Page 33 - 2022 July Report

Sherry Salway Black
Resilience
South Dakota trip report
June 15 – 18, 2022
I was fortunate to accompany Bobby on his inaugural visit to South Dakota and to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. It was a jampacked two and a half days. I came out on Monday, June 13 so I could tie in some work with First Peoples Fund (FPF), based in Rapid City, and where I chair the board. Bobby arrived on Wednesday, June 15 and we were able to do a short site visit at the FPF offices that Wednesday afternoon. As a reminder, FPF is a 25+ year old national Native organization doing amazing work with artists and culture bearers including the We The Peoples Before event at the Kennedy Center at the end of this month. JSF provided a grant to FPF a number of years ago for some artist professional development and business training workshops.
We had dinner that night in Rapid City with Lori Pourier, the President of FPF and with Tashina Banks Rama. Tashina is the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at the Red Cloud school on the Pine Ridge Reservation (more on the Red Cloud Heritage Center and School later). She is also a graduate of the Gonzaga MBA-AIE program and she recently was named a recipient of the prestigious Bush Fellowship. Tashina is a mother to ten children and also the daughter of Dennis Banks – one of the founders and leaders of the American Indian Movement, starting in the 1960s.
I would be remiss to not share more about Lori too. She has been President of FPF since its founding more than 25 years ago and she has grown the organization to 20 staff and an annual $5M budget and $13M in assets, including owning their building in Rapid City. She currently serves on the board of the Jerome Foundation and the Library of Congress American Folklife Center Board. Past boards include Grantmakers in the Arts and Native Americans in Philanthropy. Lori and I have been working together since 1985 when we both worked for First Nations Development Institute.
During dinner Tashina and Lori shared amazing stories of their organizations and some information and history about the Oglala Lakota Nation and the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation – the second largest reservation in the nation (about the size of the state of Connecticut.) It was good preparation for our next two days of visits to Pine Ridge.
The main reason for this trip at this time was for Bobby to visit Oglala Lakota College (OLC) before President Tom Shortbull retires in July 2022. He is attending President Shortbull’s retirement on July 8 but given that celebration and date, it was doubtful he’d be able to get his or anyone else’s concentrated time. That said, our entire day on Thursday, June 16 was a visit to OLC. We arrived at 9:30 at the main campus and administrative HQ for OLC outside of the town of Kyle, SD – the Piya Wiconi campus. We were met by President Shortbull and Marilyn Pourier, Institutional Development Director. Marilyn is Lori Pourier’s mother and has worked at OLC for 24 years. Lori’s sister Johnny also works there and has for more than 40 years.
The Oglala Sioux Tribal Government has been very strict about COVID protocols and President Shortbull has upheld these for the safety of OLC staff and students. We were only allowed in the main admin building briefly and only just inside the downstairs lobby so Tom could point out some things and then we took a brief tour of the grounds to see the Veteran’s Memorial between the admin building and the ceremony grounds before we moved over to the OLC Historical Center next to the main building. Masks are required on campus. Tom believes that students will be back in person in the fall with perhaps a hybrid teaching/learning environment.
The Historical Center tells the story of the Oglala Lakota, the establishment of the reservation and related history. President Shortbull’s grandfather was a prominent leader, Chief Shortbull, in the latter part of the 1800s and he is prominently featured in this space. Marilyn was our guide for the day and then we met with the current VP for Instruction Dr. Dawn Frank, who was that week announced to be the new President of OLC starting mid-July after Tom officially steps down. Dr. Frank talked about programming at OLC particularly the foundational studies effort (what had been called remedial in the past.) We shared that JSF had funded the construction internship program with the SD Native Housing Coalition and the Lakota Funds. The vocational ed program had gone through some changes in leadership and
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