Pine Ridge Reservation

22 September 2014 – Monday

 We got up fairly early to head off to Oglala, which was about an hour away.  Our contact was Sister “Barb”, a Dominican Sister from the Springfield, Illinois order.  She is the Parish Life Coordinator at ‘Our Lady of the Sioux’ in Oglala.  The Compassion Ministry Team at Keith’s church had been making quilts for them for several years and had developed a relationship with them.  We’re still not sure how a Lutheran Church and Catholic Parish got hooked up, but it does seem to work well!

Dave Rooks, who was the Parish Life Coordinator before Sister Barb, also joined us.  He was raised on the reservation but now lives in Rapids City and is a journalist there.

Oglala is a VERY small town on the outskirts of the Badlands.  We had a brief tour of the church, but got back in the car with Dave for a tour of the reservation.  It’s BIG.  We drove well over a hundred miles and saw a lot of different terrain.  As we were driving though a gorgeous valley, Dave told us that it’s the poorest county in the country……

We also visited the cemetery at Wounded Knee where 125 years ago, the 7^th Cavalry massacred 275 people.  They are all buried there in a mass grave.  In the 1970’s, Wounded Knee was at the center of the American Indian Movement (AIM) whose radical purpose was take back the land and traditions that originally belonged to them.

When we returned to the church, Sister Barb had prepared a lunch for us.  Dave had to return home, which was about two hours away to coach a girls soccer team.  Sister Barb finished our tour of the facilities and we had her do a brief video that we can share my church back home.  She gave us a framed photo of the church congregation signed by many of them.

We drove back to camper, loaded up, and headed north through Custer, Lead, Deadwood, and ended up in Spearfish about supper time.  We’re camped in the city campground for two nights.  It has full hook-ups included cable TV so it’s not really roughing it.  We plan to hick the Spearfish Canyon area and explore Deadwood Lead.