Sunday, May 27, 2018

Hey Fpcsmym

ROD WILSON

Monday, August 5, 2013

Mission Trip Reflection by Sabrina

I recently traveled with thirty-seven other people from FPCSM on a youth mission trip to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Six of us were the adult chaperones and the others were high school students ranging in age from fourteen- to eighteen-years old.

We left SFO, arrived in Denver, and rented 4 large vans. We continued the day by driving through Colorado, Wyoming and then arrived in Rapid City, South Dakota by 10:00pm. That was a long distance adventure for one day. We slept on the floor of a church classroom that night and got a solid five hours of rest.

The next day we briefly visited Mount Rushmore where we took group photos and then traveled to the Pine Ridge Reservation of the Oglala Lakota Sioux people

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The countryside had gentle rolling grassy hills, buttes of sandy rock and free roaming horses where you could visualize how the world was centuries ago. Along the entrance to the reservation there were many abandoned trailers and wooden homes. There was only one real gas station/ mini-mart and a very small grocery store. The only true shopping center to buy clothing and groceries in bulk was two hours away near Rapid City!

We learned this reservation was one of the most destitute of the country. There is rampant suicide and addiction related issues among these native people. We did find many adults who are working within the limited resources to try to overcome their statistics and better their situation. The organization we joined there is called Youth Works and they have been in the area for multiple summers as a fantastic Christian liaison.
Our objective was to lovingly connect relationally and work with the children in the literacy program.

The building where we worked and lived was the Wounded Knee District School. We enjoyed five nights of sleeping on the hard tile classroom floors, way too many flies and most days with 60-to 80-degree weather mixed with lightning and thunderstorms.

The Lakota children arrived on our first work day swearing profusely, wanting to fight us and each other. They were disheveled in demeanor and attire. We learned to gently welcome them, to read with, play with and teach them of our love for them as God used us to care for them despite the harsh behavior. We understood from the Youth Works group that most of the children would attend because they would receive a much needed meal that would have to last them until the next day when they would return. Some children would also receive clothing donations as they would wear the same dirty clothes for weeks.

The families of the Lakota people showed signs of neglect as the very young children chose to "live" with other families to separate from abusive and/or incarcerated parents. It was heart wrenching for me as an adult and even more difficult, I believe, for our teenagers who struggled to understand the environment but learned they could make a difference. We met with adults whose only source of income was making fry bread and bead necklaces to sell to those who were passing through.
We did however see trust being built and love bridge the gap of the Lakota hopeless and helpless experience.

We continue to pray for this proud people and their rejected community who continue to suffer greatly.

Our teenagers were enlightened and became courageous and confident in this exposure. They received empowerment to love as Jesus would without walls or boundaries. They also learned more of an appreciation of their gifted life. Seventeen of our teenagers will leave for colleges after this adventure and filter this experience in a way that has forever changed them.

I am so thrilled to have even been a tiny part in the life of the teenagers that I adore as they have been changed by a view of true hardship.
One evening after our work day we met a Lakota man named Darin who raises Bison. He showed us the Lakota way of smudging which is known as the way they usher their prayers and received cleansing from the "The Creator." Then Darin let us enjoy feeding these beautiful creatures by holding a hay pellet in our mouth and letting the Bison remove it from our mouth with his tongue. I can't even begin to tell you how rough, and frighteningly wonderful that moment was! We also learned more of the history of his ancestors and his people in general that night.

When we finally packed to leave, for another 12 hour travel across country, we left a piece of our broken hearts in South Dakota with only memories and pictures to comfort us.

All in all it was another very wonderful trip (I've been taking these youth trips every summer since 2007) and I wanted to share my joys and difficulties with you.

My desire is for you to know I love you dearly and share my hope of a future without struggle for the people who can't move these insurmountable difficulties by themselves. If you feel moved to give of your time or resources to a community of people who need your compassion please consider the Wounded Knee District School in the Pine Ridge South Dakota Reservation.

With gratitude,
Sabrina Robinson

Opinion Page, Pine Ridge, NY Times, July 23, 2013

Editorial

Abandoned in Indian Country

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Published: July 23, 2013

It’s an old American story: malign policies hatched in Washington leading to pain and death in Indian country. It was true in the 19th century. It is true now, at a time when Congress, heedless of its solemn treaty obligations to Indian tribes, is allowing the across-the-board budget cuts known as the sequester to threaten the health, safety and education of Indians across the nation.

Many Republicans have lately taken to dismissing the sequester as a mild headache for a country that needs to tighten its belt. They are willfully averting their eyes from Indian reservations, where the cuts are real, specific, broad and brutal. The victims are among the poorest, sickest and most isolated Americans.

The sequester in a nutshell? “More people sick; fewer people educated; fewer people getting general assistance; more domestic violence; more alcoholism,” Richard Zephier, executive director of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, recently told Annie Lowrey of The Times.

The damage is being done to agencies and programs whose budgets rely nearly entirely on federal sources, now being slashed. In signing treaties with Indian nations in return for land, the federal government promised a wide array of life-sustaining services. One of the most important is the Indian Health Service, which serves about two million people on reservations and is grossly underfinanced even in good times. It routinely runs out of money halfway through the year. Though Medicare, Medicaid and veterans’ health were exempted from sequestration cuts, the Indian Health Service was not. It stands to lose about $228 million in 2013 from automatic sequester cuts alone, out of a $4 billion budget. That will mean 3,000 fewer inpatient admissions and 800,000 fewer outpatient visits every year.

On the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the tribal police force, facing cumulative budget cuts of 14 percent, or more than $1 million, has let 14 officers go. Its nine patrol cars are already pitifully inadequate for policing a 2.8-million-acre reservation plagued by poverty, joblessness, youth gangs, suicide, alcoholism and methamphetamine addiction. The tribe is cutting a program that serves meals to the housebound elderly. Its schools and Head Start program are cutting back. On a reservation with a chronic and worsening shortage of homes, where families double up in flimsy trailers without running water or electricity, a housing-improvement program with a 1,500-family waiting list was shut down. There were 100 suicide attempts in 110 days on Pine Ridge, officials there said, but the reservation is losing two mental-health providers because of the sequester.

The warnings about the cuts have come from many sources, all ignored. A report in May from the Center for Native American Youth described the looming damage to housing and juvenile-justice programs, child-welfare and mental-health services, and education. It predicted that sequester cuts to the Department of Education would lead to staff reductions, canceled programs and shortened school years affecting nearly 115,000 Indian youths at 710 schools.

In the Navajo Nation, in Arizona, the Window Rock Unified School District is cutting about $7 million from a $24 million budget; it let 14 employees go and shrunk to four buildings from seven. The United States attorney for North Dakota, Timothy Purdon, has warned tribes that sequester cuts could jeopardize public safety. Furloughs at the Justice Department, he said, could reverse the recent gains in the number of federal prosecutions of crimes in Indian country.

Byron Dorgan, the retired United States senator from North Dakota who founded the Center for Native American Youth, demanded in an Op-Ed article in The Times that Congress hold hearings to examine its broken treaty promises and develop a plan for restitution. He said it should exempt Indian country from sequestration. He is right. Where the deficit zealots see virtue, we see moral failure.

The next time any Republicans get pious about their party’s respect for life and the rule of law, someone should ask: What about Pine Ridge?