Rosebud

We spent today learning about Teach For America and exploring the Rosebud reservation. We spent most of the day at the Todd County Curriculum Center in the town of Mission. We had a little bit of break so Luke and I walked into town. The first place we passed was called, if I remember correctly, Gill's Bite and Bait. Here is a picture from out front:



Inside there was a strange mixture of merchandise: lots of guitars, lots of fishing bait and lures, and, behind a counter, "Indian artifacts." Luke talked to the man working inside, presumably Gill, about fishing in the area. He said that there were bass everywhere, and some trout. He suggested that it be cooked immediately after being caught--if you take it home before cooking, it won't taste good anymore.

Just up the road were a few stores. "Downtown" Mission stretched a little ways up and down the state highway, but at the intersection we were at, there was a grocery and hardware store and across the street a health clinic, as well as some boarded up buildings. This is a view of the grocery and hardware store:


Later on in the afternoon we went by the Soldier Woman Art Gallery. There were some cool old cars out front. This picture also might give you some idea of the landscape.


Later still we drove from Mission to St. Francis, where we saw a Catholic Church that is painted with both Christian and Lakota imagery. An anthropologist who teaches at Sinte Gleska University (on Rosebud) mentioned how there was no such thing as "Lakota relgion," but only a Lakota way of life, which helped elucidate how she and others were able to integrate traditional Lakota beliefs within their Christian worship. We also went to the Father Buechel Memorial Museum, which had a lot of artifacts from Lakota culture that have been preserved from when the missionaries first arrived on the reservation. I took two more pictures on the drive from Mission to St. Francis. The first indicates what the landscape typically looks like in the region. The second is near the town of Rosebud, near the Little White River, where it is a bit more hilly and forested. They aren't great pictures--they were taken from the window of a school bus. The second one especially doesn't really indicate what Rosebud looks like.



We are on the very western edge of the Central Time Zone here (Pine Ridge is on the very eastern edge of the Mountain Time Zone), so it stays light very late. I went out for a run at 9:20 and the sun was just beginning to set. I took a dirt road across from the casino out for a little over two miles. There was nothing but hills and grass around me, and, except for Luke and Jenny running behind me I was probably the only person around for miles. About a mile out I passed an abandoned barn, surrounded by some woods. On my way back a big buck jumped out of those woods, but when it saw me it turned back in and I didn't see it again. It was a spectacular sunset too--it's too bad I didn't have a camera.

Tomorrow we will be exploring the Pine Ridge reservation--my future home.