That is almost a full mammoth skeleton. !!! Can you imagine? That was, seventy thousand years ago or so, a living, breathing, heaving, HUGE animal. It got caught in a small, warm lake, which happened to preserve over 70 skeletons (not all this complete). The things you find!
Of family week, I'll just say that I survived, and I've decided I only like kids 6 and under or over 15. Not sure what I'll do with my kids, if I have any, during those nine years.
Last Saturday, Re-Member participated in the annual Oglala Lakota Nation Parade. The staff, with our spiffy matching t-shirts, threw candy and toilet paper from our makeshift float, featuring a (non-functioning) outhouse, one of our many spectacular products.
Pine Ridge at its finest! I'm proud to say that I escaped from Re-Member every day of the powwow and circled that arbor quite a few times. Unfortunately I managed to forget my camera every time. Alas, I'll just have to come back someday.
So, I'm pondering:
about place. I've always felt caught between places, and never really let myself settle, mentally, in a place. This is a place where history has refused to die, and which people have pondered for generations. They were selling t-shirts with images of Sitting Bull and Red Cloud on them at the powwow. Your history, or at least the romanticized and martyrized version of it, is lurking at every corner. It seems odd to be living in a building with transitory volunteers who spend six days on the reservation, while meeting people who can trace their ancestry to a certain hill that is only a few miles away. My sense of time is becoming warped, and it makes this place feel heavier, laden with something that has already happened and something expected to happen at the same time.
My body is also attuning itself to this schedule. Time is approaching 10:30; I can tell because I can feel my limbs start drooping. I think it's time for some sleep.
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