Don't you just get a warm, fuzzy feeling from this sign?
This was our first outdoor event. That led to a whole lot more excitement and bustle than I needed first thing in the morning, but ultimately went off pretty much flawlessly. The school there was midway through its renovation into a museum, and it lacked things like, oh, electricity. So, we found an electricity (just the one lonely little electron, but he was a trooper), and turned their nicely manicured lawn into a veritable deathtrap of hidden extension cords. All of my extension cords (3 of them) got used up trying to get power into one of the buildings, and we had to use one of our lifelines to get a local to bring about 10 more cords.
Nevada, like expected, is mostly brown and tan, and very dry. In a few select areas, however, little rivers run – the riot of growth exploding away from the water is stunning. Rich greens of grasses and trees bleed away from the rivers as far as they can stretch, then fade back to the flat tan of the rest of landscape. Life thrives where it can.
It’s also, you know, sunny. I burned to a crisp, prompting the rest of the group to spend the next two days teasing me about becoming a red man. If any word of protest escaped my lips about the pain, someone was bound to shake their head and solemnly declare that “forced assimilation” always hurts.
As always, see the White Bison site for a more complete report. One thing that stuck out for me, however, was a story about punishment. If you did something wrong, you had a three-part punishment. First, you dig a trench. Then, you haul water to fill up the trench. Finally, you walk back and forth in the wet trench all night long. Nevada nights are cold. The speaker’s father underwent this punishment; he marched back and forth all night next to a fellow student who died of pneumonia a few days later.
I think people need to know how much anger is running through these communities. Don says that the alcohol and drug abuses that are so common are just a symptom of the real problem; there’s so much resentment just below the surface it’s frightening.
Imagine if the trench story was at a military training camp. There’d be an investigation, a scandal, a bunch of newspaper articles. Imagine it took place at ANY OTHER SCHOOL in the nation. The school would be shut down immediately: these are the only schools at any point in history that are allowed to simply ignore student deaths.
Or, in some cases, actively encourage student deaths. Marlin talked about his grandmother; when she was 8 years old, her best friend was killed by a nun in front of the student body to set an example. In the nun’s defense, she probably didn’t mean to actually kill the little girl. In the defense of all that is good and decent in this world, however, killing 8-year-olds is so far beyond damnable that, even if some portion was accidentally, this still qualifies as an all-out atrocity. All the little girls in the school watched their friend die, “to set an example.”
To set an example.
Wouldn’t you be angry? How could you possibly manage to not pass that anger on to your children?
It’s possible to end the pain; but it’s unbelievably hard, and it’s one of the things White Bison is trying to teach people now. Please pray for them.
This was another difficult stop, as Stewart is half-way through rennovation to become a commemorative museum. The coordinator has spent years getting the place preserved and is now on the cusp of being able to show the world the amazing piece of history she has saved. I think just about everything we said was a surprise for her, and not a pleasant one, either. She looked pretty bowled over by the end of the day. Some of the people showed up with aching hearts, and others showed up ready to wave their flags and cheer. Those goals don't mix together well.
That's not to say that both aren't, to a degree, right. Some good came out of some of the schools. They weren't all consistently, with no exceptions, hellish. The problem is how often the worst is ignored, and how often it's not even known about.
I feel we're doing good work, and necessary work, but it's harder to get excited when you leave behind someone completely dispirited.
On an unrelated note, the closest hotel we could find wasn't in Carson City, it was in Elko -- which is, apparently, in Japan.
0 comments:
Post a Comment