Young Adult Tales 4--Life on the Rez

Continuing to recount my young adult years, I bring you my summer in South Dakota. For the rest of my walks down memory lane, click on "MPT" in my sidebar. For others' tales, go to Mommy's Piggy Tales. Thanks to the tv show LA Law, I decided in high school that I wanted to be a lawyer. Who doesn't love to argue, right? Then in college, as I was pursuing my interest in Native American history and culture, my advisor mentioned she knew a former student who was practicing Indian law. What? I could combine my interests in Indians and law, who knew?! From that point on, that became my goal.
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What is Indian law? Basically, it's advocating on behalf of tribes, either working for a tribe or working for an organization such as Native American Rights Fund (NARF). Issues include treaty rights, water rights, gaming etc.

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Just so this story doesn't take super long, I'll cut the chase--in the spring semester of my first year of law school, I looked for and applied to summer jobs in Indian law. The job I got was working for the Attorney General of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in South Dakota. I received a Student-Funded Fellowship that paid me a little bit of money to support myself while on the (unpaid) job. And I bought a car, because I had no way to get myself out there. A friend (and her dad) and I caravaned to SD (she drove onto Montana for her summer job).

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On our way, we drove down to Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge reservation. The poverty was immediately noticeable and I started to worry about what I'd gotten myself into. {Shannon County, where Pine Ridge is located, is one of the poorest counties in the US.}

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Okay, so I drove on to Eagle Butte, the town where I'd be spending my summer. I followed the directions the AG (Steve) had given me and arrived at the administrative building. I remember meeting the secretary and then I met the only intern who'd arrived before me, Paul. They should have known I was coming but nobody cared, apparently. The dorm we'd be staying in wasn't available for another week. Paul was staying with the AG's brother (Tom), the tribal attorney. They were kind enough to offer me the couch (in the middle of the living room) while Paul slept on the floor of an empty bedroom. Great first impression.

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Eventually the dorm opened and more interns arrived--Katherine and Chris soon after and later Christine and Truc. Becky, a young law grad, also arrived. She'd interned previously and now began working as a lawyer for the tribe.

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Steve was a jerk who buddied with the guys but didn't have much use for us women. The work was poorly divided and I never got to do much "legal" stuff during my time there--Katherine and I spent most of our time doing secretarial work on a case that had already been to the appellate level. So I won't talk about the work and my boss.

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Life on the rez. Eagle Butte had a population of about 2000 people--my high school had 2700. There were two grocery stores, one restaurant (and a bar that served frozen pizza), a couple gas stations. Only half the residents of Eagle Butte were tribal members, the rest were white, so I sort of blended in, although I think I stuck out as "city folk." {One time, I was talking on the pay phone in the gas station and these two boys looked at me funny and asked if I was speaking "Mexican." No, but I guess I was talking faster and different than they were used to.}

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It wasn't as destitute as Pine Ridge (or at least my brief impression of it), thank goodness. Tom had a nice house. Most of the houses were owned by the tribe. When Becky arrived, she had to be issued a house by the tribe. She moved in and her parents came out to help her clean up and paint the walls etc. The dorm we stayed in was for the high school, where kids from outside of Eagle Butte would live during the school year. Other than finding an enormous cockroach one night, the place was in good shape.

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There were about 2 main north and south streets in the town. The main center road had everything on it: gas station, our office building, then the post office, laundromat, drugstore, a grocery store at either end. To the east and west were residential areas. Then on the main east-west road was the restaurant, another residential neighborhood, and two motels.

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Eagle Butte had running water but smaller nearby towns did not. One of our secretaries did not have a home phone. Everyone had a propane tank sticking out of their lawn. I'd never seen that before.

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The interns and I left town pretty much every weekend. We went to Rapid City a few times, including once we camped and went to a pow wow. We went to Deadwood, which is an old "ghost town" with casinos. We went to Hot Springs and enjoyed a warm-mineral-water-filled pool, that was fun. We traveled around the Black Hills and saw buffalo and prairie dogs. We had to drive across the state to Sioux Falls to pick up Truc and I think that's when we went to the Corn Palace in Mitchell. We camped in the Badlands. We arrived when it was dark and set up our tents and woke up to the most amazing landscape! Really spectacular terrain (they film movies there to look like other planets). We hiked that--man, it was hot.

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One time in all this driving around, we were in Chris' car and got a flat tire and Chris couldn't figure out how to get the spare out from under the car. I was the only one with a cell phone (this was 1997, I had borrowed my parents' phone for the summer) but I couldn't get reception to call AAA. Thankfully, a family driving by stopped to help us--the dad got out, I think he even had tools in the back of his truck, and he freed the spare and we were on our way.

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The traveling was by far the best part of the summer. I think I put 8000 miles on my new car that summer! We saw Mount Rushmore; went to two pow wows (Rapid City and Pine Ridge); the scenery and wildlife in the Black Hills were amazing.

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Those are my memories from my summer in South Dakota. It was a priceless experience, most affluent white kids from suburbia don't get to see reservation life up close. I wish the job aspect hadn't been so negative, that was unfortunate. But it was a very valuable experience.

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Okay, folks, I'm asking for your help once again. I have 2 weeks of these young adult tales yet to come and I'm open to suggestions on what to write about. Here are some choices:

-My wedding and/or honeymoon (to Whidbey Island, WA)

-Our vacation to Charleston, SC

-My 6 weeks in France in college

-Challenges

-Something about growing into either my appearance or personality over the years

What strikes your fancy? Tell me in the comments what you'd like to read about. Thanks!!!

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Thanks for reading--come back next week for another installment of my Young Adult Tales!