strong women

(Photo by Sally Vanderploeg)

Three weeks of my May 2010 consisted of eleven, wonderful people, one motor pool bus #8 (Mo), one trailer, and one adventure on the Pine Ridge Reservation (the Rez) in South Dakota. There was no way for me to have ever known what I had gotten myself into. I was incredibly nervous about going to a new place where I might not be accepted. This experience would require a lot of patience and hard work to help bridge understanding between the travelers and the Lakota.


The tradition of the Lakota people emphasizes the importance of women. There is a belief that women are sacred. Women have the ability to cleanse themselves once a month during menstruation. As an American woman entering into a new place from a culture extremely different to that of Pine Ridge, I have had to re-evaluate the way I think about this topic and how it’s portrayed to the people around me. I have never considered myself to be sacred. They also believe women deserve the highest respect. Traditionally, the women in the Lakota culture take care of the family, prepare the food, keep stories, make the clothing, produce the children, build the teepee, and much more. The women of the culture are a large part of the community. The power of women is too strong to fully describe.

While on the Rez, I had the opportunity to see the crafts and artistry from the Native American culture. This included beautiful pieces of beaded jewelry, porcupine quill artwork, paintings, dream catchers, and star quilts I was introduced to a newer dream catcher design: the strong woman dream catcher. During my stay on the Rez, I was able to encounter a newer dream catcher where the web of sinew was shaped like a tipi. The dream catcher symbolizes the role of women and emphasizes their needs to be a key reminder.

The strong woman tepee dream catcher also reminds the people that it is now the female’s turn to try and fix the problems of the world. Not to bash men, but the men have done a great job ruining the beauty. The women can now come, with a patient heart and the knowledge of the past, to build a bridge of understanding between all of the cultures. A large part of the Lakota tradition is the Medicine Wheel. This wheel consists of the colors: red, black, yellow and white. The four colors represent the many races, the cardinal directions, stages of life, and much more. There is a popular saying Mitakuye Oyasin among the Lakota people, which translates to “We are all related.” The women have to take it upon themselves and start to connect the people of red, yellow, black and white. I am willing to help spread this way of life.

Out of the eleven travelers that went to South Dakota, ten of us were young women. Those selectwomen helped me grow more into my womanhood more than any single person. We were together (nonstop) for three weeks. We laughed together and cried together. We sang together, worked together, and played together. We fought with one another and made-up again with a reunion of relief. We opened our hearts and minds to new concepts and ideas that shape the problems and benefits in our world today. We lived in one building, ate the same food, shared razors, shampoo, paper, discussed our bowel movements, and we journaled together. You take ten strangers, each with their own, beautiful personalities, and put them in a room you get a new family. And that’s what we were: a family. I was proud to call the women my family. They follow the idea that there is no one right way to think or act. Each of the girls is beautiful. We were one unit for one set of time. We may not ever be in the same room again, but no one will ever know exactly what we experienced together.

It seems to be a strange place to really see strong women. The Rez? It’s a place where the unemployment rate ranges from 85-95%, where teen suicide is six times higher than the United State National average, where gang violence and drug abuse is part of daily life, where alcoholism consists of about 80% of the population, where the life expectancy for women is fifty-four years and men a grand total of forty-seven, and where there is more domestic violence than any other specific location that I know. The people I have met on the Rez always seem eager to share and ready to learn about the empowerment, or even the simple basic rights and equalities, of women. There needs to be a basis of respect. Between my new family and the strong woman dream catcher, I am reminded of the fact that women are strong.