This was a somewhat-unscheduled stop. It wasn't part of our original intinerary, certainly, and never even got added to the White Bison website. As I understand it, there was a strong request from Flandreau that we stop by; even if just for a moment. This gets routed through several proper channels before it reaches our ears (and it reaches my ears a day after everyone else's), and we're left with a sense of a "strong request" without much information about who or where it came from: the city council, a corp of volunteers, the school board, or a single lonely shut-in who thought he was ordering pizza over the phone.
So, we shifted course yet again and planned to stop by and maybe say a prayer or two before moving on and getting a good night's rest. Silly us. As we got closer and closer to the school, more and more information trickled in about the preparations that had been made and the expectations that the local coordinators had. And so we added an extra day's worth of ceremony to our docket and sadly watched our night's rest flutter away like a wounded sparrow. At least, I did -- the sparrow-thing, that is. Don and Marlin are fired up about being able to reach another community. Me, I just miss sleep.
As part of this juggling for Flandreau and Rapid City, one of our established stops -- Morris, Minnesota -- was forced off the list. Everyone felt pretty badly about this. We just can't do any more. We can't. Sorry.
Flandreau was a common location for Indian children from Minnesota. Moving them to schools in Minnestoa made it too easy for them to run home, but moving them cross-country was too expensive. Flandreau was the compromise, and a lot of Minnesotans were sent there. It also appears to have cleaned up its act some time ago -- or so they say -- and is a respectible educational institute now. This means the people with the most meaningful stories are now elders, and live in another state. Additionally, I suspect the coordinator "stacked the deck" and lined up a panel of speakers who all have close ties to the school; for example, it employs their children.
To give credence to the deck-stacking theory, the coordinator picked enough people to sit on the elders' panel that there was no time for open mic. Furthermore, one of the "elders" was younger than me; a recent graduate who had nothing of any interest to say: "Yeah, it was a good time. I learned a lot of stuff. It was good."
Caption: Flandreau was pretty awesome, I guess. Yeah.And so, a guy named Sid (Cid?) had a wonderful opening speech, Don gave his presentation with his usual levels of greatness, then we sat around for a few hours and listened to some canned statements about how great the school is and was and always has been.
Caption: Sid was great.It's the same old conundrum: we're not here to focus on the negative, or dredge up the worst of the past for no reason. Sparks of hope and levity are absolutely critical. But we're here to try to do healing work; why ask us to come at all if you claim to have nothing to forgive?
In sum, we learned that Flandreau is the best place in the world; for that we skipped Morris.
The one upside is that the walls of the cafeteria, where we were set up, were plastered with huge posters of hot women advertising milk. So, uh, that was a plus, I guess.
One last oddity: they didn't seem to want us to go in the front door, so we all entered in through the kitchens. They were standard industrial kitchens, which made for an odd entryway.
I slept a little the night before, so I'm less grumpy; I wouldn't say I'm 'perky' yet.
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