South Dakota

My friend Mari was on a road&air trip in the States and stopped over in Martin, South Dakota for some time. I was lucky enough to have been invited there to visit her in October and to see some of the areas I had read and heard so much about as a child. It turned out to be a very thought awakening trip. I will write here about thoughts and things I was told of; whether or not all of them are accurate in every aspect, I do not know (some of the information on the ever so trustworthy Wikipedia differ somewhat of the impressions I gathered during my short stay).

Healthy local food in
Nebraska, ie. fried green beans

People and Economy
South Dakota, and especially the area I visited, are among the poorest, if not the poorest, States and counties in the US. Also, it is very scarcely populated and the towns are small. One of the smallest towns we passed through, we found in the state of Nebraska, where the population was an amazing 33 people. Martin, the town we stayed in, was rather large with a population of more than 1000 people, but most of the towns we passed had around 100-200 inhabitants.

The town of Martin is situated between two reservations. I was told that many of the people living on the reservations live in very poor conditions, some of them earning about $2000/year. Also, the questions revolving around the Native Americans and the reservations are not only in the past, but even today there are many issues related to Native American peoples' rights, including land rights. Sometimes the reservations might be concidered to have too much "unnecessary" land and this extra land might be redistributed for some other use and taken away from within the original reservation limits. Often times it seems, however, that the lands removed from the Native Americans seem to be the areas with the most fertile soil. There are of course many efforts put into trying to develop the reservations as well, but not all the plans are thought through. For example, a nearby town got funding for a youth center that was built outside the city center. The young people, however, didn't have any means to reach the center without a car and therefore the center's capacity is largely underutilized.

Vanha intiaaniputka

The mother of the family I stayed in had a saying, that poverty is a lifestyle in South Dakota. When the gaz prices were at their highest, some of the people took their horses and rode to the grocery store to do their shopping. The state has also suffered from drought for the past eight years, which has also significantly weakened the economical status of the Native Americans living on the reservations and who often don't have other sources of income besides agriculture.

School
The family I visited had four children in the house who went to school. However, they only went to school four days a week. There was no school on Fridays, because the county does not have enough money to keep the school open more than that. This way they can save on the staff salaries (teachers and other school staff), school bus rides and heating expenses, since they won't have to heat the school during weekends.

However, since there are limited options for pastime activities in (at least those parts of) South Dakota, the reading scores for kids actually went up after they changed into a four day school week system. Also, since many of the children live on farms, they often help out at their family farms or businesses on the extra "free day" and thereby also gain work experience. I wonder what would happen if they did the same in New York or here in the Bay Area...

Nature

Even if all of the above sounds somewhat disheartening, South Dakota was great! Luckily for me (and unluckily for Mari) I had a private chauffeur for the whole three day roadtrip, because I forgot my driver's license in Berkeley. But oh, all the things we saw!

We visited a couple of national parks where we saw the buffalo roam (a bit too close, I might add) and also plenty of really gorgeus views. We did see Mount Rushmore (the mountain with the president's faces carved into it) and I took the perfect shot of it from a moving car. That was how much we wanted to see it, after having visited the Crazy Horse Memorial which is situated about a half an hour drive from Mount Rushmore. Carving the Crazy Horse Memorial started as a one man task in 1948 when sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski and Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear officially started the project. The carving work still continues and is done by seven of Ziolkowski's ten children and some of his grand children.


On our last day of driving we saw absolutely beautiful places, such as the Badlands National Park. Despite the amazing scenery we were quite preoccupied with other things, like keeping the car on the road! During the night it had snowed in some areas we had visited just the day before, but luckily we didn't have to use any of the roads that had been closed on our last day anymore. However, the whole 250km that we had to drive to get back home to Martin, there was a terrible wind that occasionally reached hurricane force gusts (about 30 m/s). After having tried once, we didn't even dare to open the car window, let alone the door, to take pictures, because it honestly felt like the wind coming in the window could've lifted the whole car into the air. Luckily our car was heavy and low enough and my chauffeur so unbelievably brave, that at the end of the day we reached Martin safe and sound. Kiitos Mari!!! :D