July 4th, 2010

A day both intense and lackluster. We visited Wounded Knee, learned the story of the massacre, wandered the cemetery (which is still active). Saw tombstones of veterans of World War 2, Korea, Vietnam, all buried next to people from the 1890’s.

I’m used to cemeteries with flowers on the graves, and there were plenty of those, but other things too. Speaking with Dave, one of the project managers, explained that loved ones will bring that which people enjoyed in life. There was a can of Pepsi on one tombstone, cigarettes on another. There was a purple ceramic hand. There were also Teddy bears, for those that died young.

There were a lot of teddy bears. Makes me want to give Alex a hug.

Dave told me about a drink called Hurricane. It’s half beer, half energy drink that’s sold almost exclusively in depressed areas like ghettos and reservations. The idea is to keep you awake and active, so you can drink more. It was, sadly, among the offerings. Apparently you have to do a lot of research to find the connection between Hurricane and the Brewer, Anheiser-Busch. Took a research student 3 months to trace that back.

Next came a hike into the badlands. Sadly, a very short one. A storm front was moving in so we only had a short while before getting washed out. The badlands is not a good place to be in a storm. Actually, no place out doors on the Rez is a particularly good place to be outside when there’s a storm. The rain is hard, it hails often, and the wind can be pretty fierce. The hills in the badlands are effectively dry mud, so when the rain comes, you’ll have a hard time getting down safely, assuming you don’t drown in a mudslide.

The scenery was beautiful. Those with cameras burned through a lot of shots while we were there. There was not enough time for silent contemplation.

Returned to the badland visitor center for lunch. Had it in the basement next to a stuffed deer. Food was good. Deer did not provide much in the way of conversation.

After an extra long drive back to Re-Member (I think they were trying to kill time), we had some time to play games. I introduced Chrononauts, which went over well. April seemed to like it a lot. I also learned that Geoff and Jaime cannot be trusted to play Uno alone. Uno can be a surprisingly violent game, especially after Jaime beat Geoff 6 times in a row.

Nice talk from the speaker after he smudged us with wheat grass. He spoke very softly, which made it hard to heard and I think put some people to sleep. Turns out the badlands were known as the white hills prior, which makes a lot of sense. It’s basically a bunch of white hills. The badlands were a name assigned to give the area a negative connotation, so that it would sound like the army was doing the Lakota a favor by taking it over.