We finished up our week in South Dakota with a cookout for the campers and the families they built for. Marletta, our contact in Rapid City who is connected to the Native American culture in the area, explained to us how white kids helping out Native Americans does a lot to bridge the rift that's been created by hundreds of years of racism. The plight of the Native American people is still bad — two of the women we built for had husbands who had been beaten and abused by police barely 50 years ago. Normally when white suburban Americans think about Native Americans they think that whole ordeal happened forever ago and is gone, and now the natives live tax-free on their reservations, making money off of casinos. The truth is in places like Rapid City, racism is still an overt, powerful force.
Michael and I flew back to McAllen on Sunday, just in time for this new week to start. I'm still shooting photos. This week we're in a Colonia Mission Discovery has never worked in before. It's also got a large population of scorpions and rattle snakes, which should make for at least a cautious, if not exciting week. Here are a few photos I took today that I like.
If anyone out there reading my blog wants more on a specific topic or has any questions, please leave a comment and I will try to reply with a blog posting.
1 comment:
OK here's a question. One central element in Mission Discovery's mission is to make sure the church teams experience a completely different culture. Does that happen more fully when there is a language barrier, as in Mexico, or are the poverty conditions in South Dakota (for example) "enough"?
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