SLIM BUTTES, S.D. – At Slim Buttes, the circle was of heads of families,
working men and women of expressed moral concern and conviction. They had
come together to greet visitors and to tell their story. The occasion was a
visit to the Oglala tiospayes of Pine Ridge by two Oneida Nation council
members and this writer. We were at “ground zero” of a project of substance
that has coalesced serious people on the poorest and most economically
marginalized Indian community in North America.

Headquartered at a camp on the White River, in the westernmost section of
the Oglala Lakota reservation, a vigorous homegrown agricultural homestead
development project has sprung up from among the poorest and yet among the
most cultured of American Indian peoples. Our hosts were the elders of
several tiospayes of the old Oglala – among them the Afraid of Bear and
American Horse families as host camp – which together have undertaken a
recovery journey to help their next generation grow healthy and thrive.

The Oneida representatives, Chuck Fougnier, director of the Oneida Nation
Foundation and Brian Patterson, Oneida traditionalist, had come to spend
time with the group of men who are the administrators and operators,
mechanics, woodsmen and carpenters that execute the nation rebuilding
program under way at Slim Buttes. They had brought a “handshake” $10,000
donation to the grassroots group’s sponsoring organization, Running Strong
for American Indian Youth. The contribution came from the Indigenous
Communities Initiative of the Oneida Nation Foundation. In his greeting to
the elders, Fougnier praised the Slim Buttes land use effort as an
excellent model of community self-sufficiency. “Our philosophy is to help
support people who are rebuilding their communities,” he said.

“Over here we have decided to build from the ground up,” traditional chief
Joe American Horse, explained to the Oneida counselors. “We work with the
tiospayes, our extended grass-roots families. We have many problems, but we
are a strong people.”

Tom Cook, a Mohawk from Akwesasne Reservation in New York, is project
director. Running Strong For American Indian Youth, their national sponsor,
spearheads the respected revitalization movement of Oglala Olympic gold
medalist Billy Mills.

Cook opened the meeting in his native Mohawk, while Al Weasel Bear and
others spoke in Lakota. Oneida spoke in Oneida and everyone welcomed the
visitors warmly. One by one, the headmen of large families who are the
inner circle of the project, men with last names like Broken Nose, Weasel
Bear, Warrior, Eagle Chief, Afraid of Bear, the father son team of Johnson
and Jonston Bear Robe, Red Bear, among others, all greeted the visitors.
With resounding dignity, several spoke in Lakota, to be translated by Al
Weasel Bear. They spoke about their dreams, the projects they do together
and the dreams of their families to slowly but surely rebuild their
community.

Emphasizing the spiritual foundation of tiospayes, Gerald Ice of Wounded
Knee prayed for the lives of people in the isolated, rural communities.
“Self-reliance, with creative assistance like this Oneida grant today, is
greatly assisted by outside help,” he said. A program tractor operator for
eight years, Ice helped put in 153 gardens throughout the Wounded Knee and
Porcupine districts this year. “People are meant to be outside, in the
wind, working on something and staying active. That way, they stay
healthy,” he said.

Ice, whose home lies within the killing fields of Wounded Knee 1890,
operates his own tiospaye revitalization project at the Fire Lightning
tiospaye, and has long sponsored traditional awareness camps there. He
attributes the strength of his garden this year to drip irrigation and
thinks it should be extended to “each family who shows they’re serious
about gardening.”

Al Weasel Bear of the base farm tiospaye described the formidable obstacles
to land use “by Indians” in the present economic system. “As our needs
intersect, hopefully you can do more and different projects out here”
Weasel Bear said.

Albert Red Bear, a tractor operator for most of the past decade in the
Allen and Medicine Root districts, said he’s distressed by the
deteriorating health conditions of the people, and gardening is one way to
help. From the Sko’pa tiospaye, Albert built his own house last year.

Jonston Bear Robe, a 23-year-old, is to be a liaison to the Pine Ridge High
School, training students in the geometry, math and carpentry of timber
framing. Johnson, his father, talked about the mechanic work he provides in
the wide Lakeside community of Oglala, and the day-to-day pressures of the
people just in keeping cars and trucks going.

Among the families represented, all spoke well of the land use effort,
primarily promoted by Running Strong. As a group they are proud to have put
up several timber-frame homes, dug and built and assisted over 300 wells;
they have strung miles and miles of drip irrigation lines over many of the
500 gardens they enthusiastically assist throughout the reservation. They
run greenhouses and gardens, nurseries, a stable of tractors and constant
construction activities. The idea of the project is to help revitalize the
Indian family homesteads. “Our motto on Indian land is: “Use it or lose
it,” Cook stated. “The main focus has been make decent food available to
the people.”

The very heartening feeling at the meeting was that of a solid core of
people conscious of working and struggling for the good of their families.

“We thank your for your reception,” Fougnier told the Oglala group. “It is
one thing to get letters and phone calls, it is another thing to meet with
you up close, to laugh at jokes and to see your situation firsthand.”

Briefly, the Oneida visitors re-iterated their offer of friendship. Their
own people, they said, have traversed great perils and opportunities and
sought to understand the conditions of other Native peoples. Both Fougnier
and Patterson emphasized that their own nation, now economically
successful, was nearly destitute only a decade ago.

Fougnier later told Indian Country Today: “The people and families involved
in this effort are a beacon of hope. What we see is a grounded circle of
families working together. They are surrounded by grinding poverty and
social problems, but persevering.”

“We really appreciate a visit like this. Almost no one comes for more than
a few hours. Here you are eating and traveling and spending several days
with us. You are willing to get the complete picture. So I thank you for
that,” Joe American Horse said.