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Pine Ridge Reservation Service-Learning Update Poetry, pictures, and reflections by trip participants
Dear FCCW family: greetings from Pine Ridge, South Dakota and the Re-Member compound! You are very present in our hearts and spirits as we work to serve and learn together with our Lakota relatives here on the reservation.Halfway through our week here, we have already experienced extraordinary grace, beauty, suffering, and compassion.
The reservation — The Rez — is a hard place, by design. Centuries of genocide, oppression, and deprivation have made sure it is so, and continue to this day. This is one of the poorest places in the United States, where many people live without running water, heat, electric power, or adequate — let alone healthy — food. The people here are suffering economically, physically, mentally, and spiritually. There is every form of injustice. And yet we are hearing from our Lakota relatives that there is a renaissance unfolding. People are re-learning their heritage: their language, traditions, songs and ceremonies and prayers. As we offer our labor to build and deliver beds, safety ramps, and outhouses — outhouses! — they generously reciprocate with their life stories, both trauma and hope. It feels important to contribute, as Nancy put it, concrete interventions to problems that go way beyond the concrete. And it feels equally important to gratefully embrace our Lakota relatives as beloved family, to join with them in heartfelt prayer for peace, justice, and an end to White Supremacy.
As hard as it is, The Rez is also a profoundly beautiful and sacred place, as Branda captured in her poem, and as you can see in some of the numerous photographs we have taken. In our nightly closing session, we have reflected on how each day’s experiences have kindled our spirits with gratitude and wonder. There is so much more to share with you, much of which will take us time and discernment to fully process.
Thank you for sending us here with your love and support. Please continue to pray that God will work through all of us — those of us here in Pine Ridge this week and all of you at home — to re-member creation, to heal and make whole that which humans have broken.
In love —
Julianne, on behalf of Andrew, Branda, Henry, Jodie, Maggie, Michaela, Nancy, Petra, Sonia, and Rev. Will
Badlands by Branda Wilhoite
Painted desert,
desiccated to fading,
Crumbly underfoot,
Framed by wide, blue skies.
A ribbon of green, swaying grasses
Swathed at its feet
A dry creek bed- the memory of a river-
A trickle, a shrinking puddle,
In the hot afternoon sun.
Rock spindles stand like tall sentries
Guarding “The Bowl”
Unlikely life- sage, paintbrush, and thistle,
Breathe hope into this desolate,
Beautiful place.
Re-Member
To make whole that which is broken.
