Dorothy, You're Not in Kansas Anymore

I am almost at the end of Week Two, here at Cankdeska Cikana Community College in the Spirit Lake Dakota Nation's reservation. Here are some photos of the college. The entrance:

The school is very proud of each of its accomplishments. Framed photos of students getting awards, traditional celebrations, and ground-breaking ceremonies line the hallways. Dakota words are next to English words, like ladies' room, nature center, and day care. You can find Dakota art,too, like this skin and Indian headdress. 

 

 The quilt is pretty (just in entrance area) but I don't think that this pattern comes from the Dakota people.

    Now for some photos of where we are staying, just to reassure family that it is as safe as I have been saying. This is Fort Totten, which really did used to be a fort to secure the area for white people. Then it became a boarding school for Indian kids who'd been taken from their families, often forcibly, and trained for assimilation. The Dakota were hunters and berry gatherers; the US government wanted them to be farmers. So at the boarding schools there were agricultural classes for the boys and home economics for the girls. The children were forbidden to speak their mother tongue. The fort has the old dormitories; 70 girls to a room. I get quite a dismal feeling from it. But just look at it...isn't it pretty? And to my kids: doesn't it remind you of the bungalow colonies we went to, with the green in the middle of all the buildings?
   Here is the front of the inn (to my parents: there are dead bolts on all the doors, and locks on the individual rooms).

 

   Now, for some North Dakota scenery, just to prove I really am here.You can't talk about Devil's Lake without pictures of the lake, so here are a few taken from the summit of Ski Jump Hill. The large rectangular building you see on the far side of the lake is the casino. In the foreground is part of the lake road with lots of trucks. Because of all the flooding here, there's an initiative to build up the roads which serve as levees. Devil's Lake has done this a couple of times, but the lake keeps flooding. This time around, the roads will be built 6 feet higher.

Note how roads go through the lake. Without these roads it would take ages to get from place to place.

Driving through the reservation, there are lots of hills and ponds, some cattle, horses, and crops. There are towns within the reservation. We are at Fort Totten, and we drove through Tokio. Mostly every place is poor--boarded-up windows, trailer homes, unpaved roads, and free-roaming reservation dogs--and there is a sprinkling of better-looking homes, as well.

This is the Boecan Dakota Presbyterian Church; the Catholic Church out by Saint Michael's has stained glass windows and looks a lot handsomer.
   Some fun photos below: 
Amitha Sampath, my morning walking buddy (I am on the Amitha Sampath diet and exercise plan), and I on Ski Jump Hill.

Above, Marisa Oishi, co-investigator of our project, which has been going strong for 4 years, with many thanks to her. Amitha and Marisa are below.

Here's the car that got us up the dirt road, pocked not just with holes but with gullies. Thanks for the car, Lauren...we made sure no one took the kayak!