As Sara said, we toured the reservation today. It was great to see all the sites and sounds of the rez, and everything we saw was a great new experience. As we were driving from stop to stop, I especially liked just staring out of the window and looking at the landscape. While the scenery was incredible, the devastating conditions of the houses and communities within the rez made me very reflective of what we spent the day doing.
While each stop included a history lesson, especially at the college, I felt as if we should have been helping someone instead of going to the radio station and “trading post”, which was a glorified gift shop. I am extremely satisfied and taken back by the amount of history I was taught, I felt too much like a tourist and not enough like a volunteer. I wish there was a way we could have been taught the history without spending the day in gift shops and on the bus. I feel that the education we learned while here is the most long lasting reward. But I came here to build, assist, and help the Lakotas who live in extreme poverty. We only have four workdays, and I cannot say that I wanted to spend one of those “work” days buying souvenirs. Am I happy I was able to buy my family authentic Lakota art while stimulating the Lakota ecomony? Of course. But my intentions when I signed up for the ASB trip were to build and help those who are less fortunate than me. To provide shelter for a family who otherwise has nowhere to go is an amazing feeling. Better than buying a gift, touring a radio station, or even eating chocolate cake (which was really good). The feeling of giving another person the basic human necessity of shelter is one that cannot be duplicated. When (not if) I come back, I look forward to working harder and hopefully changing a few more lives for the better.
--Eric
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