Whitey on the Res

The house now is nearing completion, although running water is still in the works. It’s a cute little one-bedroom cottage with a spacious loft area and earthen floors and walls. Our work here includes a variety of projects, like collecting and drying herbs, helping build a cob storage shed and fixing and installing loads of little things in the house. My biggest task is to build a fence around the property to keep horses and cows at bay (their residue is everywhere and shoveling it is on neverending project in itself). Once again, I’ve found myself spending most of my days digging holes. With all the skills I’ve developed, I’m now thinking about starting my own hole-digging business when I’m done WWOOFing.


This permaculture project is very low/no budget, so most of the building supplies are donated and most of the tools are borrowed. Resourcefulness is a necessity, and we often find ourselves scrounging through heaps of construction junk to find a post or sheet of plywood just the right size. The race now is against the season, and we’re rushing to get done with everything that has to be finished before winter comes. The first snowfall can happen anywhere in the next 2-6 weeks, and not much can be done after that.

So far I’m liking it here. Two more volunteers, Chip and Alexis, arrived the day after I did. We stayed in our tents only the first two nights. After that, the temp dropped dramatically so we all moved into the house. Gerald, Shannon’s father-in-law, will eventually move in here, but he prefers to stay with Shannon in the next town until it’s finished.

With no running water, we have to fill up coolers at the neighbor’s garden pump. There’s an outhouse, an outdoor mirror and sink (no pipes) and a camp shower, although dinner is served at Shannon’s house a few miles away so we tend to shower when we go there. Like Utah, ambient light is scarce out here, so on a clear night you can see a zillion stars in the sky. And if you stare long enough, you’re bound to catch a few shooting stars.

I heard plenty of horror stories from my friends about coming here. They ranged from “all reservation Indians hate white people” to “everyone on the res is a kleptomaniac alcoholic and they’ll steal anything you leave unwatched.” I can’t say everyone here is immaculate, and alcoholism is definitely a big res issue, but so far everyone I’ve met has been very friendly. Shannon is Jewish and from California, and she’s been completely welcomed into this culture.

Gerald quickly became one of my favorite people here. He’s a skinny guy in his late sixties, although he can wield a sledge hammer like nobody’s business. He has a strong Lakota accent and tells great stories about growing up with his grandfather in these hills before anyone else settled here. He also has some sad stories, like being slapped on the knuckles with a ruler anytime he spoke the Lakota language in public school. Overall, he’s totally mellow and very happy about his new house. I have to be careful leaving clothes lying around because he’s likely to grab my jacket or hat and walk to the next town with it. It’s not theft, it’s just his way; he lives minimally and is used to sharing everything with his family and neighbors. And he always returns what he takes.

So far, I only had one awkward moment. A few nights ago, I stopped by a local quickie mart—the only store for miles—to pick up some food for Shannon. Two Indian children were sitting outside when I walked up with the two other volunteers, who are both white. Once kid kept saying “Where are all these white people coming from?” while the other just shouted “Hey white people! Give us money!”

Oh well.

Res Life

After all my days of cruisin’, I finally arrived at my destination on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation!

I arrived a bit later in the day than I expected, partly because I took a scenic detour through the Badlands and partly because I got horribly lost. At any rate, Shannon, the woman in charge of volunteers, directed me to the construction site and told me I could set up my tent anywhere on the property. It was late, dark and cold, though, so I opted to snooze in the car for my first night. My car’s back seat, believe it or not, has given me some of my best nights of sleep on this trip.

I should probably explain this reservation project. Although it’s part of the WWOOF network, it’s not exactly a farm. A house belonging to Shannon’s father-in-law burned down over a year ago and she’s spearheading the project to rebuild it. Not only is it being rebuilt, but Shannon is turning it into a large permaculture project to help the community. This includes straw bale exterior walls, cob interior walls, a composting toilet, a solar heater, a rainwater catchment system and several permaculture gardens that will hopefully produce veggies and medicinal herbs that can be sold for profit.


The Pine Ridge reservation is the poorest Indian reservation in the country, and this construction project is smack dab in the middle of its poorest area (by the way, I’ve learned that “Native American” is not kosher by most Indians). Shannon is using this building project as a way to reach out to the tribal community, teach them to do their own sustainable projects and hopefully generate some revenue for locals who are willing to help out with the garden and get involved with selling its goods. She is currently encouraging people to turn their old refrigerators into worm farms/compost bins—as just about everybody out here seems to have an old refrigerator lying around the yard.

I knew most of this info before I arrived, but the area doesn’t look as impoverished as I expected. It may be low income by national standards, but I quickly realized that it’s a close-knit community where everyone habitually pitches in to help each other out. For example, Gerald, the father who will eventually live in the house, needs to travel 10 miles every day from his daughter’s house to the construction site. He doesn’t have a car, so in the morning he just starts walking until someone passes by and picks him up. His sons do the same thing, and I’ve learned most people in the community get around that way.

There is barely anything out here other than lots of small houses. The region consists of several small towns each about 10-20 miles apart, and it’s rare to find even a gas station in most of them. I’ve been in rural areas with gas stations and stores further apart than this, but never among so many towns with such dense populations. The poverty level probably has something to do with lack of businesses, and therefore jobs, but it seems like nobody here is really interested in money-making schemes. I’ve heard a few comments to verify that many Indians here hate how capitalist white people just want to make a buck.

Well, I chose this place because it seemed like a radically different project than what I’ve been doing and I wanted variety in my farms, as well as a cultural experience. So here I am…