most part, and I really hope the Cheyenne River Youth Project continues its amazing work!