Back to the Rez : Tom McDermott

 

I wrote this article four years ago for my Peace Corps alumni group, following a trip my wife, Viviane, and I made that year in the north central part of the US. The trip gave me the opportunity to revisit an Ogalala Sioux community in South Dakota that served as one of our Peace Corps training locations in the summer of 1966. The time we spent there in 1966 made a deep impression on all of us young (PCVs) - grinding poverty, lack of basic services, and racial tensions with 'white' neighbors. Visiting 52 years later I found the same poverty, worsened in part by drugs and alcohol. But I also found refreshing energy for change among the community and around local NGOs like the Cheyenne River Youth Project.

  Back to the Rez

“Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles of racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its Indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “ Why We Can’t Wait”, 1963

High on my bucket list has long been a return visit to the Sioux reservation in South Dakota where the Peace Corps sent us for training in 1966.   Somehow those green but eerily barren hills stuck deeper in my subconscious than all the weeks we spent on the farm or in the classrooms of Milwaukee or Madison.

Yet despite our many road trips north, east and west from Santa Fe, South Dakota was always too far off the route. For most of the year it was too cold to warrant a comfortable visit. In the end it took me 51 years after our PCV training to finally get to the lands of the Lakota Sioux.

For those unfamiliar with the term, “the Rez” is what many native Americans call “the reservations” to which their ancestors were confined over a century ago as land hungry European settlers gobbled up the best lands and water. By the time the natives reached the reservations, their numbers had already been decimated through years of wars with the US Army and the machinations of white settlers and their allies in Congress. In the years since then many native Americans chose to move off the reservations and blend into the ‘white’ population. Those who remain have to varying degrees maintained their culture, language and religion. Yet they remain in most ways wards of the US Government with poor access to education, health care, and jobs.

Stories we tell ourselves

I grew up in the white suburbs of Pittsburgh. Like most of my generation I acquired a slightly romantic view of the American Indian - the bedtime stories, the arrowheads collected on hikes, the version of ‘history’ we were taught in school, Thanksgiving with the settlers, Custer and Little Bighorn, John Wayne and all those westerns. That romantic view eventually faded into acceptance that a terrible tragedy had been inflicted on the native peoples of America. Yet I believed that the tragedy was due to the sins of our forefathers, not our sin. A tragedy of our past, not our present.

Through undergrad days I tutored in Harlem, marched for civil rights, took part in the anti-war demonstrations of the mid-1960’s . When I thought of poverty, racism and racial injustice it was in ‘ black / white ‘ terms. I was vaguely aware of the ‘ brown / white ‘ issues facing the Latino population, and the ‘poor white´ issues of Appalachia, but those problems seemed far away. Totally missing in my perspective was even an inkling of the ‘red / white ‘ story which underlies not just our past, but our present.

Back in ‘67 I recall wondering why in the world the Peace Corps would send trainees for India to spend time with American Indians. Had someone in D.C. mixed up India with American Indians? Suddenly instead of India, we were in the midst of an America I didn’t know existed, a ‘red’ America, a starkly poor ‘ red ‘ America. Only many years later did I realize that this short piece of our training was no mistake. If nothing else, it helped prepare us to confront the limits of what we knew about ourselves, who we are and how we got here.

Once we got to India, my news of home continued to be of civil rights struggles, and Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam. After India came all those years when I was living and working overseas for NGOs and UNICEF in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. When AIM confronted the FBI and occupied Wounded Knee in 1973 I was deep in my work in post-war Bangladesh. The news of that struggle - so close to where we had camped just six years earlier - hardly registered with me. America’s race issues remained for me a ‘ black / white ‘ story only. No other color combinations existed.

After retiring from the UN in 2007 and choosing to live in New Mexico, my wife, Viviane, and I started to do volunteer work with Santa Fe’s council on international relations, which every week or so hosts groups of foreign visitors to the US sent by the State Department. In this role we quickly got used to shepherding visitors to the many Native American pueblos around Santa Fe. These tours usually involved meetings with tribal authorities, police, and local voluntary agencies. From those we met and what we read, we learned of the many tragedies the pueblos faced under first Spanish, then Mexican, and finally American colonial rule, and we heard in detail the continuing problems the pueblos still face with federal, state and local governments.

Yet learning the experience of the Pueblo peoples of the Southwest in no way prepares one for the situation of the Sioux of the Great Plains. Our visit to the Reservation lasted only a few brief hours, and what we actually saw was light and somewhat hopeful - a youth project doing good work for kids. It was the reading before and after our visit that gave us the true picture of how bad things have gotten there, much worse than the situation when we trained there. The little we saw during our brief visit didn’t confirm that gloomy picture, but it also did nothing to refute it.

Across South Dakota

Mid-May this year was cold and wet for the Dakotas, with temperatures in the 30’s - quite a contrast from sunny Santa Fe. It had snowed in the Dakotas the week before we arrived. The Cheyenne River Reservation lies on the border between North and South Dakota and is bisected by the Missouri River. You may have heard of the longstanding dispute over the oil pipeline built in April 2017 further north on the Missouri near another Sioux Reservation, Standing Rock. The impacts of any oil spills in the river could severely impact both reservations. As a result, many of the Indian reservations were joined by hundreds of other environmental activists over several years in futile attempts to block construction.

The population of the Cheyenne River Reservation is now a little under 8,500, living on roughly 4,300 square miles along the left bank of the Missouri River. Advance reading about recent developments is scarce and what we could find was thoroughly depressing. Meth use has become an enormous problem, far bigger problem even than alcohol. Obesity and diabetes are at crisis levels. Unemployment, suicide, and out-migration are crises without any apparent solutions. See for example this 2009 CNN article on life in Cherry Creek.

Click here for the article in CNN.

Unemployment stands at 88 percent of the tribe. One hundred percent of the population are listed as living below the poverty line.

Life for the kids growing up on the Rez is particularly dismal. Youth despondency and suicide are widespread, especially given the fact of so many families shattered by drugs and alcohol. The numbers are staggering, especially when you consider the already small size of the population. The last figures I could find are from 2003, when suicides were at a rate of roughly 5 per week.

Good spot for target practice from trucks rushing by

Native Youth Killing Themselves - ABC News 

Native Americans Facing Highest Suicide Rates - Lakota People's Law Project

Julie Garreau, Director CRYP

The second of the two articles linked above quotes Julie Garreau, who heads the CRYP youth organization we visited at the tribal headquarters in Eagle Butte. More about CRYP follows below.

The Road to Cherry Creek

Thanks largely to the bad weather, we arrived on the Cheyenne River Reservation two days later than planned, on a Sunday, and Mother's Day at that. The road into Cherry Creek had been heavily damaged and flooded in places. Local people told us to avoid the road unless we had a truck or a 4-wheel drive vehicle.

In addition, we faced the problem of turning up without knowing anyone, a name or a face. I very much doubted that 51 years later anyone there was likely to remember the young folks who camped there so long ago. On the other hand, maybe they DID remember us all too well and therefore still be looking for one or more of us !!

Eagle Butte and the CRYP

So instead of Cherry Creek, we settled on a visit to the tribal headquarters in Eagle Butte (population 2,418). Eagle Butte is situated roughly midway between Bullhead to the north and Cherry Creek to the south. At Eagle Butte I at least knew a few names and a group to visit. Information about the Cheyenne River Youth Project (CRYP) was easy to find thanks to its strong presence on the web. The fact that both Viviane and I have worked with youth programs overseas gave us an excuse to write in advance asking to visit.

The name, Cheyenne River Youth Project, suggests that the project serves the whole of the reservation. However, due to the distances involved, and the lack of public transport, CRYP serves mainly the population living in or near Eagle Butte. (Yes, they also know that the initials have the unfortunate downside of sounding like ‘creep’, but a name is more than an acronym.)

Having spent much of my career dealing with voluntary organizations (NGOs) and those who run them, I know that longevity tells a lot. Most groups fade after a few years, dying off from lack of donations, weak financial management, weak leadership. Many others implode due to personality disputes.

In this regard CRYP is an exception. Now in its 31st year, the organization boasts steady donations and strong leadership, as well as a steady flow of volunteers (both groups and individuals). Its head, Julie Garreau is a full member of the tribe and has previous experience on the tribal council. She is also the sort of hard-headed, no nonsense sort of person who ensures the project keeps on mission and within budget.

  

If you read no further or click on no other links in this report, click on this one telling the story of one Lakota girl, Genevieve Iron Lightning.

Lakota in America - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie4m9LAVDGw

CRYP’s activities are simple - an after school program for children ages 4 to 12, teen programs in employment skills, agriculture and art. In addition, they run a cafe and gift shop offering some limited employment for teens. Particularly popular is “Midnight Hoops”, a Friday and Saturday nights basketball and music program designed to give teenagers something other than drugs and booze to do on those late nights.

CRYP partners with Red Can to run an innovative graffiti art program. Red Can is an international association of graffiti artists who meet and ‘jam’ every summer on the Cheyenne River Reservation to practice their work and teach art to teens. Many otherwise drab buildings around Eagle Butte have come alive with their art (they paint over and start again fresh each year).

Arriving two days later than planned, Viviane and I had missed seeing the activities for kids, but instead found ourselves in the midst of a Mother’s Day program. We were immediately put to work moving tables and chairs. Two Lakota comedians had been recruited for a big community show. We chatted with both, but with a 4-hour drive still ahead of us, didn’t stay for the jokes - though likely we provided some material for the comedians to add to their routines. We also had to skip the lunch that followed. Thanks to Viviane’s foresight, we had brought with us two fruit pies to add to the lunch.

If you are interested to learn more about CRYP and their work, you can find them on the web at
https://lakotayouth.org/ and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/LakotaYouth/

The Cheyenne River downstream from Cherry Creek

Finally

One brief interlude from 1966 that sticks in my memory - two of us were walking back to Cherry Creek from somewhere. A white rancher offered a ride in his truck. “Peace Corps?“, he asked. “What are you guys doing out here?”. Told that we were training to go to India, he said, “India? “Damn ! I hope them Indians are better than the’ Injns’ we got around here. Useless drunkards and beggars, living off us taxpayers.”

It was easy enough to chuckle later at that kind of overt racism. Yet it hid another more pernicious racism - the racism of the rest of us in comfortable modern white society - a racism that lives in the myths we tell our children and in our willingness to ignore the tragedy which the Sioux and other native peoples live out under our gaze.

Slavery is often called “America’s original sin” - but as Dr. King reminded us, it was not our first. Our genocide of native peoples deserves that title.

The thing about original sin is that it lives on as forever sin - sin either forgotten and then repeated, or as long ago history, something done 'by them back then', not 'by us today'. If unaddressed, the stains will continue to live on with us and with our children. 

Crossing the border - Leaving the Rez (no, I didn't have to walk all the way home)