Mission, SD

The land here rolls all grassy and lush in this wet summer, down to creek bottoms and up on high plains. The White River runs through here and it is white with the run off from the Badlands to the northeast of us. This is the Rosebud Reservation of the Lakota Sioux, and we’re here to build homes.

Our camping spot is on the grounds of an Episcopalian mission complex, an old stone church, a dormitory and small school building that was used for Lakota children, what was probably the minister’s house and the shop building.  

 Below the campground area is a circular “arbor” a sort of double ring of posts with a roof that would provide shade around a stage.  It is falling apart now, and I’m not sure what it was used for. Over the fence, to my joy, is a herd of horses in many colors, including some paint colts, my idea of the perfect landscape ornament.

The construction team is mostly 17 year olds from a Catholic school in Chicago who come in shifts all summer long, and mostly they work very hard in the hot sun, but they have little experience.  Our construction supervisor is new to Habitat, and I think he finds the troops a little daunting to find work for.  We have two houses near completion, one older one to rehab, and a new one in town.

I started on the rehab house, mostly demolition and clean up.  It was abandoned for 15 years before the tribe gave it to Habitat.  We found the debris of life, children’s school papers, photos, old shoes, shells and beads from craft work, and in the shallow cellar, the dried up corpse of a dog.  Mysteries: who were they? Why did they leave? How did the dog get down there?  I waged a holy war against a patch of poison ivy around the front door, and won, but did get a little on me.

I worked on final things on the nearly completed ones, mostly small fixits that I was comfortable with, but at one house, I came face to face with the mixed feelings that working here seems to create.  I was hanging a door on a pantry, a little in over my head, and two of the home owners boys were hanging around and playing. They started slamming the doors of the bedrooms in a typical little boy way, but I felt as though they were going to break those doors while I was still hanging mine, and had a moment of thinking my work was a little futile.  The family has 13 children and currently live in an assemblage of three derelict trailers.  There is children’s clothing strewn on the ground, and to my eyes it was a dispiriting sight.  There is no way two parents can watch 13 children, and I understand that my New England need for tidiness does not translate to this culture.  The cultural habits of Anglo-Saxon villagers that stay put in tight quarters have nothing to do with the cultural habits of a hunter gatherer culture that roamed the plains and used everything of the buffalo except the fart. 

On top of the cultural disconnect, us palefaces have an atrocious record of murder, extortion, robbery, and general high handedness in our dealings with those who were here first.  The battle site of Wounded Knee is just down the road.  The tribe keeps a token herd of buffalo.

And finally, a joke: How do you know it’s summer time on the Rez?  Because that’s when the Christians come.

Not very funny, really.  I am a Christian, and I did come to build houses for folks, as I do all over the place.  Here, people will not meet my eyes, or respond if I say Hi.  I have no interest in saving souls or any other reforms, and am horrified when people come up to me and ask if I have taken Jesus as my personal savior.  Lakota children were nearly kidnapped and sent off to church run Indian Schools, where their hair was cut, their clothes burned and every ounce of their culture was bleached out.  So it’s no surprise that I am viewed with suspicion.   There is a noisy group from Sioux Falls who have a lot of kids and frequently burst into enthusiastic religious songs to a guitar accompaniment.  They are here to restore the old stone church, but there is a perfectly good one down town.  Another group who came here with Habitat built the Arbor and were saddened to see it falling down. One wonders whose idea the Arbor was. And in this same group was a gentleman who assured the H4H that he was an accomplished plumber, but all of his work leaked and had to be redone.  Perhaps his work will be counted at the pearly gates, but I’m hoping he gets demerits for the sin of pride.

I have long been interested in Native American culture, and also in the sometimes peculiar ways that the paleface world looks at it.  Nobel Savage or Filthy Savage,  perfectly in tune with the natural world or lazy and drunken,  a proud and fearless people or slinking dogs living off the scraps handed out by the pale faces.  There is deep depression, poverty, substance abuse and school drop outs here, and it is tempting to create a myth for myself to explain it, or excuse it in some way. But this is only to make it more comfortable for me, and is no help. 

I know that some families will get a better place to live, and that is enough.  I’m not doing this to be thanked or blessed or anything else, nor do I expect my hours here to save the Lakota.  I guess it’s a little like teaching High School. One hammers away, hoping that some of the subject matter and some of the maturity goals will stick, but there is no way to know if you are doing any good.  Both these types of work please me anyway, the teaching part and the hammering part, and at Mission I got to do both, which IS a blessing for me.