Vacation to South Dakota

Day 2 - Into the West

Here we are in South Dakota, land of the Lakota Sioux. Driving up here, it was easy to see the Lakota people travelling over the land in Wyoming, Nebraska, and South Dakota following herds of buffalo across the prarie. I give partial credit to Steven Spielberg for the excellent depiction of this region's history in his mini-series Into the West for helping me envision what it was like here in the past.

The past is still present here, also. The land hasn't changed much. It is still empty--rolling hills, grass, and blue skies stertching out in every direction as far as the eye can see. Only in the Black Hills themselves is the horizon blocked from view by the terrain. So much land... it makes me wonder why the white felt it was necessary to steal so much from the Lakota people and to kill the "savages" who were standing in the way of " Manifest Destiny" and "progress." In the Black Hills, at least, it was for the gold, which is gone now except for the tourist dollars that flow into this place every summer. I bought a pair of Black Hills Gold earrings. I love them, but at the same time they will always make me a little sad, knowing that the beginning of this industry was so dark.

It makes me sad to think ofhow the people who first lived here were hunted down like animals, starved because the buffalo were wastefully killed off to provide carriage robes to settlers,and how the Native people of this country are still being discriminated againts by our government's policies--and by some individuals.

Discrimination and prejudice bother me more than almost any other injustice. Why? Maybe because I'm 1/2 Jewish and I know my family was just lucky to be in North American and not Europe in the 1930s and 40s. Or perhaps it's because I'm a woman, and even though we have many more rights than our sisters who lived here 100 years ago or than those who live in countries such as Saudi Arabia today, I know there are still those who feel that "wives should submit themselves to their husbands," and would prefer that feminism and "women's lib" never existed.

I never feel things like this in Colorado. I never felt the presence of Native Americans in New York or California, either. Why is that? Their existence is largely ignored, even though the place names are constant reminders of their language and their sense of belonging to the land. Something about South Dakota, like Alaska, makes the presenence of the original Americans more immediate and apparent.

I know it is impossible to restore things, to make things right, to give back all of the land that we (speaking as a white American, even though my relatives were still in Russia and Lithuania at the time this land was taken from the Lakota) stole. But there must be some way to respect the Sovereign Nations and the traditions and ideals of the people who truly first discovered America and make reparations, as inadequate as they would be, and to reverse the trend of disregarding their needs and knowledge.