Team 2 Week 1 Journal

Day 1: June 25th, 2011
Four detours, a make shift road through the flooded plains and multiple road construction no passing zones makes ten hours and the arrival of team two to Eagle Butte, SD. We arrived with big welcomes from Team 1 and the exciting news that we had to get back in the car and head to Cherry Creek for a Pow-wow. A pow-wow was the best way to start our trip and allowed us to meet a big group of youth from Cherry Creek and gave us the opportunity to participate in a cultural tradition. “The YMCA can keep a beat” is what we heard as we fancy danced with the youth around the pow wow grounds. We spent some time talking with an elder in Cherry Creek named Delores, who team one was unable to connect with until this evening. She is respected in the community and wants to be at programming on Tuesday to teach the youth traditional bead working. We also met June, who has made her home open to us for restrooms and yard for programming.
Day 2: June 26th, 2011
We met Carol and Mona at breakfast in Dupree to talk about the wonderful work of Team 1 and talk about our upcoming weeks. After breakfast, we ran to the Sioux Y to check out the equipment and location. Team 1 printed off registrations and camp flyers for us to promote camp while were in the communities. Then we headed back to give a final farewell to team one. Good bye Team one! You set the bar high! Except…
Roaches, Roaches everywhere. After moving from the first room to the suite that team one occupied, which was pretty awesome with a sofa, two sinks and a bit of extra room to veg out we completely unpacked and we shuffled yet again to two new rooms so that the suite could be bombed. Being confined to one side of the hotel (due to our encounter with roaches and the hotels need to contain us) we got our rooms unpacked and were able to set up our plan for the week.
Program Goals- Divide program times into sections and establish “routine.” Day one and two evaluate and take notes on who is participating and possibility for baseball teams.
Day 3: June 27th, 2011
La Plant- We took off about 10:00am to get to La Plant early to meet with Teresa, the new Youth Director at the Boys and Girls Club. We spent the beginning of our time rounding up youth and ended up with about 18 to start our program. Team one did a great job hyping up baseball. We warmed up with a few laps around the bases and playing catch with explanations about how important it is to warm up to avoid injury. The youth were all pretty young so we had to use the tee for hitting. Per the request of the youth, we played boys vs. girls (which was great for camaraderie/teamwork) and ended up playing the whole time. A few kids trickled off and played with hula hoops. We were able to explain positions, and constantly be talking about how to play the game. The youth were engaged and we were able to take advantage of coachable moments and give positive feedback. As we were cleaning up and about to leave, a truck with “Summer Smiles” Day camp staff and other youth stopped by and picked up kids to go play at the Community Center. We found out this group will be coming into La Plant everyday from 2:00-5:30. We are planning on adjusting our program time to be done by the time the Summer Smiles group comes. We also will be bringing Ricki, a staff from the Sioux Y, on Monday and Wednesdays to La Plant and Swiftbird to learn more about programming from us and help to build relationships.
Swiftbird- We arrived in Swiftbird at about 2:45 pm and immediately started looking for youth. Most of the kids in the community were picked up that morning by a woman named Joni to go swimming in Eagle Butte. They were just getting back when we arrived. Joni is a women who works for a program called Youth Diabetes Prevention. We exchanged information so we can communicate and collaborate. She will be bringing kids from La Plant during our scheduled time on Wednesday so we will see how we can collaborate or what options we have. We picked up a few boxes of water bottles from the Sioux Y and are planning on bringing them to the communities. We’ll fill them with water, write their names on them and then collect them every day. This helps us keep attendance, learn names, keeps the youth hydrated and promotes healthy living as the youth are excited to fill their new water bottle with water from our cooler instead of bringing pop to programming.
We started with baseball again and most of the youth besides two older boys got a little distracted. The kids in Swiftbird are younger ranging from 4-13, making the potential for a baseball team pretty low. We moved on to other programming and the group naturally split to make bracelets and the rest to play basketball. “Today is a good day!!…We got to go swimming and now YOU GUYS ARE HERE!”-Ashton, Age 7. At about 4:00 pm a few of the kids noticed a van, “the Bible people are here” and they ran off to participate with another group. The Big Apple Adventures and Bible Camp is a group from Alabama that is doing program from 4-5:30. They are only here for this week so we’ll adjust our time so the kids get as much fun in their day as they can fit! 
Day 4: June 28th, 2011
Bear Creek- We arrived in Bear Creek at about 11:00 on Tuesday. We checked out the community center and programming space. The community building is great but still needs some clean up. It was recently infested by mice and rats and some of the elders in the community are trying to clean it up. The playground and the “field” were not mowed and we walked over to contact the guy with the mower. He did not answer his door. We did some door knocking and stopped at Kracie’s house (Brayley’s mom) and the kids told us that most of the youth went to their grandmas house for the day. The kids in Bear Creek are very young. Our oldest, Nevyn, is ten years old. We did a lot of different programming but because of the ages we weren’t able to play a lot of baseball. We had five kids, played basketball, baseball, and made bracelets on the playground. So far, the potential for a team here seems very slim besides Nevyn who is very athletic and loves baseball and basketball.
Cherry Creek- Our team was excited to get to Cherry Creek so that we could see some of the youth that we met at the pow wow a few nights before. Cherry Creek has a great ball field next to the community building with indoor basketball courts that the Mennonites have the keys for. They are the house with the volleyball court on the edge of the community. Cherry Creek is a bigger community and we were able to get fifteen youth ranging in age from 5-19 to come and hang out. They played ball beautifully together with older kids helping younger kids and everyone just playing, not getting too competitive, and giving fair chances to hit/field/etc. The potential for a team here is much higher. It was really fun to play with “older” kids. These same older kids would be great to bring to camp for a day if you have someone who is lifeguard certified (which we do not). Transportation can be arranged through Carol at the Y and she need as much notice as possible but at least three days. We have permission slips and flyers to hand out and talk about camp. After a GREAT game of softball with positive competition and equal hitting and fielding time (which we did not have to facilitate and they did on their own) we took a group of older kids and played some street ball. The younger kids about seven or eight of them, went with Ashley, made bracelets, and beaded. Fun Fact: Kids in Cherry Creek (and other communities) have a choice of which community/school they would like to attend and many have to be up at 6:00 am to get on the bus and do not return from school until late. In addition, they have options to move into “dorms” where they stay during the school week because the distance is so far. We did run out of water and it was wretchedly hot out but Makia invited us into her house to fill up our jugs. There are minimal places to get water and use the restroom so plan accordingly.
Day 5: June 29th, 2011
La Plant- Today we met Ricki, a staff from the Sioux Y at our hotel to bring with to programming. She will be coming with on Monday’s and Wednesday’s to learn programming so that they can continue similar programming through the school year. This is very exciting as our work out on the reservation is reaching a new level… not only are we connecting with youth in communities that the Sioux Y can not always travel to but we are now helping to train the programming staff so our work out here can be sustained after we return to MN in August. We reached La Plant and met again with Theresa then walked to get kids. A similar amount of youth showed up, about 18 and they were given lunch (sponsored by Simply Smiles) and we began to play baseball. A small group of girls went and made bracelets with Jenny. More information on Simply Smiles is that they are a group of 30+ volunteers staying at the church across the street from the La Plant School. They are here to build houses on the families lands so that they do not have to live in the rental/tribal houses in the community. The younger volunteers run the Day Camp in La Plant and pick up the kids everyday at from 2:30- 5:30 pm. They are doing a lot of programming similar to ours but also do community dinners, movies, and other cool stuff. We worked it out with them so that we can program 12-3 and they come 3-6. We believe that Doretta is working with Simply Smiles and have set up a meeting with her to say hello next Wednesday. It is very important that we remain neutral with Theresa and Doretta and stay out of any issues they may have.
Swiftbird- We met Joni (youth diabetes prevention program YDPP)at Swiftbird and she brought us water, fruit and yogurt to give to the kids. She informed us that we could fill out a request form and have healthy snacks at all of our communities. All we need to do is stop by their office, located behind the Tribal Wellness Center, and fill out the form. Someone running the YDPP is a board member and big supporter of the Y so she said our request will most likely be granted. We started programming with some baseball but the kids lost interest relatively quickly due to the heat. The community building was mowed so we were able to use that area and Jenni (community contact member) has the key to open it up everyday. We gave the kids as many pieces of fruit as they could eat and some of them had 3 or 4 apples each. By now it was 100 degrees outside and HUMID so we decided we needed to have a water balloon game. While filling up water balloons and “snooping” in the community building/GED building we found a box full of dish soap bottles with no caps. We filled those up and had a huge water fight then ended with a yogurt snack. We opted to leave Swiftbird a little early so that the Bible School people could have a bit of programming time since it was their last day and our programming times overlapped. This allowed us to go see Camp Marrowbone in action. Camp Marrowbone had about 10 youth enrolled for the week. They stay in teepees and eat outside. It is a small and beautiful camp with so much potential. The staff are great and stay right on the ground in the teepees with the youth. They have a swimming dock that was purchased by the tribe and an arts and crafts house. We were able to sit on the dock for a little bit and even do some swimming (in our clothes). It is camp at its very best. Be sure to make time to check it out!
Day 6: June 30th, 2011
Bear Creek- Today in Bear Creek we shot baskets with Ethan (10 yrs) until other youth returned from swimming in Eagle Butte and would be back around 1pm. When the kids returned we decided to do some nutrition tests to finish where Team 1 left off. We completed the nutrition test, went over the answers and then organized a “Food Group Relay”. The youth were actually very engaged and all of them participated. Ashley had some food cut outs from some curriculum so we timed them and had them run, pick up a food and then drop it in the correct food group hula hoop. After, for a job well done, we gave out some stickers and the leftover yogurts from Swiftbird the day before. We need to contact Doug Dupree from the Housing Authority to try to mow the playground and field. Our programming has been at the playground and in the street until then.
Cherry Creek- After Bear Creek, we stopped in Dupree to pick up Sam, another staff from the Sioux Y. Ashley knew Sam already, as her team connected with Sam last year on one of their days at the Sioux Y and appointed her as a great potential leader in Dupree. It was great to see that she was now employed by the Sioux Y and would be coming out with us to Cheery Creek every Thursday to learn programming from us. We had some great conversations with Sam on the way to Cherry Creek about her upbringing through the Y, her struggles with college and her life on the reservation. She is an excellent staff to coach and mentor. She talked about a photographer named Emily that has been coming to the Y since 2005 and teaches lessons on photography. Emily has been an influence on her life and helped keep her in school, brought her to New York, and was a constant in her life, so much so that Sam named her daughter Emily after this important woman in her life. When we got to Cherry Creek, we met a group of about 15 youth that quickly grew to 24. We played baseball and made bracelets again. The kids are starting to expect baseball as a standard when we come.
Driving back we “debriefed” with Sam. We asked Sam what she thought of program and what she could see as possible things to bring back to the Sioux Y. She replied, “It’s really good to see the staff participate and have fun in the active activities. Our staff always start playing but then quit as soon as the kids get a little bored. You guys keep playing and encourage the kids to play more.” Sam wants to sit down with us and talk about more programming options regarding nutrition, healthy living and keeping active. Ashley and Sam made a plan to meet next week to make copies or curriculum and start compiling active games, nutrition worksheets and healthy living activities. On our way back to the hotel that night, we talked about how great it would be bring some Sioux Y staff out to the Twin Cities for them to job shadow at different branches/camps and bring that back to the reservation (similar to what we do with our exchange staff from Japan and Africa).
Day 7: July 1, 2011
This morning we had a meeting with Tyson from the Youth Affairs Coordinator about how we could partner with the baseball that he is already doing in Eagle Butte. We found out that he is actually the person that suggested baseball to the Sioux Y for programming. He has a lot of stuff going on with his Baseball camps coming to an end this week and now turning his focus to culture camps for the next few weeks, “Bringing back the Lakota way of life.” He has a budget that allows for transportation and programming supplies. This program runs Monday, Wednesday, Friday with different cultural activities like setting up teepees, digging turnips, painting teepees, and learning about the Lakota culture from various elders in the community. Then on Tuesdays and Thursdays they will be allowing youth to create beadwork or other arts and crafts and allowing them to sell them to earn money on Fridays. We will be distributing flyers in our communities as well as in Iron Lightning during their pow wow on Monday to promote registration in our communities for these upcoming opportunities for youth. He is also doing a Fitness Challenge program for families. They call it FIT, Families Interacting Together, which would be a great partnership opportunity for the Sioux Y. All of this programming will be going on while Team 3 is here.
We asked him about the feasibility of getting an intercommunity Baseball Tournament going and how we could do it together or what we should do. He said we could get a group from the communities we program with and arrange transportation to create a “Sioux Y” vs. Eagle Butte game at the fields of Eagle Butte. Due to the wide range of ages in each community our suggestion for a tournament/games would be to A) get the older boys from Cherry Creek, Bear Creek, and Swiftbird together to create a “Sioux YMCA team” and bus them to Eagle Butte for the game/tournament. Or B) have a Community Baseball Day, make flyers and open up multiple game times for different age groups and even adults. (Option B could be held at the Cherry Creek Field or even La Plant (if mowed).
Tyson also invited us to talk about the programming we do on the Radio Talk Show that is on the reservation next Thursday at the Lakota Technologies Institute. The talk show host is Ilene Briks and is trying to get a talk show in all of the communities. We are setting it up for next Thursday when Team 3 arrives as well as set up a dinner with Carol, Mona and some of the board members to welcome them. We also had Mona call Doug Dupree about mowing in Bear Creek. Now, off to Deadwood to visit the resting place of Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok.