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March 31, 2004 Hello Everyone, Since we have been aiming to write to you all at least once a month, and since it is (ahem) the last day of March and we haven't written yet, we figured we'd better write today. So here's the March 2004 scoop from the MCC Oglala Lakota Nation Unit. Near the end of February, we attended the Defenders of the Black Hills' wopila (thank you) celebration. As we mentioned in our last update, Defenders recently blocked the construction of a shooting range near Bear Butte which would have desecrated a sacred prayer site for the Lakota people. The Sturgis business group planning the shooting range was funding the project with a HUD (Housing and Urban Development) Community Development Block Grant. CDBG grants are intended to benefit the state's poorest communities, not to provide recreation for sport shooters. HUD withdrew the funding after Defenders filed a lawsuit, so for now, plans to build the shooting range have been dropped. Defenders have already made plans for a strategy meeting about longer-term protection for Bear Butte. The wopila began with a prayer ceremony of thanksgiving for the protection of Bear Butte, attended by about a hundred Lakota, Cheyenne (some traveling all the way from Oklahoma), Arapaho, and other allies. After the ceremony, some 400 people attended a meal and an honoring of the many people who helped in the struggle. We felt very privileged to be able to take part in that event. We've continued to attend regular Defenders meetings and are excited about working with this grassroots organization. In mid-March, we hosted 4 MCC women: our supervisor and her administrative assistant from MCC US Peace and Justice Ministries, and two women from MCC Central States - the Northern Tier associate from Freeman, SD and the Peace and Justice staffperson from the office in Newton, KS. I (Karissa) would say that Carl did a commendable job of holding his own among such an intense group of amazing women. We had some good, serious conversations about the future of this unit as well as plenty of good laughs. They were here for 2 days and stayed one night in our home. Last week we took advantage of some beautiful 70-degree weather and took off for a few days in the eastern part of the state. We spent some time with my (Karissa's) grandparents and one of my aunts and her children on the family farm near Freeman. It was good to see some familiar faces and places again for a change. We also stopped by the MCC office in Freeman and attended a Defenders' meeting held in Huron, also on the Eastern side of the state. This month in the office, we've been busy preparing and distributing our Partners in Employment applications. Partners in Employment (PIE) is a program where we provide grants to local partner organizations to help them hire a Lakota college student for the summer. The idea is not only to provide employment, but to also support the work of our partner organizations and help the workers develop leadership and employment skills while strengthening ties to their home community. We've continued to struggle with discernment on how to respond to folks who drop by asking for emergency assistance. We hope we're learning better how to be practical about what we can help with and to respond respectfully to all requests, but it's been tough. Between this and the PIE applications, we're a bit exhausted from making decisions about distributing the relatively small amount of money we have in our budget. It feels like just a drop in the bucket in a place where there are so few jobs and resources. I (Carl) also spend some time on website help for two partner organizations. Defenders' site is at http://www.defendblackhills.org (not much of my work in that one yet), and the Lakota Action Network is at http://www.lakotaaction.net. LAN, a youth organization, is another grassroots group we're excited about partnering with. The executive director is just about our age and lives right over the hill - we've been really glad to have a neighbor we connect with so well. (Karissa speaking - I've continued to observe the irony in the fact that I'm the only one of us who's gone through a graduation, and yet Carl's skills always seem to be in higher demand wherever we go. The moral of the story? Be a computer nerd, not an econ major). This month we'll be traveling to Akron, PA from the 20th to the 29th for our General Orientation to MCC, in case any of you are trying to reach us. If you folks have any questions that you'd like us to answer in our next update, you can send them to "Dear Carlissa" PO Box 120, Porcupine, SD 57772, or just e-mail us. We've put up more pictures at a new address: www.goshen.edu/~carljm/tour They're in the form of a tour of our trailer, so if you have a little time to kill you could check it out. If anyone's got too much spring rain, you can mail some to us - we're in dire need of some more water in this dry landscape. Blessings to everyone! Karissa & Carl
