From the Shenandoah to South Dakota

The days go by slowly here. One-and-a-half workdays in, and my body is tired, my mind is tired, and I miss home. We woke up yesterday to find a dusting of snow on the ground and drove one hour away to the home of Bob Bear Killer, a Lakota elder. He had been in the process of building a house for his father, until his father died and he simultaneously ran out of money. There it sat for six years until a member of the community discovered the house's plight and Re-Member picked up the task of completing the house.



With deep ruts in the driveway threatening to trap us in the mud, we parked our van and trailer about 150 yards away and hauled all the lumber and tools to the house, the bitter cold making our steps ache and skin burn. The wind out here is a demon when angry, whipping our steps and mocking the spirit of anyone who dares to venture forth in it. My arms trembled under the weight of the lumber as I strained to pick my way through the wind and frozen mud, tripping on ruts and stepping gingerly over dog feces left by the resident pack of Rez dogs watching us with curious, intelligent eyes. My toes were frozen on impact, stung with every step. I faltered, I doubted, but I persevered.


Photo by Christina Freeman Nielsen



My reward was to spend the next few hours installing flooring in the unheated house, the cacophony of our beating hammers our only protection from our thoughts, mine which had begun to stray to warmer days and home. Gusts of sawdust assailed us from within the confines of the one-bedroom house as the weather made cutting wood outside impossible - or at least, inhumane. I coughed up dust from my lungs and thought of the people of this land.



On top of the hill visible from the house was a little shack with plastic covering the openings were windows should be. By last count, we were told, 18 people all lived there together. Life expectancy here is the lowest in the Western Hemisphere except for Haiti - with parents dying in their early 50's. And yet, there are no orphans on the Rez, and the homeless are invisible. It's a common occurrence, we learned, to have three to four families living together in the same house, despite the abject poverty. In this land where no one hears the cries of their children or the agony of their sick, the people have done as they have always done - taken in others as members of the same family under the Creator. Thus it was ordered at the beginning of time, and thus it remains today. I looked at the floor where four of us were hammering, adjusting our bodies as we went along so we could all fit in the small area together, and wondered how many would live here after we were finished.