Sinte Gleska University Reclaims Land from Loneliness.
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| Title: | Sinte Gleska University Reclaims Land from Loneliness. |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Crazy Bull, Cheryl |
| Source: | Tribal College Journal. Win 2000 13(2):10-14. |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 5 |
| Publication Date: | 2000 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Evaluative |
| Descriptors: | Agricultural Skills, American Indian Education, American Indian Reservations, Animal Husbandry, Conservation (Environment), Higher Education, School Community Relationship, Tribally Controlled Education |
| ISSN: | 1052-5505 |
| Abstract: | Sinte Gleska University's (SGU) model for community development includes transformation of an old boarding school site, community-based collaborations in gardening and nutrition, and a bison restoration project. Tribal members learn to work with the land in harmony with tribal stewardship models as well as Western land use and agricultural strategies. (PGS) |
| Entry Date: | 2001 |
| Accession Number: | EJ620242 |
| Database: | ERIC |
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| FullText | Text: Availability: 1 Value: <anid>AN0003871915;5PG01DEC.00;2000Dec14.19:29;v4.1</anid> <title id="AN0003871915-1">SINTE GLESKA UNIVERSITY RECLAIMS LAND FROM LONELINESS </title> <p>Land has its own story to tell. It speaks of the joyful experiences of human beings, animals, and plants. It tells of blood that has spilled, tears that have fallen, and broken bodies that have been laid to rest. This is the story of a piece of land that once was the site of the most troubling of tribal educational experiences -- the boarding school. Now Sinte Gleska University is transforming that land into a model of tribal land use. </p> <p>Sicangu Lakota people are no different from other tribal people in their desire to maintain close ties with the land, to protect the land, to nurture it, to hold it for future generations. The land is our relative -- perhaps called mother, perhaps grandmother. Without land, tribal people lose their identity. The land along with language, spiritual beliefs, and social systems distinguish tribal people from others. The founders of Sinte Gleska University (SGU) knew that a healthy, restored tribal nation depended on the ability of people to spiritually and physically reclaim their lands and the land stewardship philosophy that sustained the nation for generations. With this vision at its heart, our students, board, and staff have diligently pursued land as place -- a place where the people are fully alive as Lakota. </p> <p>For many generations the ancestors of today's Sicangu Lakota camped next to what is now Antelope Creek on the Rosebud Reservation in south central South Dakota. Antelope Creek is an oasis for people on the many journeys across the Northern Plains. A tributary of the Little White River, Antelope Creek weaves its way through a region where water and trees can be many miles apart -- a journey that may have taken hours if not days in the time of our ancestors. </p> <p>Standing on the edge of Antelope Lake, a man-made reservoir filled by Antelope Creek, one can imagine our relatives setting up camp in the shade of trees along the creek bank. In the south are buttes creating a buffer against the warm southern winds. To the north, east, and west are rolling hills. It is many more miles to other bodies of water and the trees and bushes that provide shade and fruit. </p> <p>When the Rosebud Reservation was created in the latter part of the 19th century, many Sicangu people remained on the lands near Antelope Creek establishing what is now the largest tribal community, Antelope. Lands near the creek served as a site for the Rosebud Boarding School, a federally operated school serving residents of the Rosebud and surrounding reservations from the 1890s until the late 1960s. Hundreds of young people spent their most vulnerable years at the boarding school, living for months and sometimes years away from home. Boarding schools separated children from the security of extended families and the tribal upbringing to which they were entitled. At boarding school, children learned the skills that would serve them in white society. It is easy to imagine these children walking on this land, hurrying from their dorm rooms to classrooms, to their work in the barns and in the gardens. </p> <p>My father, Elmer Crazy Bull, went to school there. He arrived at the tender age of ten speaking only Lakota. He came from a home where he was a doted-on eldest grandchild, sheltered from formal education by his grandmother for as long as she could protect him. He left eight years later. Upon his graduation, he and his father visited the Bureau of Indian Affairs office where it was decided he would change his name in order to go to college. The very grandfather who raised him, Felix Crazy Bull, signed the tribal court order changing his name to Compton. After he died, my mother gave me a United States history book that he had. In his book, Native people are referred to as savage red men living in slum-like conditions where women and children are abused. When I visit the land that was once the boarding school site, I think of him and what it means to reclaim the land as the place of our hearts. </p> <p>Our origin story tells us that the blood of the First Creation, which is blue, runs through the land and covers the land -- the water and the air. Natural laws such as respect, generosity, and reciprocity are best epitomized in our relationship with the land. Treat the land with respect, and it will reward you with abundance. Our grandmothers and grandfathers provided for their families and ensured the continuity of our tribe by gathering wild fruits and vegetables from the land and by hunting and trapping the animals placed there by creation to sustain our food needs. </p> <p>However, a cruel history of land sales, fractionalization of land, and environmental abuse took its toll on tribal members' understanding and use of land. It has distorted our understanding of land's place in tribal philosophy, as reflected in our origin story. As the result of poor economic and social conditions, non-Indians have most often used the land, and tribal citizens have become increasingly disenfranchised from it. Approximately three-fourths of available lands are in the hands of non-Native operators, according to a Sicangu Policy Institute commissioned paper, Land Use, Land Management and Land Policy on the Rosebud Reservation by Harold Compton of the Rosebud Agency Bureau of Indian Affairs. </p> <p>Fractionalization has prevented families from using land where our ancestors once built their homes, dug their gardens, and grazed their cattle and horses. Fractionalization occurs as land is distributed among heirs using extended family relationships. For example, one 160-acre tract of land may eventually have 100 or more heirs, all descendents of the original land holder either through blood or marriage. Fractionalization destroys the ability of heirs to productively use land. Even communally owned land has been primarily leased to non-Native ranchers and farmers. </p> <p>At Sinte Gleska University (SGU), President Lionel Bordeaux believes that to reclaim our birthright to the land, we must show tribal members how to work with the land, demonstrating its use with tribal models that also incorporate Western land use and agricultural strategies. When Congress gave them land grant status in 1994, tribal colleges and universities throughout the United States began or expanded land-related degree programs and developed community based models of land use. </p> <p>SGU already had a model for community development, the institute, in place as a strategy for organizing special initiatives. The university had established the Land and Natural Resources Institute along with the Institute on Economic Development to consolidate efforts to build community development programs. Eventually these became the Sicangu Policy Institute. </p> <p>At the same time as land grant legislation was being enacted, supporters of SGU offered financial assistance toward establishing a new campus, expanding beyond the site near Mission, S.D. The planning team considered several locations on the reservation. President Bordeaux transformed their work by remembering an old friend saying that the university should take over the old boarding school site -- they should make something good out of a place that had been lonely and often terrifying for many. Thus the process of reclamation began through campus planning, legislation, and policy and program development. Reclaiming this land quickly became the natural path for the university to take toward its goal of restoring tribal use of land. The land to the south and east of the boarding school site belonged to the tribe. Through the efforts of students, staff, and community leaders, nearly 1,600 acres were allocated to the university for its use, including the boarding school site. </p> <p>At the boarding school site, the university and its supporters have constructed significant new facilities, including the cultural center, student housing, a technology building, and the new multipurpose building. Most importantly, a variety of exciting reclamation projects ranging from gardening to buffalo raising are situated on adjacent land. Each of these projects is tied directly or indirectly to the restoration of tribal land use projects and the education of the Sicangu Lakota. </p> <hd id="AN0003871915-2"> Land Curriculum Project </hd> <p>The smiles of young children and the kind-hearted support of the elderly are the rewards experienced by Phyllis White Shield as she oversees SGU's land curriculum project. This collaborative effort of SGU and the Rosebud Sioux Tribal Land Enterprise is developing community and school educational resources to restore a tribal land ethic among the Lakota. This land ethic is founded on an understanding of land philosophy, history, use, and ecological stewardship. Community-based collaborations in gardening and nutrition create a framework for curriculum standards and lessons. </p> <p>Each fall, youngsters from the Head Start Centers come to the one-acre garden at the Antelope Lake Campus site to pick pumpkins. A community garden at the White River Senior Citizens Center brings children and the elderly together to grow their own food. </p> <hd id="AN0003871915-3"> Bison Restoration Project </hd> <p>Visitors to the SGU buffalo pasture are treated to seeing over 40 buffalo gathered in the shelter of trees in the early morning light. The buffalo move in a lazy circle around the pasture feeding on the natural grasses of the land. They are a model for extended family relationships and good land use. The dominant bull in the herd towers over six feet tall. It is hard to tell his exact height from the distance that visitors must keep. </p> <p>Tom Frederick manages the herd with plans to build the university's capacity to offer bison management courses and to create auxiliary enterprises including hide tanning and specialty meat sales. His experience with natural resource management, farming, and ranching ensures that the university uses a holistic, tribally appropriate approach in the care and development of the bison herd. </p> <hd id="AN0003871915-4"> Organic Farm Project </hd> <p>In the early years of the reservation, the federal government undertook many efforts to persuade Native men to become farmers, distributing farm equipment and seeds. Although the Lakota quickly adapted to the concept of subsistence gardening to provide food for their extended families, successful, larger-scale farming was an elusive goal. As part of his agricultural services project, Tom Frederick has also begun working with 300 acres of farmland to create a five year crop rotation system of corn, cane, millet, beans, and sunflowers. Organic methods will be used to replicate tribal ecological practices of land stewardship and reciprocity. </p> <hd id="AN0003871915-5"> Sicangu Policy Institute </hd> <p>Established in 1997 through a W.K. Kellogg Foundation Capturing the Dream grant, the institute developed the first land and natural resources implementation plan for the university to guide implementation of land grant status. James Rattling Leaf, Land and Natural Resource Developer, and other staff at the institute have expanded SGU's work in the areas of global imaging systems (GIS), science projects, weather/climate studies, environmental protection, and integrated resource management. Collaboration with various tribal programs and area schools ensures widespread dissemination of SGU's initiatives. </p> <hd id="AN0003871915-6"> Cultural Resource Management </hd> <p>The land holds the secrets and artifacts of our past. It is full of sacred sites where ceremonies and spiritual events occur. It also contains the fruits, herbs, plants, and animals that have sustained our lives for generations by providing us with food and medicine. These cultural resources must be protected and properly managed. SGU is training a cadre of cultural resource managers that is equipped to identify and manage cultural resources. Coursework and field based experiences are designed to meet the needs of the local community, such as identifying cultural resources for the Mni Wiconi Rural Water Project, a large water project on the Rosebud and Pine Ridge Reservations also serving several South Dakota counties. </p> <hd id="AN0003871915-7"> Animal Science Project </hd> <p>Recently SGU acquired a 160-acre ranch where Lisa Colombe Simon, an animal science instructor and researcher, is overseeing the establishment of a working ranch run by students and interns. In addition, she is the key person teaching youth horsemanship throughout the communities. Children and youth experience the excitement and awe of caring for and riding horses. They are taught the importance of caring for animals and making the sacred connection between human beings and the horse nation. </p> <p>Sinte Gleska University's staff and students are building the foundation for a healthy tribal nation by demonstrating how the land can be restored to its central place in tribal life using traditional knowledge and contemporary practices. When I am standing by Antelope Lake, seeing all that has happened there and thinking of what the future promises, I remember my dad and all the other people who spent their childhood away from their families in schools scattered throughout the United States. I think they look with pride upon what is happening on this land where loneliness and loss once reigned. It is their strength and help from across the spirit world that has made this reclamation possible. </p> <p>PHOTO (COLOR): Our origin story tells us that the blood of the First Creation, which is blue, runs through the land and covers the land. Photo of Antelope Lake by Peter Kerze </p> <p>PHOTO (BLACK &amp; WHITE): Hundreds of young people spent their most vulnerable years at the Rosebud Boarding School. Photo courtesy of the Sicangu Heritage Center at Sinte Gleska University </p> <p>PHOTO (BLACK &amp; WHITE): Jay Bear Heels of the Rosebud Sioux Headstart enjoys her pumpkin. Photo by Phyllis White Shield </p> <aug> <p>By Cheryl Crazy Bull </p> <p></p> <p>Cheryl Crazy Bull, Sicangu Lakota, currently serves as Chief Educational Officer of St. Francis Indian School on the Rosebud Reservation. She is a member of the SGU Board of Regents. Cheryl's dad, Elmer Compton (1921 -1987), who inspired this story, worked for land operations and realty for the Rosebud Agency Bureau of Indian Affairs and was the first Rosebud tribal member to serve as agency superintendent. </p> </aug> |
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