Can't Go Back Now

Rapid City, South Dakota
Anyone who is slightly in touch with the world knows of the current financial crisis that is taking place and affecting so many people’s lifes. Today when we headed out to the Pine Ridge Lakota Indian Reservation I was not really expecting anything very different from the Navajo one… How very wrong I was. I learned what I consider to be a valuable lesson today: not all reservations or places are created equal. The unemployment level for the Pine Ridge Reservation is hovering around 85%. This really hit home once we entered the reservation and you could literally see the quality of everything go way down. Houses that had boards over them and would typically be considered uninhabitable were the the homes to people and families. At one point I was disgusted with the life I know because I have literally spent my life around people and places that have had barns or even sheds that are much nicer than what these people were living their lives in.

While all this was incredibly moving I really had to look America’s bad side in the face when we went to Wounded Knee Massacre site. Going to the place I was pretty unconcerned. Wounded Knee was a place that I remembered hearing one or two remarks about in my history class but that was all; my doubts outweighed my expectations to put it simply...


We unknowingly drove right past the site where a mass murder and burial took place.
I hate that.


After our u-turn and hiking up a hill to a cemetery that had no signage we found the site. I had to fight the tears. It was heartbreaking. The grounds were wild and unkempt. This made me battle within myself. In one way I can respect the “letting nature take her path” idea but that contradicts almost all of my up-bringing. I was taught that you were supposed to respect the dead. This definitely meant you kept the cemeteries nice. I could not decide if the unkemptness was because of the way of life and traditions of these people or because of the lack of resources to do anything.

In the end as we pulled away from this place I realized that I was greatly changed. Americans’ have built their lifes on the backs of their fore fathers and mothers. Doing these deceased people the injustice of improper acknowledgment of their lives, battles, and deaths touches me deeply. I felt many things as we tried to plan our return route. Most prominently I felt a huge battle of emotions taking place in me. I experienced feelings ranging from: more American, great saddness, and yet more proud at that moment than I ever did this morning when I stood under Mount Rushmore.

A popular game that we have taken to playing regularly on this trip is “Would you rather….” Today I close with:

I would rather share this bit of history and take my loved ones to Wounded Knee
Before even suggesting a visit to Mount Rushmore.