white stars

There's a scene in Tolkien's Return of the King where Sam and Frodo are resting at the foot of Mount Doom (I think, it's been a while I read it), in the dark and cold, and wishing they were back in the lush, green Shire. Sam looks up and sees a white star, and tells Frodo to have hope--somewhere in the high heavens a light is shining.

As dorky as a reference that may be, I feel like these past two days--at our second annual Housing and Economic Development Summit--have shown me many white stars in what seemed at first to be a desperately bureaucratic tangle of misplaced jurisdictions and varied levels of incompetence. I met Bret of Windpower by Bret, who built a $400 wind turbine that produces 700 watts of energy out of a used car engine and David and Calvin of Village Earth, who work on the ground helping people consolidate their land and escape the leasing system (read more here). Bret, who blew in on a rickety blue truck with a canoe strapped to the top with some sketchy looking knots, has lived off the grid for 8 years, even growing and making his own biodiesel. I finally met Henry Red Cloud, direct descendant of Chief Red Cloud, who founded Red Cloud Renewable Energy Center and produces solar energy heaters on the rez, and some folks from Cal-Earth who are building an eco-dome out near Wounded Knee. Whenever I hear about something like Cal-Earth, or Rosebud Log Homes, I wonder why we still do things the inefficient, unsustainable, wasteful way.

Seeing a solar panel on a tipi and dancers in full wacipi (powwow) regalia texting on cell phones--as well as people selling indian tacos out of a car on the side of the grounds--makes me happy too. I don't believe in static culture. Talking to some of the people working for housing made me realize also that this wayward governance is now part of the culture, too. People expect only delays and broken promises from the federal and tribal government--but that's just a thin backdrop to living their lives, making community, shooting the breeze while watching the beautiful black hills.



I talked to Tony (not pictured below; but they did include the vets who were present in the Grand Entry to the wacipi), a Vietnam vet, for a while by our powdered Powerade coolers. I later saw him walking down the main road leading to Porcupine (a happenin town of 127 houses, one small gas pump next to a tiny store selling coffee brewed in a 20 cup glass pot, and a clinic). My first inclination was to feel indignant--this man fought in an unjust war for a country that tries to erase the memory of his people, and he has to walk in the hot sun for miles to get to his old trailer. But he wasn't broken. He wasn't bitter. In our 20 minute conversation, he probably smiled more than I saw some of our bored, dehydrated volunteers smile (though many of them have been really great and good spirited) all day. Someone shoot me if I say something about the stolidness of Lakota nature or the strength and depth of their spiritual souls--but I guess it's important to remember that poverty doesn't define someone, and I've got to let my big picture analysis live side by side with little person realities.

I can't say enough about the sky. Yesterday, when I walked outside after dinner, there was a storm sweeping slowly in from the west (I think it was west at least). We have such a wide view of the sky that we could watch these large expansive storm clouds push their way towards us. I've never seen such bright and insistent lightning. I walked to the top of the hill behind Re-Member and watched the clouds slipping forward, thundering and raining all the way, lifting up eventually to let the setting sun light up the horizon.

I don't have a picture of the storm (we can't go back into the building if the volunteers are having a program) but I have some of a sunset I took my first week here.



Tomorrow I go to a community garden, started by one of Re-Member's staff members--I am super excited. And now, for the first time in years, I'm going to bed before 10pm.

Thanks to everyone who's written me--I'm working on writing everyone back. :)