Angel of Pine Ridge

In The Midst Of “Ethnic Cleansing”

By Paul Beaver, Former Head Photographer for 6 Years of the Independence Examiner. 

Maykala White Face, 5, must be an angel. Her pink shirt is emblazoned with the word in large glittering script. Her precious smile melts the heart of the biggest and strongest of visitors to her Manderson, S.D., cluster home on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

She does not know that the six friendly visitors during Christmas from the Kansas City area bringing food, toys, wood stoves, appliances and household goods might not also be angels to her.

The six visitors were part of Operation Morning Star delivering about 10 tons of food and other needed items to some of the families of Manderson Christmas Day. Operation Morning Star is a Kansas City metro wide project founded in Independence to collect goods for the people there. A month after Christmas that food was gone.

Woodrow Respects Nothing, 78, and his family were another household visited. Respects Nothing uses his World War II, Korean War and Social Security benefits to help provide food and housing for his two daughters and grandchildren in Manderson. Respects Nothing earned three Bronze Stars and three Purple Hearts from the wars.

He reluctantly lives in a HUD house for now but hopes someday to move back to his land on the reservation where he was raised and where he has a small herd of horses. The log cabin on that land is six miles and a half-hour's drive off paved road. The now-abandoned cabin is where Woodrow lived until he was nearly 50 years old. It has no electricity or running water or plumbing.

His granddaughter Anna, 17, takes the other children in the family there regularly so they can ride his horses and get away from the cluster housing conditions that offer few opportunities for Lakota children to play safely and experience that part of the Lakota heritage. The group of visitors watched the children come to life when they were able to go to the land of their grandfather and ride his horses.

Richard Boyden of Independence founded Operation Morning Star six years ago. It is dedicated to providing relief to people on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. In perhaps 14 trips to Manderson within the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation more than 45 tons of food and other needed items have been delivered because of the response of donations from Kansas Citians.

There were a few old and worn out chairs in Wilda Black Bear's house at Christmas. The couch that was once there that was also a bed had fallen apart and was gone. A mattress lay in the middle of the living room floor where Maykala sometimes sleeps with two or three other young children. There are not enough beds for the extended family of 17. A small freezer sits in the corner of the living room, no longer working. Now, a month later, neither does the used washing machine that was delivered at Christmas to her house

The visitors were offered coffee and asked if they were hungry. They were given food from a family who has little to eat.

This is the spirit of generosity seen among the Oglala people. It is a tradition of love and giving from those who have very little. It is humbling to the visitors.

Emmery Black Bear, Wilda's husband, has no job. He is a carpenter and wants to work, like so many other Oglala Lakota men. But, there is no work. There is only the economic assistance program that does little to supply the basics promised by treaty ­ right of food, shelter and other needs. He does what he can to keep up their dilapidated HUD cluster house. But, without money, he is unable to do all that is needed.

Now black mold has been found inside their home and hundreds of others on the reservation. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Indian Health Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs say it is a result of sewage backup and other excess moisture sources. This black mold can cause flu and allergy-like symptoms that can include skin rashes, inflammation of the respiratory tract, bloody noses, fever, headaches, neurological problems, suppression of the immune system, and in some cases, even death. Some forms of black mold are known to cause cancer.

The houses will have to be sanitized, or more likely the houses will be condemned and will result in hundreds of displaced Lakota families with no place to live.

What was a problem of roaches is not as important anymore. Nor is the sliding of the house on its foundation. Nor is the insulation that has disintegrated to the point of giving little benefit. Nor is the leaking plumbing needs as important as before.

Instead the primary fear is when will they become homeless while getting sick during the waiting process.

John Yellow Bird Steele is the President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and a Vietnam veteran. Steele explained to the group of visitors the fight he is involved in for his people and the assault upon the national sovereignty of his tribe by the Federal Government and the state of South Dakota. Land rights, water rights, legal rights, among other treaty rights, are all under attack, he says.

He cites the 85 percent unemployment rate, the per capita income of less then $2,800, more than 60 percent of tribal members are living below the poverty level, 1/3 of the houses are without running water or electricity.

He says the Oglala have an 80 percent alcoholism rate, the nation's highest suicide rate, eight times the national rate of diabetes, five times the rate of cervical cancer, twice the infant mortality rate and a life expectancy equal to that of Haiti.

These provide the groundwork, Steele says, for the economic destruction of his people while at the same time creates social conditions that cause the further deterioration of the people physically and spiritually. Steele chooses his words carefully and calls this "ethnic cleansing."

Steele, who lives with his wife, Anna, in a small HUD house, has an extended family of 23 children including their own. Beds materialize at night when mattresses are laid out on the living room floor.

For more than one month, Steele said to the group, the Department of Interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs have done nothing to release the trust money checks owed to more than 300,000 American Indians. This is money the residents depend upon to buy food and pay bills.

The six visitors were reluctant to say "goodbye" the day after Christmas. They had grown to love them deeply.

There is no word in the Lakota language for "goodbye" because the circle of love among the Lakota can never be broken because of distance or circumstance.

There are plans on the drawing board that Steele and other tribal leaders are interested in for geodesic homes at $16-23,000 each to replace the HUD homes. These can be built in one to four days. Also, an "Aqua-Ponics" food production system costing and initial $4,000 would provide food for a family of four more than a year's period time.

In the Kansas City area, Operation Morning Star responds to ongoing needs of the Oglala Lakota people by asking for gifts of food, wood burning stoves, chain saws, working appliances, washing machines, dryers, beds, good furniture, hybrid seeds for gardens, tools, compressors and even good running trucks and cars, including a diesel tractor and trailer.

Paul Beaver is the photo editor at The Examiner and was one of six visitors from this area who visited the Pine Ridge Reservation over Christmas and helped deliver food and goods. 

To make a contribution to Operation Morning Star, contact Richard Boyden at 816-352-7999 or email him at operationmorningstar@gmail.com

For more information, go to Boyden’s web page at http://www.operationmorningstar.org