Day Five

Day Five ending location: Laramie, WY
Total miles traveled as of Day Five: 2380

I woke up in Gillette, WY and was having a hard time getting up. It probably didn’t help that I was a bit wired the night before and didn’t get to sleep until 5am. So waking up at 9am didn’t go so well, but I still managed to wake up and do some updates on the blog.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but I got a little bit of a later start than I had intended. After showering and doing some research on sites in South Dakota, I managed to leave Gillette by about noon. Ugh.

My plan was to stop at Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, then head to Mt Rushmore and then the Crazy Horse memorial. I decided not to go to the Pine Ridge Reservation – I wanted to stop by, but I saw that there wasn’t really a there to go to. Plus, with the level of poverty that is present on that particular reservation, I felt that being an obvious tourist was disrespectful.

The whole day produced mixed feelings for me. Much of the land that I went to had been not just important to native tribes (the Oglala, the Sioux, the Lakota), they were sacred lands. To be visiting monuments in these places felt odd – I wanted to be respectful of the land and of the history, but at the same time, I was making the decision to visit.

This may sound very unpatriotic (especially since this will be posted on July 4th), but I honestly disliked Mt. Rushmore. Of the three monuments, this one felt the most out of place with the surrounding environment and with the history of the area. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an impressive monument and the carvings are really cool, but the whole parking garage, the pavilion, the museum, etc. are such an eyesore in comparison to the Black Hills National Forest. What gets me more than anything, though, is the knowledge that this land is so important to the tribes that were here first. And then in the late 1800s when gold was discovered in the Black Hills, the Lakota were moved against their will to other parts of South Dakota. So for there to be a monument to these four influential presidents in the middle of this land doesn’t feel right, especially since one of the accomplishments that is highlighted is the expansion of the US land via the Louisiana Purchase which led directly to the displacement of the Native Americans.

The day really just produced a lot of disappointment with our past and present treatment of Native Americans. As I was researching the Pine Ridge Reservation, I was reminded of something I read in On The Rez by Ian Frazier which had to do with the town of White Clay, Nebraska, just across the border from the reservation in South Dakota on disputed land. The village has a population of 14 people, but four liquor stores. So while the tribe attempts to work on the problem of alcoholism, the surrounding area profits from it. This site is much clearer than I could be.

I have found myself trying to come up with an historical parallel to how we have treated the Native Americans and how we continue to treat them overall and I am at a loss. I think about Germany and their national guilt associated with the Holocaust. At some point, you would think that our national conscience would lead us to make amends or at least stop overtly screwing over the people who we displaced.