Tuesday, March 22, 2005
My Trip to the Reservation
*I know many of you have been curious, so hirr it is*Wow. I can’t think of a better word than that. It’s hard to describe this place when once you get over the initial shock of it. It’s not quite what I expected, but definitely more than I deserved and infinitely more than I could have wanted to get out of my spring break.At first glance, the Pine Ridge elementary school and dormitory, which is home to many of the young girls and boys, is a strange place. It’s not bad. I thought the campus would consist of dilapidated schools and rusted playground equipment.In all honesty, the buildings aren’t in terrible shape. The quality of the school building is comparable to the older parts of Love Library or L.W. Chase Hall.Closer inspection of the students of the high school and (to a lesser extent) grade school it appears as though the Native American students of the Pine Ridge are losing or about to lose their proud heritage.The names of Sitting Bull and Red Cloud seem to have disappeared and have been replaced by Usher and Snoop Dog.I asked a little girl named Ida if she could tell me who Crazy Horse was and she only knew him as “a mountain somewhere.”The natives themselves are a strange group of people. There seems to be no single mark or characteristic of the entire populace. Some of the students look black; others look Asian or Latino and a few others appear to be white.The culture here isn’t what I expected. Since the school is basically a small town of teenagers with little adult supervision, the typical years of teenage rebellion are nearly unchecked, and the students become bitter at their lot in life, and it seems inevitable that many will go down the same road as their parents.Class attendance is a problem, keeping kids in school all four years is another, and yet another problem is teen pregnancy. According to several of the administrators and teachers at the school said 80 percent of the girls on the reservation have or will have a child before graduation.The students have taken the ‘gangsta’ culture of the blacks and made it their own and come to identify with it. Across the campus there is graffiti which screams the black influence.Some of the graffiti is symbols or designs, others are direct attacks on the faculty, and still others proclaim greatness or elitism. Two examples are the building which had “SK8-TR 4 LIFE BI-ATCH” and the dormitory, which had “NATIVE’S ONLY” poorly scribbled on it.I can’t say I blame them for being angry. There can’t be much hope around here. One of the students on the trip with me said she found the place where they party at. Beer cans, condoms, cigarette butts and drug residue there and everyday there is new paraphernalia.Around the school there are home made signs proclaiming the importance of being drug free and the dangers of alcohol, but from the look of the students smoking cigarettes in between classes, it isn’t working.As sad as my second thoughts about the school were, upon even closer inspection, the true sorrow of the school crept out of the wood work.One day we played with six, seven and eight-year-olds I didn’t do anything special. Just gave them shoulder rides and piggy-back rides and I realized how bad they had it.These children are completely on there own. They may have families out there somewhere, but they see them at most twice a week. This means children a third of my age have all the responsibilities I do. They have to clean up after themselves, bathe and relate to others and make friends alone.Fortunately for them, there is one native custom that is still very strong, the value of family. These children become sisters to each other, the elders or matrons become mass mothers to all the little girls. As they get older and progress through the system, the older kids still keep an eye out for the younger. As far as I can tell, this is the only support system at the school.The matron can’t really afford to give out individualized attention to the girls, so they tend to cling to anybody who shows them any kind of attention. As I played with the young ladies, they fell in love with me.Many referred to me as “dad” and others were constantly shouting for my attention shouting for my attention. One little girl even gave me a note saying “I Love you.”Did I change any of there lives? I doubt it. By this point I’m sure I’m nothing more than a faded memory to most of them. I can take some consolation in knowing that at least for two days they smiled more than they probably would all year.However, those two days on the reservation changed me. I saw a side of humanity usually obscured at the university. Was it heartbreaking? Goddamn right it was. Would I do it all again? A quote form a little girl named Tore (pronounced Tory) said it best:“Dan, please come back again.”How could I disappoint that?
posted by Dan # 9:01 AM 8 comments