美国国家公共电台 NPR A Return To The Rosebud Reservation Finds Tough Times Have Gotten Tougher

A Return To The Rosebud 1 Reservation Finds Tough Times Have Gotten Tougher

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

This summer, NPR reporters are going home, back to the communities where their families are from, to see what's changed. NPR's Kirk Siegler travels back to the Rosebud Reservation in rural South Dakota, where his parents worked when he was born.

KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE 2: I was born in the small town of Valentine, Neb., because it was the closest hospital to the Rosebud Reservation just over the state line in South Dakota. My mom, Jeannie, taught here at the St. Francis Indian School back then.

JEANNIE SIEGLER: Yeah, here's the sign. Welcome to the land of Lakota Oyate.

K. SIEGLER: We're traveling back for the first time in 30 years. My parents first moved here from the East Coast in the '70s because there were teaching jobs.

I was really little.

J. SIEGLER: Yes, you were tiny.

K. SIEGLER: The sky is huge out here. The rolling prairie stretches out for miles. It's pocked with these little canyons 3 that are lush with pine forests. At the edge of one of them is the village of St. Francis.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHURCH BELLS RINGING)

K. SIEGLER: At the Catholic mission, noon mass is letting out. We run into people my parents knew, most notably 4 a woman named Jody Waln.

JODY WALN: Jeannie, I'm Jody.

J. SIEGLER: Oh, it's Jody. I thought that was you. Oh, my goodness.

K. SIEGLER: Waln is a Rosebud Sioux tribal 5 member and famous rabble 6 rouser here.

WALN: A lot of memories came back.

K. SIEGLER: Now 60, Waln hasn't lost any of her fire. She does social work 24/7. She invites us over for a look at the children's shelter she's now running in the nearby town of Rosebud. This reservation has been rocked lately by drug abuse, namely meth and fentanyl. And there are a lot of broken homes.

WALN: Like, at my work, I see the direct consequences of it.

J. SIEGLER: Oh, yeah.

WALN: It's bad.

K. SIEGLER: The Rosebud Sioux Tribe has had to condemn 7 160 reservation houses lately due to meth contamination. The drugs touch everything - the housing shortage, the suicide crisis. They're squeezing other people's ability to get even basic health care.

WALN: We're so overwhelmed with the immediate 8 daily obstacles and struggles that there's no looking to the future.

K. SIEGLER: This was a problem back when we lived here. But it's gotten way worse. Jody says there's plenty of blame to go around - broken treaties, neglect. But she says some of her people also have a hard time taking ownership of their own weaknesses.

WALN: Among us Lakota people, you know, when you need help with something, it's like, where the heck is everybody? But you pop that beer can, and you've got all kinds of friends.

WAYNE BOYD: We're in this vacuum.

K. SIEGLER: Through Jody, we meet several tribal leaders, including Wayne Boyd.

BOYD: We don't have access to what every other American has. And we're forced to live on whatever crumbs 9 that the government feels fit to give us this year.

K. SIEGLER: Boyd says bureaucratic 10 tangles 11 also make it harder to deliver health care, to attract new investment here. When I asked him if anything had improved since we lived here, he had to think for a while.

BOYD: I don't know. There's a lot more comfort things here. We have electricity everywhere. We have running water everywhere.

K. SIEGLER: There's electricity and water everywhere. That's what he could say. Folks here listed off a lot of the same problems I hear in other places on my beat covering rural America - the suicides, drugs, poor health care. It's just that on an isolated 12 reservation, these are all magnified by 10. Back in the car, it's hard for me and mom to take it all in. A lot of things seem to have gone backward, not forward.

J. SIEGLER: You can see life is still tough here for many people. But there are a lot of good things that people do.

K. SIEGLER: I was just a baby when we moved away from the Rosebud after five years to Montana. My parents still talk about it, though, all the time, especially my mom, who remembers her students most.

J. SIEGLER: How much is it?

TAKISHA FARMER: Two dollars. Does that work for you?

J. SIEGLER: Yeah.

K. SIEGLER: One morning, we stop at a flea 13 market in Mission, the biggest town on the reservation. And I meet 18-year-old Takisha Farmer. She says all the problems here overshadow the good.

FARMER: 'Cause there's gangs. And there is all that here. But there are people who, you know, are going to college, are getting off this reservation, are valedictorians.

K. SIEGLER: Farmer and her boyfriend Kenyon Fast Horse sell stuff at this market to make some extra money for college. Fast Horse says people turn to drugs and alcohol out of despair.

KENYON FAST HORSE: It's hard. You know, like, that's how people look at us different - because it is hard because there's not much around here.

K. SIEGLER: When Fast Horse and Farmer came up in the reservation schools, they learned about Lakota culture and language. And this was a big change from the old days, when native students were forced to assimilate into white culture.

BEN BLACK BEAR JR: (Singing in Lakota).

K. SIEGLER: Back at the mission in St. Francis where we started our trip, there's a celebration for one of the retiring Jesuit priests. Ben Black Bear Jr. is singing a traditional Lakota song.

BLACK BEAR: (Singing in Lakota).

K. SIEGLER: Black Bear teaches Lakota language and culture in schools and online, something he thinks will help to start addressing the bigger challenges here. He's also working to modernize 14 the language.

BLACK BEAR: Email - we've translated as (speaking Lakota). That's the Lakota version of email. So, you know, once kids learn that, they can use it, you know?

K. SIEGLER: Oh, and Black Bear also tells us there's no word in Lakota for goodbye.

So I'll come back. Is that right?

BLACK BEAR: (Laughter) OK, yeah. I'll see you again (laughter).

K. SIEGLER: Kirk Siegler, NPR News, on the Rosebud Reservation, S.D.