Dear Secretary Jewell:
Back at the end
of June, I came across a news article about remarks you made at the National
Congress of American Indians in Reno. I
was greatly heartened by the immense amount of support you seek to give to the
various tribes in helping improve their current circumstances. As I read this news article, I was taken back to an experience I had recently with Native American culture. At the beginning of March, during the first week of my Spring Break at Valparaiso University, I went with a group of 12 college students and 4 chaperones from St. Teresa of Avila, the Roman Catholic Student Center at ValpU, on a service/mission trip to St. Augustine Mission in northeastern Nebraska. It is located in Winnebago, on the reservation of the same name, and serves the people of both the Winnebago and Omaha Reservations. The mission ties together four different churches in the local area, on both reservations, and there is a parochial school at St. Augustine. St. Teresa's had formed a sister parish relationship with St. Augustine a couple years before we went on this trip.
During our week there, we engaged in service work, tending to various projects at St. Augustine, and a nearby parish, St. Joseph, in Walthill. These projects included cleaning churches, painting a room in the St. Augustine church, sorting clothing donations, reorganizing storage spaces (including a food pantry), and doing demolition work. We even spent time with the students in the classrooms at St. Augustine school. We also engaged in cultural immersion activities, getting to know the people there and their experiences.
We were fortunate enough to be there on the Feast Day of St. Katharine Drexel, the nun who founded this mission back in the early 20th Century. (Notably, this is one of a few sites in the United States associated with a Roman Catholic saint.) There were special elements incorporated into the Mass that Sunday morning to celebrate her and the mission, songs in the native languages, and even a communal buffet meal afterwards. Later that day, a man who works at the school, Dwight, took us on a tour of both reservations, explaining aspects of the Omaha and Winnebago cultures, as well as the lifestyle of the people there, often fraught with restrictions laid on by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The joke is that BIA really stands for “Bossing Indians Around”. Indeed, the people on the reservations aren’t even allowed to sell and buy land, as they must go through the BIA to handle those transactions for them. At one point during the week, one person in our group, when he came across a BIA employee, asked him why the BIA even exists.
We also saw that the people there live a dilapidated lifestyle. They don’t live in the best homes, and economic opportunities for them are limited. This is especially the case on the Omaha Reservation, whose leadership has been corrupted by nepotism. The Winnebago have fared better, as they have invested funds into businesses there. The public schools there are lacking in quality. Fortunately, St. Augustine’s school provides an excellent curriculum for its students that helps them excel. They even provide instruction in the Ho-Chunk language, and I was fortunate enough to sit in on a Ho-Chunk language class. This is definitely a positive change as the mission seeks to affirm the culture, whereas before, the mission sought to stamp out the culture, even as part of the US government’s efforts to do so, and we heard some stories about the abuses that occurred as a result. Yet the school only provides the students such an excellent education through 8th grade. At that point, the families have the tough decision to make to either send them to the nearby public high school, which doesn’t provide them with as high-quality an education, or to a parochial high school miles away, which is quite an investment. Even for those youths who excel, they often end up leaving the reservation to engage their high level of education and skills elsewhere, instead of investing it back in their communities, so that there is a brain-drain on the reservation.
Yet there is hope, especially in the work that the St. Augustine Mission does to support the culture, and to provide a superior education for its students. There are even people who take the initiative to preserve their own culture, like Dwight, and others we met, like the college student who helps teach the Ho-Chunk language as a teacher's aide. We as a group represented hope, because we devoted a portion of our Spring Break to go there, taking care of various tasks that needed to be done, and being present to the people there, who were so appreciative of our presence, and willing to share with us on such a deep level. We were even invited to participate in the Sweat Lodge ceremony, which is one part of our week that stands out so profoundly in my mind.
I hope that as you make efforts to improve the lives of aboriginal Native Americans that you keep in mind the good works being done by St. Augustine to support the local culture, and even of our group that made the point to go there and experience the culture. Hopefully more people will make the point to really get to know aboriginal Americans and their rich cultures.
I thank you for your commitment to these people. Indeed, it was especially notable when you said, “I can't reverse all of that in a four-year period of time, but I can make important progress,” speaking of the federal government’s imperfect track record of fulfilling promises to the Native Americans. We can’t do everything, but we can do something. We can lay a foundation that will lead to greater things for the aboriginal Americans.
This all makes me think of a monument being built to honor Crazy Horse in South Dakota. It is literally being carved out of an entire mountain. When finished, the monument will show Crazy Horse riding a horse. Right now, only the face is complete, with the part of the mountain where the arm will extend out having been carved away. The task ahead is daunting, and long from being complete. But there is a start, upon which a great finished product will emerge. I hope that this serves as a metaphor to spur us on in the work to make whole again the lives of the aboriginal Americans. The tide is beginning to turn to support them. Let us be spurred on in the work ahead of us, persevering to support the rich culture of the First Nations peoples.
Sincerely,
Paul Rubio
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