If anyone had told me in August that I’d be visiting Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in September, I would have said they were crazy. But here it is, October, and I’m looking back at September realizing, “Wow—that really happened!” And now, looking ahead to November, I find myself with a lot of things to reflect on for Native American Heritage Month.
I’ve been a supporter of Native Americans all my life, and in 2001 I went on an enlightening Indian Reservation tour, which included Pine Ridge Reservation, home to Lakota Sioux. For a while, I stayed in contact with some of the people I met there, but life happened, and I lost touch. In early 2023, Pine Ridge drew me back. When I finally returned, it was as a volunteer for the nonprofit One Spirit Oglala Lakota.
Right: Lynda King wraps herself up in a star quilt. (Courtesy photo)
I had learned about One Spirit via its website sometime in March and was impressed by what I read about how it was trying to help the Lakota people. I sent an email to the director, Jeri Baker, to learn about specific needs they might have. She called me immediately, and we talked for about half an hour. She asked, “How would you like to come to the Rez?” I asked, “What would I do there?” She said, “Anything! Follow me around, see what’s going on, what needs to be done!” She told me about some of the things One Spirit was doing on the Rez, as it’s commonly called, and emphasized that at the core of all of it was a desire to restore and preserve Lakota traditions. She said, “We can’t lose this culture.”
In my conversation with Jeri, she told me about Hampton Beach luncheonette owner Ute (Uta) Pineo, who had been collecting donated items to ship to the Rez by truck. I just had to go to New Hampshire to meet her, to find out what inspires someone to do something on that scale to help people she doesn’t know, so far away. She told me, “It’s easy. Everyone can do something!”
In May and June, I made trips to Hampton with contributions for the shipment, things that would have been too bulky for me to ship separately. It was during one of my trips there that I first met Jeri in person, who was there to not only meet with Ute, but also to meet with people from the Chamber of Commerce about their support of the Lakota youth summer employment program that had been started in Hampton.
Meanwhile, I learned about One Spirit’s support for kids on the Rez to attend Camp Marrowbone, a program in northern South Dakota about two hours from Pine Ridge, where kids enjoy a typical overnight summer camp experience, with the addition of Lakota traditions, games, skills, and more. But to go, they needed their own sleeping bags. I put out an appeal for sleeping bag donations on Bolton’s Community Facebook page and received a number of generous contributions. Then I went on the hunt for more, picking up a few at local thrift stores. Because One Spirit partners with the Give Back Box program, I was able to ship 20 sleeping bags in five large boxes, at a nominal cost of $30 per box.
In July, Jeri called me again, to ask if I could come out to the Rez for the grand opening of a basketball court at the Allen Youth Center. The court had been made possible by a generous donation from the PD Jackson Foundation, founded by former basketball star and coach Phil Jackson. Tempting, but me on Pine Ridge? I just didn’t see it happening. I hadn’t traveled anywhere in 10 years.
Jeri stayed in touch with me, and before her month-long trip to Europe in August, she asked me again about a Pine Ridge visit in September. I told her I’d think about it. I started trying to imagine what a trip to Pine Ridge would look like. Jeri came home at the end of August, and two days later called me, ready to help me make travel plans—for a two-week stay. (I’d never been anywhere for two weeks at a time.) I left for Pine Ridge at the crack of dawn on Tuesday, Sept. 12, with plans to return Sept. 26.
Eyes on the Rez
I joined nine other people—a five-person construction crew from Ohio, two people from New Jersey, one from New York, and one from Montana—who were there to work on projects that had been arranged for the week, and to review the status of some ongoing projects. We bunked at the Tatanka Lodge in Wounded Knee. The lodge had two floors, each with four bedrooms and a large kitchen-living area. We ate most meals there, except when our plans took us on road trips. I did a lot of dishwashing and drying, some cooking, and took a lot of notes. During my two-week stay, I had eyes on things I’d only read about. And those things look much different when you see them in person.
The Charging Buffalo Meathouse on the Pine Ridge Reservation. (Courtesy photo)
Pine Ridge Reservation is a place rich in history but plagued by social problems brought on by a convergence of circumstances that include an 80 to 90% unemployment rate, a per capita income of only $8,768, and a territory that is sparsely populated enough to limit the availability of and access to services and resources in ways that are unknown in most of modern society. I discovered that on the Rez, there is no such thing as a “quick trip” to anywhere, owing in large part to the vast distances between towns. Each of our trips to get groceries for the Tatanka Lodge involved a trip of 30 to 40 miles each way.
Inherent beauty everywhere
The Reservation has no public transportation, and there are no auto dealerships, auto repair shops, or service stations. It is not uncommon to see properties filled with a large collection of assorted cars in various states of disrepair. I learned that when vehicles on the Rez die, they are kept to be used for spare parts—either to fix other cars or to sell outright.
As you ride around the Rez, it can be easy to miss some of its inherent beauty. There are towns where many houses are boarded up. There are ramshackle trailers that look uninhabited—but they’re not. But the beauty is evident in vast expanses of plains, unbroken by signs of civilization, some filled with fields of sunflowers, prairie dog towns, or immense bales of hay, and speckled with cattle, horses, or wildlife, such as herds of antelope. Long ribbons of solitary roadways seem to go on forever, against a backdrop of the Black Hills.
The rolling hills extend to some of the small communities on the Rez, where houses are often tucked under groupings of trees. And although Badlands National Park is located just outside the Rez, the Badlands themselves also reach down well into the northwest corner of the Rez, providing breathtaking views at every turn.
The projects
Shortly after the arrival of the One Spirit team, the Ohio crew and One Spirit volunteers began work on building a new house for a Lakota elder who had been living in a dilapidated home near the Wounded Knee Memorial for many years. The project became more drawn out than expected because, once on site, the work crew realized they needed materials they didn’t have. That prompted an emergency run to the hardware store, in a truck hauling a flatbed trailer, for more Sheetrock, insulation, and assorted small parts. The closest large hardware store that stocked those supplies was about 100 miles away. I was invited to go along for company, so I can attest to just how long a trip it was: nearly nine hours, round-trip, including the time it took to find what we wanted, get it loaded and secured, and head back.
Another of the projects I saw in person was the Okini Market, the One Spirit thrift store run by a young Lakota woman and her daughters. The market is where donations such as clothes and household goods from One Spirit supporters are received, and on our tour I saw that one of the boxes in the filled-to-capacity warehouse section was actually one I had shipped that had not yet been opened. We learned from the store’s manager that the building had some issues that needed to be addressed, including a water leak, so that got added to the “to-do” list for an upcoming trip in November.
On the way back from our visit to the market, we stopped at a small local restaurant, Bette’s Diner, for some tacos. We met the owner, Bette, an unassuming woman who does all the cooking herself and prides herself on her secret fry bread recipe. We discovered she was a great-granddaughter of the famous Lakota Chief Black Elk, who was a second cousin of Crazy Horse and fought with him in the Battle of Little Bighorn.
Charging Buffalo Meathouse and a buffalo ranch
Touring the various One Spirit projects on the Rez, I was particularly taken with the Charging Buffalo Meathouse, which is a centerpiece project of One Spirit’s goal to bring back traditional foods to the Reservation. It is a meat-processing facility that processes not only buffalo but also wild game such as antelope and elk. The man who runs it, Bamm Brewer, is a Lakota who manages a herd of buffalo there, and he gave me a moving account of the spiritual connection between the buffalo and the Native American.
One Spirit is working on programs to improve the fertility of the plains in order to produce enough hay to sustain Bamm’s herd, as well as the tribal herd, through the winter, but until that happens, they must rely on buying hay to feed them. Meanwhile, One Spirit is working on expanding the capacity of the Buffalo Meathouse, with an eye toward having it become a competitive processing facility in the area for buffalo and other game.
A highlight of the trip for me was accompanying the One Spirit team on a trip to Ted Turner’s buffalo ranch in the northern part of the state, near Pierre. Because of its focus on the buffalo project, One Spirit had been given a grant to provide volunteers and staff with a private tour of Turner’s ranch, along with a presentation by the ranch managers on “regenerative grazing” techniques. Regenerative techniques offer alternatives to conventional grazing practices that can deplete and degrade the land over time, and include methods to help repair, rebuild, revitalize, and sustain the ecosystems that help support livestock.
It was about a three-hour trip to the ranch from Wounded Knee, through some of the most spectacularly beautiful country I’ve ever seen. And there waiting for us at the end of the trip was a pasture of rolling hills that seemed to go on forever—dotted with more than 2,000 buffalo. Several were grouped close to the fence near where we parked. For those of us whose only exposure to buffalo had been in tame places like small farms or zoos, it was breathtaking to see them in their natural habitat.
After our visit to the ranch, we learned that a film crew from PBS North in Montana would be arriving in Wounded Knee shortly to tour and film some of the One Spirit projects, including the house-raising, the Charging Buffalo Meathouse, the Okini Market, the Allen Youth Center (which I did not get to visit), regenerative gardens, the horse spirit camp, and a tourist rest stop being constructed near a home in Red Shirt, overlooking part of the Badlands. The crew was very impressed with what One Spirit has been doing. The resulting PBS program is planned for release sometime in January.
Connections against a sobering backdrop
One important part of the trip for me was the opportunity to meet in person people who live on Pine Ridge and talk to them about their lives there. There was a lot of stimulating conversation and a lot of laughter, but there was also a sobering backdrop of talk about “historical” and “generational” trauma that permeates the society today. I had several interesting conversations with a 40-year-old man who is, among other things, a spiritual leader for his family and community. He told me that, in his view, “People see us as a sideshow, so that’s how we tend to see ourselves.” He observed that “boarding school trauma taught it was sinful to be a Native. Traditional ways were taken away from the menfolk. We were taught, ‘You can’t be Indian.’” He said he believes that “historical trauma” continues among the Lakota people to this day, carried on in the genes.
Upon my return home, I was asked if I’d like to help out with writing the One Spirit newsletter and posts on the website. Of course I said yes. One of my first orders of business will be to draft a paragraph or two about Native American Heritage month. I’m in the process of collecting thoughts on this from some of the people I met during my trip. One person told me he thought it was “cool.” I asked him if Native American Heritage Month brought to mind any particular heroes.
“All heroes come to mind—war chiefs, elders, today’s leaders,” he said. “It’s good to be recognized but,” he added, “every day is Native American Day to me.”
Learn more at www.onespirit lakota.org/who-we-are.
Lynda King is a former editor of the Harvard Press.
