Off to Great Start

Today was the first official day of my program, I am very excited about. It is excellently organized and the professor running our program is really great - his name is Valerian Three Irons. I met him and his wife today, Maryln, as well as the other girl in my program, Carly. Carly is going to be a first year student at Tufts University in Boston in the fall, and she is a really nice girl. Both of us are glad that there is at least one other person in the program! Our professor and his wife took us our to dinner tonight and we were given big binders detailing our time here, what is required of us, our schedule, etc. Lots of information and it is all very exciting!

We are currently staying in a hotel right down the street from South Dakota State University and this is where we will be while we take classes for the first week.

After the first week we are spending a week traveling with our professor and his wife around the state and also around sites in Minnesota, North Dakota, Nebraska and Wyoming! We will see different culturally significant sites and learn about them, history and current goings-on from an indigenous perspective.

After those travels we return to brookings for a few days of rest and are sent to our host families. I will be on the Yankton Sioux Reservation with host mom Faith and her son Kipp. I am very excited to meet them. Professor Three Irons told me tonight that Faith is extremely high energy, involved and excited all the time. She has also been arrested for protesting and is really into activism. What a great match for me! He said he can tell that we are going to get along well.

Dinner was fun because I got to talk to my professor and his wife and get to know them and we talked a lot about the American Indian Movement and AIM activism because I am really interest in that. The picture on the blog is something created to say Free Leonard Peltier. Peltier is an AIM activist accused of the murder of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation in the 1970's during the most active years of the American Indian Movement. There is no real evidence he is guilty, and during the 1970's the FBI heavily suppressed and took action against the American Indian Movement so most consider him a political prisoner. My professor and I spoke about this a lot about this. Three Irons was supposed to go to where Peltier is imprisoned and lead a SweatLodge for him, but when he got there he was not allowed in, and no one would tell him why.

Anyway, not i am just wrapping up my first day getting ready to do some reading and check out my binder of information. I am so excited about being here and feel like its off to a great start!