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December 23, 2005 Happy Holidays to all of our readers! The advent of this update has been rather longer than we had intended, but tis the season! (New photos and all the updates at www.meyerloewen.net, as always). In local news, KILI has now played "A Native American Christmas" over the air for the 50th time this December (luckily it's not a bad CD). ...and now, what you've all been waiting for... Dear Carlissa!! Well, we only received two questions in the last six months, which is okay because this update is too long anyway. Dear Carlissa, Do you have any recommended reading about First Nations' history and current issues? (thanks to Jen Linder and Karl Stutzman for the question, and apologies that you had to wait so long for the answer) Dear Jen and Karl, Yes, actually, we do. I've attached to this email the Field Guide for our unit, which includes a recommended list of readings and video resources on the final page. One that I'll highlight (because I just finished reading it, and thought it was quite good), is Neither Wolf nor Dog, by Kent Nerburn. Also, I recommend anything by Vine Deloria, Jr., (Custer Died For Your Sins is a good one to start with), Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown, and American Holocaust: the Conquest of the New World, by David Stannard. -- Carl Dear Carlissa (writes Erin Kindy), Sometimes I think it's easier to confront the inequities and conflicts here in Colombia than those closer to home. How do the 2 of you work with the fact that your work is close to home and has an impact everywhere you have lived your lives? It's not like here, where even though there are connections, one has to work to draw them and it's not just in your back yard. Dear Erin, Why does MCC do so little work with Native people in North America compared with overseas work? Working here challenges my identity on a daily basis more than anywhere I've been overseas. In Guatemala, Chiapas, or Hebron many people identified ways in which their problems originated in the US empire. But it was always easy enough to differentiate myself from the US government. In daily life the focus was usually on someone else - their own government, their government's soldiers, sometimes the US government - but certainly not a good-hearted ordinary American like me. So I could feel good about being "a different kind of American" and not have to push any further. Here, there's no escaping the fact that my people caused (are causing) the suffering. Directly, not in some abstract systemic way. Not only that, but everyone on Pine Ridge experiences racism in direct, personal forms, all the time, from people who look, talk, even act like me. It's not that people on Pine Ridge aren't welcoming. I've many times heard comments like "it's not the color of your skin, it's what's in your heart." I appreciate that - in fact I find it amazing, given what people with my color skin have done here. But when someone talks about "the dominant society" and "what they did to us" (are doing to us), I'm never far from the awareness that in many ways it's ME they are talking about. Underlying all of this, I think, is a question of belonging. Lakota spirituality is deeply rooted in a sense of belonging to and with a place, having the spiritual responsibility to care for that place - not just any place, but the place where you have been placed by the Creator, which you were created to care for. So where is my place? Is it on land in northern Indiana that we violently stole from the Potawotami 200 years ago? Is it somewhere in the Alsace-Lorraine or the Swiss Alps where I've never been and don't know anyone? Where is the place where I belong, where I have been placed, which I was created to care for? Sometimes I feel desolate that I will never really have such a place in the way the Lakota do. Thanks again for the question. -- Carl It's been a chilly winter so far. For the second year in a row, the Meyer family visited us in mid-December after Carl's brothers finished with classes. Last year we went hiking in the Badlands in t-shirts on a warm sunny December day. This year we went for short walks in the snow-drifted backyard with scarves wrapped tightly around our faces and long underwear on. Many of our neighbors are running low to empty on their propane tanks. Cold temperatures bring hardships for many people here. Please keep the people of Pine Ridge reservation in your prayers as they find ways to stay warm this winter. We continue to assist some elders in the community with firewood, but what we can do is very small in comparison with the need. This fall we both completed Lakota Language III at the Kyle College Center, as well as a Lakota conversation class arranged separately through a community member from Wounded Knee. I attempted substitute teaching once more at the Porcupine School, this time with the kindergarten class. Whew! Carl has continued as treasurer for the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity. We have also continued participating in Wowasake Ikikcupi, a local action and education group concerned with governance issues. And so on. Highlights from our summer and fall: JULY Unite to Fight We supported and participated in the 4th Unite to Fight anti-oppression training held at Kiza Park in Manderson, South Dakota. 4th OLN Discernment Meeting (The first 3 took place in Rapid City, where 10 people from different parts of MCC came together to look at the relationship between the Oglala Lakota Nation Unit and the MCC structure.) We ended our last update with preparations for the fourth OLN Discernment meeting, which was held here on the reservation in the town of Kyle. There were close to 20 participants -- most were staff and board from the MCC Central States region. We enjoyed our time with a small group that came early to meet with some of our partners, see some of the reservation, and hear more about our work. At the meeting, the Discernment team presented our Discernment Framework document, which outlined a direction and possible actions for change for MCC Central States and the OLN Unit. The whole group affirmed the direction outlined in the document and agreed that the OLN Unit should be transferred back to MCC Central States. Visions of long-term stability for the OLN MCC Unit are starting to appear on the horizon... Hurray! SEPTEMBER Another Sermon Attempt On our visit home to Seattle, we made our second attempt at a sermon on our learnings from our work here. Let us know if you want a copy. Black Hills Bike-Hike We were asked by Edie Tschetter, MCC staff in Freeman, SD, to participate in this year's Bike & Hike MCC fundraiser in the Black Hills. During the Discernment Process, Edie decided that if MCC was going to have a fundraiser in the stolen Black Hills, at least the money raised should be designated for the Oglala Lakota Nation Unit. So we helped out with evening educational activities and also got in some great fall hiking (including one particularly adventuresome day with thriving fields of poison ivy, a buffalo we unwittingly roused from his nap charging past us and leading us down the trail, and then the trail itself mysteriously disappearing into a trackless river gorge). A Star Quilt for Cindy Sheehan We traveled with a group of 8 others from the reservation to the Sept 24 anti-war rally in DC to honor Cindy Sheehan with a star quilt. Richard Iron Cloud, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) representative on Pine Ridge, wanted to honor Cindy Sheehan in a traditional Lakota way for her courage in taking a stand as a mother. He collected signatures on the quilt and messages of support for Cindy from people all over the reservation. We partnered with AFSC and Lakota Action Network to make the trip possible. On our way we stayed over one night at Goshen College, where the group made a presentation and raised some funds for the trip. MCC's new executive director (Robb Davis) was able to attend the Goshen presentation - we met him there for the first time, and have enjoyed working with him since. In DC, the group was invited to be part of the lead contingent for the march, although thanks to some confusion and a larger-than-expected crowd, the lead contingent marched somewhere in the middle. After the march our delegation made a powerful presentation of the quilt to Cindy Sheehan on the main stage - a refreshing change from loud and repetitive sound bites. Most of the front row of the crowd was moved to tears. Our neighbor Nick Tilsen also gave a short but powerful speech at the rally later in the evening. Central States Board Meeting In late September we traveled to the Central States board meeting to help bring the Discernment process to the entire board. Our Discernment group had 3 full hours on the agenda, and the board strongly affirmed our process and the Discernment Framework. The board agreed to make MCC Central States the new home for our program, with commitments to flexibility, to continued learning and openness to change, and to following the lead of our partners. OCTOBER Black Hills Action Camp I (Carl) spent a good portion of October planning for the Black Hills Action Camp, which took place near the end of that month. The Camp came together through the partnership of Owe Aku, Lakota Action Network, American Friends Service Committee, the Ruckus Society, and MCC. There were close to 60 participants; most local, but a number of Native young people came from as far away as Vancouver Island to attend. The training focused on direct action strategies to work against military recruitment on the reservation and to oppose a new bar near Bear Butte. Bear Butte is a sacred site in the Black Hills where Native people from a number of Nations go to fast and pray. The nearest town is Sturgis, which hosts the largest motorcycle rally in the country every August. To capitalize on the bike rally traffic, an out-of-state businessman plans to build a new biker bar near the Butte. Ironically, he originally planned to name the bar "Sacred Ground" and to build an 80-ft statue of a Native person outside the bar. He has since dropped the name, but still plans to build the bar. The people we work with do not want more bars built near their place of worship and prayer. NOVEMBER Discernment Follow-up Meeting After the Action Camp, we got busy preparing for a follow-up meeting from the Discernment process planned for mid-November. We needed to clarify our new relationship with Central States, and we wanted to include input from the community. In addition to members of the local community, the meeting included Robb Davis, new MCC director; John Stoesz, new director of MCC Central States; Leia Lawrence, MCC Central States human resources and service program coordinator; Harley Eagle, our predecessor, co-director of MCC's anti-racism program, and the co-coordinator of MCC Canada's aboriginal work; and Ruth Yellow Hawk, the facilitator for our Discernment process. The meetings were long and intense. We had lots more people show up from the community than we had expected, including some that we hadn't met previously. We were pleased that our group was able to create a positive environment for discussion where everyone had an opportunity to share their thoughts. And we were grateful that we had hired a friend to cater the food!! The meeting went long hours and we were exhausted afterwards, but we came out of it with a clearer sense of next steps for our work here and a lot of hope for a positive new beginning in our unit's relationship with Central States and the whole of MCC. We felt a lot of support, excitement, and understanding from our partners and from the MCCers who came from Kansas and Pennsylvania for the meetings. We are excited that Leia Lawrence (in the Newton, Kansas office) will be our new contact person with MCC. We are already enjoying working with her, and we are relieved that she has been taking on a significant support role for our unit, especially in navigating MCC bureaucracies and advocating for our program. Thanksgiving in Freeman Over Thanksgiving weekend, we led a Sunday School class at Salem-Zion Mennonite Church in Freeman. We had also scheduled a presentation for Monday morning chapel at the Freeman Academy, but that was thoroughly snowed out as we were thoroughly snowed in with my aunt & grandparents in Sioux Falls until they opened the interstate Tuesday afternoon. We just made it home before the interstate was closed again on Wednesday. It's been a wild winter here. NEXT STEPS MCC Circle for Accountability After our meeting in November and many discussions with friends and partners, we are now more clearly articulating our need for a formal accountability group in the community, which we are tentatively calling the MCC Circle at the suggestion of a partner. We are hoping that the MCC Circle will, 1) hold our invitation to the community as well as the power to revoke it, 2) set direction for MCC's work here, 3) receive reports from us on what we have been doing with MCC's time & money, 4) help MCC with community relations. We have a tentative date set in February for a meeting to form this group. In the past we've been hesitant to ask this much of our already busy partners, but at this point we feel that a group like this is necessary for MCC's work here to continue in a good way. Please be thinking of us as we try to bring this group together. MCC Central States Young People's Gathering There's a quality collection of our peers working in MCC Central States these days. The group has lots of passion and energy, and the rest of Central States has seen the potential benefit of putting all that passion and energy together in San Antonio for a gathering this January. We're looking forward to that as a grand old time of fun and rejuvenation, as well as sharing each others' vision and passion from where each of us sits in MCC. We always love hearing from you, and we really appreciate it when you take the time to read our letters. You all mean so much to us -- your support, prayers, & phone calls sustain us regularly. Have a Happy Christmas and Very Merry New Year, or something along those lines... Love, Karissa & Carl
