On our trip to Pine Ridge, the overarching lesson I learned was that land gives and sustains life. While in South Dakota, I saw that the Lakota have a relationship to land that acknowledges this.
Growing up, I did not have that experience or relationship to land; land was pretty—mountains, lakes, oceans— but I didn’t understand the feeling that Lakota people have historically had about the land or that we should understand land as a source of sustenance. The trip really opened my eyes to this.
But that’s not the only thing the trip showed me. Prior to the class, I had read about broken treaties, boarding schools, bribes given by the US government for the Black Hills, and the current state of the res (poverty and addiction), but I never got the truth or what really happened like I did when I was there— a firsthand experience that showed me the effects of structural racism, violence, and cultural erasure.
For example, we read about the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 —the treaty that federally protected the Black Hills to the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Lakota tribes— prior to coming, but reading about it paled in comparison to learning from the tribe’s venerable elders about the treat and its residual effects on them and their families. Not surprisingly, the treaty was broken. Whites heard word about gold in the hills, inspiring waves of whites to illegally storm onto this sacred, holy land, even though the treaty promised that this land would belong to the tribes forever.
Furthermore, as white people rushed into the land, they brought their dominant culture. “Culturing” of indigenous people has an ugly history in North America: Native children were taken from their homes, moved to one of 367 official boarding schools, and forcefully coerced (verbal, emotional, physical abuse) into assimilating into white society; this meant speaking only English, adopting Christianity, and cutting long hair. Ronny Poor Bear, a resident of Pine Ridge – and now a friend because or our time together during the trip – told us about his experience in a boarding school and how callous and abusive the teachers were. Quentin Red Bear, his relative, told similar stories and teared up when talking about his grandparents who had it significantly worse than he, his parents, and his friends or relatives did. This trauma was heavy—Quentin took a few moments to finish his sentences as the generations of abuse choked him up.
This imposed white hegemony forced indigenous people across the world to change their relationships with themselves, their communities, and ultimately to their land. As we learned, the Lakota and many other tribes have somehow kept that relationship alive. I loved hearing from the elders that after the federal government offered reparations of $100 million dollars in 1980, the Lakota people refused it. As Ronny, Jim, and our other Pine Ridge friends echoed the words of their ancestors: The land is not for sale. This represents the differences in their way of life: the Western, exploitative capitalistic mindset and relationship to land with the contrasting harmony with which Lakota people have with the land, the land that gives them life (or used to, before white people came).
I encourage other students to participate in this program because while in South Dakota, we were engaged in a community-living style that feels very healing and restorative from the go-go-go mindset we come from. From gardening projects, digging wells, planting trees, and installing solar panels, it’s nice to see the fruits of your labor benefit something else greater than yourself. This work also showed me more about how I and the Lakota relate to land the resources that nature has given us.
Keeping in mind that this is just a fraction of what life used to be for the Lakota people, students can take these lessons and values about land, community, and the people they meet on the Pine Ridge reservation back home and apply them to their own lives, whether they’re thinking about their relationship to land or other issues. They can also educate others and advocate for people they met during the trip.
On top of these new experiences, I’ll add that being with the Cross family – the primary family who hosted us – was the best hospitality I’ve ever experienced. We were instantly treated like family, making such a personal experience even more profound. We shared great connections, making saying goodbye difficult. Fortunately, in Lakota language there is no word for “goodbye.” Instead, they leave one another by using a word for “later”: Tókša. This bodes very well for me, and my classmates amazing communal experience invites us to go back to Pine Ridge.
