Day Three

       Woke up this morning to a barrage of high fives. There is no better way to wake up. We all ate breakfast quickly and packed into our vans as usual, and left for Uncle Floyd and Aunt Natalie's house to begin the long process of unloading 25,000 pounds of food brought from Conscious Alliance. It began slowly, laying down pallets for us to walk on over the mud, people not knowing where to be, figuring out how to pack boxes and where to keep things out of the way, but soon things began moving. One group began carrying everything out of the truck, carrying it into the garage built on Uncle Floyd's yard to serve as a food bank, another group unpacking and sorting food, and another unloading the food bank into separate boxes to be given out to families.
      Soon we began to work with each other, understanding where to be and how to be out of each other's way. Soon what-can-I-be-doing's became "sweet corn!" and "Get some more boxes". Eventually we became so good that cans would be thrown from the food bank to the short driveway where the boxes where being filled. More work needed to get done at the community center, however, so me and Chuck volunteered to go with Mike. I was happy to get a chance to do a little bit of the electrical work needed and to be able to talk to Mike some. Its nice to around someone who knows his work so well and is so ready to let us sometimes make it harder on him by helping. He also has a genuine concern for the reservation, as a white man, and, if it were possible, would prefer the world return to the Lakota's traditional way of life, rather than the alternatives.
     Me and Chuck finished up and returned to the rest of the group for lunch. Eventually we packed the family boxes into all of our vehicles and drove to Henry Red Cloud's property. There he was building and training others in renewable energy devices. Using the internet and a few other resources, Uncle Henry had built a windmill generator and a number of solar air heaters for his office and workshop. He also had a number of solar arrays and a straw bale house. Uncle Henry showed us around, using each generator and heater as an example of a big part of the future of his people. He has been installing these energy alternatives on the reservation and elsewhere, giving people a chance to save money on heating and become a little less of a burden on the earth. He also talked about the training and internship programs he offered. Listening to him talk about his goal, we could tell how important to him it was to bring this gift to his people and find the most efficient, cheapest way to do so. He returned constantly to ideas of "always moving forward". The day before, he had taken a backhoe to the yard next to the creek in order to drain where it had flooded four feet on his property and the surrounding community. Unless he had mentioned it, it would have seemed like a normal day. There was evidence of the destruction it caused in the surroundings, but not in his attitude of moving forward.
      After that we drove past Oglala to a school on the other side of the reservation. There a grant had been given from a music foundation in Nashville to teach young boys the art of traditional drum making. These kids had spent months tanning and scraping hide. They were all pretty nervous to speak and perform in front of us, but you could tell in the craftsmanship of what they had made that they were proud of what they had done.
     So, at the end of another long day, we returned to Uncle Floyd and Aunt Natalie's to enjoy a dinner and talk, and then back to the retreat center for much needed sleep.