South Dakota

On May 1, 2009, I along with nine other CSU students, and two graduate students went up to South Dakota to work on an Indian Reservation for a few days. We went up there with Ray who works at CSU as the ropes course director and his son Makabe who is six. We left at about 9:30am and took the long trek up to South Dakota stopping at a few places to get gas, and food. Many of these places were in very small towns, which only had one place to get any type of food, which included getting groceries. In one town, we were divided up into teams to get food and my team was in charge of the main course, and was given only $20, which we found very difficult. We found that we would only be able to buy two packs of meat (because they ended up being half off), two loafs of bread (to feed 14 people), a pack of cheese (which happened to also be on sale), and some peanut butter and jelly for the vegetarians. We realized if a family was on a fixed income sort of like we were, they really would be hurting to get nutritious food because the prices were expensive because they were in the middle of no where and they were the only store there so they could charge whatever they wanted. Which I personally found disconcerting because it seems as though they are cheating out the customers even though most likely they aren’t trying to, but they too have to have to provide for their families

            We then headed back to the road to get to South Dakota. We arrived there 8 hours later, which was two hours later then expected, but it was alright. We met Ed Iron Cloud whom Ray has worked with many times before. He took us up to his land where we encountered dirt roads. I was very scared of these roads because we were in a twelve-passenger van, which was not meant for these roads at all. We started the trek up the roads where we encountered some very deep crevasses in the road, where the van almost got stuck and on a few of them, the van almost tipped because we wanted it to go one way and it wanted to go another. After about 45 minutes, we finally made it to the campsite. This site was also the same spot that the Indians used for the dances and other special occasions. We then set up our tents and began to have dinner. At which point Ed told us some things about the reservation. He then had to leave because he had to go pick up the log cutter and had to get off the roads before they turned into mud as it started to rain.

            That night we stayed up a little longer and talked about what me might be doing the next day. We were not too sure, other then cutting up logs to be used for an unknown project. We then headed to bed, and it was a very long and cold night. A few people could not get to sleep because it was so cold, I personally just went to the bottom of my sleeping back and slept there until morning. We woke the following morning about 8am and had to be ready to go at 9am. We were ready to go, but Ed still had not arrived, so we played ultimate beach ball, which was just like ultimate Frisbee, but with a beach ball. We had a wonderful time doing that even though there were many close encounters to bison poop. The bison are also on this reservation, so we had to be careful and be ready to run if something became wrong and dangerous, although we were told that rarely happened.

            We finally called Ed around 11am and we decided we would just meet him down at the place he wanted us to cut the logs. We got there to find him along with one of his brothers and the log cutter. This log cutter was very large and they could not get it to level out on the ground, and it took about 45 minutes to get it right. We then dragged the logs from the top of the hill area to the bottom and loaded it on the cutter. Shortly into the cut, the cutter decided not to work properly and continuously broke for no reason. We kept messing with this for a few hours, and then finally Ed asked a few of us if we could go down the road to a friends’ ranch and pick up a new blade. We agreed, although we felt awkward because we didn’t know this person, and they had no idea who we were. One thing I realized while we were driving through town was that they had no street signs and just used landmarks to get to places. I sort of understand this because, as a smaller tight knit community almost everyone knows where everyone else lives especially if you have kids in school.

            After we go the blade and put it in the machine, it began to work much better. We decided to call it quits around 6pm, when we realized all day we had cut 4 different logs, and only got 10 pieces of useable pieces out to them. This really was a powerful moment for me because, there were fourteen of us, and that was all we cut in about a 6-hour time spot. Without us, there only would have been Ed and his two brothers if they were available. Things like that, we do not think too much about here because they aren’t too obvious and we can ask so many people to help us and our technology is much newer and user friendly as compared to theirs. After we did this, we headed over to the White River and looked at that and the badlands. We then went to the Children’s’ community center for a dinner that Ed Iron Cloud’s sister prepared for us. It was a delicious dinner with beef stew, a berry type dessert and fried bread. We then talked to Ed about the reservation and his beliefs of the system. He stated that the Pine Ridge Reservation (different from the Pine Ridge town) was the poorest community in the United States, making only about $2000 a year. I thought that was very ridiculous, because there are many multi-millionaires out there, but here in this reservation, where we as immigrants too their land, are only making $2000 a year to support a family. It did not seem to poor there, but it was still noticeable with some houses that were falling apart and the trash all over the reservation.

            Ed also stated that he is disappointed that the natural language of Lakota is dwindling and he wishes more people were able to communicate through that. He states since it is no longer used a lot, he no longer is fluent however; his cousin and brother are, which he is very envious about. After it began to get dark, we headed back to the reservation for some s’mores, more talking with Ed and his cousin, and then off to bed. We woke up about the same time, and hung out packing up our belongings and packing the van waiting for Ed to come back, but as 11am approached he still was not there, so we got in the van, and started to head out because we had to get back to CSU by 6pm. On our way out, we passed Ed, so we stopped and got out to say goodbye. He was extremely grateful for us being there and the article we read in class “Helping, Fixing, Serving” really played a role in my thinking about how this opportunity went. I was so glad to be given the opportunity to go to South Dakota with a great group of people and learn so much about the Indian natives in this community. I was also glad to know that Ed really did enjoy us going out there and allowed us to be part of his community for a short time and help him out as much as we could. A few of us plan to go back there for a longer period of time very soon.