In Mt. Rushmore's Shadow: The Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota Sioux

Our Father, the Sky, hear us and make us strong.

Our Mother, the Earth, hear us and give support.

Spirit of the East, send us your Wisdom.

Spirit of the South, may we tread your path of life.

Spirit of the West, may we always be ready for the long journey.

Spirit of the North, purify us with your cleansing winds.

-?????? Sioux prayer

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On the way to hitting #55 of our 63X63 U.S. National Parks quest —?and frolicking on Independence Day under the gaze of Mount Rushmore — my wife and I took a southern 109-mile detour to the Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota Sioux Reservation to pay our respects at the Wounded Knee Massacre Memorial.

There, we met Jerilyn Elk and her grandson, Timothy, who shared some history and present-day conditions on the Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota Sioux Reservation.

Some background:

The Black Hills and thousands of acres surrounding them belonged to the Sioux nation. In fact, this “ownership” or protected legal right to be left undisturbed was codified and approved by Congress in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.?

Spoiler alert: the United States breached the treaty, took the land, and enforced a policy of “removal” to reservations and a life of subsistence rations for the Sioux Nation.

General George Custer was sent to enforce the policy of removal and to forcibly flush recalcitrant Sioux “hostiles” onto reservations. The Army's campaign against the "hostiles" led to Sitting Bull's notable victory over Custer's forces at the Battle of the Little Big Horn on June 25, 1876. This Sioux victory was short-lived, and the various bands of the Sioux Nation slowly and inevitably surrendered.

The U.S. Army’s vengeance for “Custer’s Last Stand” would culminate at a remote place in South Dakota: Wounded Knee Creek.

On December 28, 1890, the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry (General George Custer’s former regiment) opened fire on a brutal winter’s day on the prairie. When the shooting stopped hours later, bodies were strewn in the gulch. Some were breathing, most not. Victims who had been hunted down while trying to flee were found three miles away. Some had been stripped of their sacred shirts as macabre souvenirs. It is estimated that as many as 300 Lakota were killed along with 25 American soldiers, who were mostly struck down by friendly fire. That day, two-thirds of the victims were women and children.?

Although the Wounded Knee Massacre has been described as the most abominable criminal military blunder and massacre of women and children, the U.S. Army awarded the Medal of Honor, its highest commendation, to 20 members of the 7th Cavalry who participated in the bloodbath.

Two monuments emerged from this fraught and tragic history and place, one in stone and one in blood – Mount Rushmore and the Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota Sioux Reservation.

Mount Rushmore is the symbolic capstone and granite declaration of plenary ownership of the Black Hills by the United States and its citizens. The ink on the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 had barely dried before gold prospectors, timber-cutters, farmers, ranchers, and pioneers flooded into the Black Hills to stake claims. Today, the natural beauty of the Black Hills is overrun with campgrounds, t-shirt shops, barbed wire fences, motorcycles emanating in and around Sturgis, and recreational vehicles from all corners of the nation.

Mount Rushmore, completed in 1941, was built on land that was illegally taken from the Sioux Nation.

The Sioux continued to demand return of the land, and in 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians that the taking of the Black Hills required just compensation and awarded the tribe $102 million (but not return of title to the land). The Sioux refused the money, which grew with interest to over a billion dollars, and demanded the return of the land. This conflict continues to this day, leading some critics of the Mount Rushmore monument to refer to it as a "Shrine of Hypocrisy."

The irony of the monument in stone is manifest in the monument of blood.

Today, there is only a small stone obelisk on the Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota Sioux Reservation above the mass gravesite of the Wounded Knee Massacre. Few people other than residents venture to that desolate, sorrowful place. But the scars and pain are indelibly imbued in the Pine Ridge Reservation. Here are a few facts about the modern Pine Ridge:

·?????? The Pine Ridge Reservation is among the largest in the United States (2.1 million acres) but is the poorest in the nation.

·?????? Oglala Lakota County, contained entirely within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation, has the lowest per capita income ($8,768) in the country, and ranks as the "poorest" county in the nation.

·?????? A 2020 study found Oglala Lakota County ranked last for health outcomes (length of life and quality of life) and health factors (behaviors, clinical care, social and economic factors and physical environment) in the state of South Dakota.

·?????? The average life expectancy on Pine Ridge is 66.81 years, the lowest in the United States. Average life expectancy for men: 47 years. Women: 55 years.

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Leave it better than you found it

Driving the 109 miles back to Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills, I had some time to reflect upon my conversation with Jerilyn Elk and her grandson, Timothy. I was disturbed and deeply conflicted by the hypocrisy and bitter irony of my visit. Millions of tourists, including me, flock to gape in wonder at Mount Rushmore. Few Americans pay a visit to Pine Ridge Reservation. As I soaked up the experience in the Black Hills, I could not shake the experience I had at Pine Ridge.

There is as much chance of restoring the Sioux Nation to the Black Hills and the vast prairies and hunting grounds of the grasslands as there is of the United States abandoning electric power.

In quoting from Justice Rehnquist’s dissent in United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, “that there was tragedy, deception, barbarity, and virtually every other vice known to man in the 300-year history of the expansion of the original 13 Colonies into a Nation which now embraces more than three million square miles, and 50 States cannot be denied …. But in a court opinion, as a historical and not a legal matter, both settler and Indian are entitled to the benefit of the Biblical adjuration: ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged.’"

Like Justice Rehnquist, it seems to me quite unfair to judge by the light of "revisionist" historians or the mores of another era actions that were taken under pressure of time more than a century ago. The civilizations and cultures of Native Americans were fundamentally different and irreconcilable with the aspirations of a nation coming from Europe and beckoning - "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore." The very idea of Manifest Destiny and concept of private property ownership could never be rationally countenanced or reconciled with the belief that no person or group of people could “own” the land.

Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the present by blithely excusing the past. We should not hypocritically decry the tragedies and sorrows of conditions at Pine Ridge while sipping a nice Cabernet Sauvignon in a well-appointed lodge in the Black Hills. Likewise, we should not carry the evocative memory of conflicted feelings and irony of a visit to the Black Hills and forget them altogether when our luggage is unpacked from our journey.

One of the things I have enjoyed most in my quest to visit all 63 U.S. National Parks is the unexpected and unpredictable twists and turns in the journey. Visiting the Wounded Knee Massacre memorial on the Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota Sioux Reservation was one of those curious twists.

I have pledged to help the people there not out of a sense of guilt or moral penance for the sins of people with whom I have no connection other than skin color and European genealogy. Rather, I will help because I acknowledge the most basic forces of human compassion and I embrace the spirit of our national parks and enriching and protecting places, people, and culture that make up the fabric of our great nation. Like the campsite credo often repeated in our national parks – leave it better than you found it.?

We cannot change the past, but we just might be able to change the present and future.

?If you are interested, and perhaps a tiny bit inspired, there are a few ways you can help too.

·?????? Visit Pine Ridge for yourself. Better yet, volunteer to help build beds, access ramps to housing, or support local schools.

·?????? Donate clothing or food. Even the basics can go a long way here.

·?????? Support organizations that devote themselves to improving conditions on the Pine Ridge Reservation:

o https://www.re-member.org/mission

o https://www.onespiritlakota.org/donate

o https://www.lakotafriendscircle.org/

o https://friendsofpineridgereservation.org/

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It’s an odd thing about journeys – you never know what you are going to pick up along the way to your destination. I discovered that in a deeply moving and powerful visit to the Black Hills and Badlands National Park in South Dakota over the Independence Day holiday. Thanks to Jerilyn and Timothy for opening our minds and our hearts at Wounded Knee.

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