Pine Ridge Experience

This is a blog I was actually assigned to write for my journalism class, but I thought it'd be worth posting on here too.

I’ll never forget the day I was plunged into the realities of White Clay, Nebraska; a town with a population of 14, double said residents in homeless people and a higher per captia alcohol sales rate than that of Las Vegas.
My experience came while I was on a class trip with my depth report class from the University of Nebraska. We were at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, shooting a documentary about Native American women. After a day of filming empowered leaders on the reservation, I found myself wanting to hear more from everyday citizens. I asked my professors if we could venture to find people on the street and talk to them. They agreed, and we left the next day to go look for stories.
After filming for about an hour at a local restaurant, we decided to go to White Clay, which was just a few miles down the road. Before leaving, I had heard mutterings of controversy over the town’s possession of 4 liquor stores just across the border from Pine Ridge, where alcohol is banned. In fact, activists held a rally in Lincoln just two weeks before we left, blaming White Clay for the rampant alcohol abuse occurring within the reservation.
As we approached the town, my eyes were met with the same ironic sight that must catch everyone who goes there off guard: the state marker that reads “Welcome to Nebraska, The Good Life…” against a backdrop of a single trashed street lined with a few run down buildings and dozens of sad looking people standing around. Some were grouped together outside of the liquor stores while others sat in the dirt, simply staring down the road into the lifeless prairie that continues on past the football field-sized town.
We parked the car next to what looked like a soup kitchen and got out, leaving the film equipment inside. The man who ran the place, Bruce, talked with us for a while about the problems in White Clay and how his program, the ABOUT Group, was working to help. They served breakfast for the people on the street 3 times a week and held support groups for alcoholism. There was also a thrift store connected to the kitchen, which provided affordable shoes, clothes, and an employment opportunity for a few people.
Still, Bruce’s description of life in the area was daunting. He said that at night, after people spent the entire day drinking, things got pretty ugly. He even said that it’s usually the women who prove to be the most dangerous and start the most fights, recalling an incident a few years back where one woman stabbed another in the face outside. He didn’t have an explanation for it other than an assumption that the women are under the most stress of anyone.
Before we had to go, he asked us if we’d come back on Thursday morning when they served breakfast for the people who’d slept on the streets all night. We said we’d love to, made plans for that morning and headed out the door.
I walked outside to see my other professor who had been with the rest of the group all day parked on the street, waiting for us. He had driven there when he heard we were in White Clay, needing to pick something up from the van we’d taken. He didn’t seem entirely pleased that we’d gone there without telling him, so I figured I’d better get in the car.
As I starting walking though, I heard a voice behind me say “Hey! Come here!” It was then that I experienced a moment I don’t think I’ll ever forget. I turned around and saw a Lakota woman sitting behind me in the dirt with her back against the thrift store wall. She was roughly 40 years old, had long black hair down to her waist and wore a tattered red coat. Surrounding her on the ground were piles of trash and broken beer bottles. She looked miserable. Then she asked me in a weak voice, “Will you come sit and pray with me?”
I didn’t know how to respond. I wanted to go talk with her, but the pressure I felt to get over to the vans took over and I ended up saying something like “Sorry, but I have to go now.”
It was the look that took over her face immediately thereafter that killed me. There was definite disappointment, but what made it even worse was also this complete lack of surprise she had, like that’s the only response she ever gets.
I spent the entire car ride back staring out the window and thinking about all the times I’ve bitched about nobody treating homeless people like human beings, nobody stopping to give them the time of day and nobody acting like their respect need be extended to anybody living on the streets. I’ve always hated people with that attitude, but in that moment I didn’t feel as though I’d risen to meet my own morals. There I was, supposedly there to work on a project aimed at helping people like that woman, yet, I walked right past her when she was trying to reach out for somebody. And for what? To avoid annoying my professor. No offense to him, but I felt terrible for it.
When we went back on Thursday morning, I saw her again as she walked into the soup kitchen to get breakfast. She sat across the room, still looking so sad and lonely but this time managing to strike up a conversation with another girl from our group. They spoke for a long time. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could see tears streaming down her face and my classmate looking like she could cry as well, just from listening. As I looked at them, I felt thankful for my classmate taking the time to reach out and listen, but overwhelmingly disappointed in myself for not doing the same thing two days earlier.
Later on, I was told that she was an educated woman who grew up on Pine Ridge, left to attend college in Hawaii and eventually came back to the reservation when she learned that her grandson had gone missing. Then, after a series of other devastating family crises, she fell into a downward spiral of alcoholism and drugs. That’s how she ended up in White Clay. My classmate finished her story by saying “She said she just needed someone to talk to.”
It was then I realized that our project has to become more than just something to showcase at our local theatre in Lincoln and earn ourselves a pat on the back from the university. It needs to be done for women like her, with the intent of actually making a difference and providing a voice for people who need one. No more formal interviews with PR people who can only talk, if even that, about the issues women face there. We actually need to SEE the problems like we did in White Clay and get out of our comfort zones if we are going to make this film right. So now, I’m just trying to think about what the next steps will be. And while I don’t have all of the answers yet, I feel like we’re well on our way to finding them and creating something truly important.