Week 1 was a whirlwind! After four years of waiting, these three weeks are finally here and we couldn't be more excited. We started the week off meeting with Lori and JR at the Kearsarge Indian museum in Warner, NH. After meeting Steve Lamb and his family, we headed to the museum. Celebrating the museums 25th anniversary and talking to JR was definitely the highlight of my week. We learned about not only the Lakota Native Americans, but all of the tribes in the museum. We also had the opportunity to walk around with JR and have him descriptively tell us about some of the Lakota artifacts featured, and also about some of the customs his people practice. On Monday Avery and I slept in (oops) and nearly missed the interview with JR. We were able to sit in on Ethney and Lori asking JR questions and got to ask a few questions of our own. Listening to JR's insightful responses was an awesome learning experience. He spoke about his reservation, what Proctor did for him, how Proctor helped him in his later life, his ideas about how to encourage/recruit more Lakota children to attend Proctor, and much more.
Tuesday and Wednesday were focused mainly on reaching out to JR's mother and mother in law and finding out what we could help with in terms of fundraising. They immediately responded that they needed help funding for their Horse Therapy program, they wanted more kids to be able to participate. The program helps kids with behavioral issues on the Rosebud reservation by helping them connect with a horse which has shown to majority improve children's behavior and emotional problems. After hearing about this, Avery and I immediately hopped on board. We decided that we should start brainstorming ideas on how to fundraise for the program. We swung between a bake sale and a coin drive for a day and then got the idea to play SPLASH/ASSASIN. In order to play the game, you had to pay $5.00 and water guns were an extra $2.00. When you sign up, you are given a name of another person who is playing and you eliminate them by splashing them with water. Once you get them out you get their target. This continues until theres one victor. We sent out a mass email about the fundraiser and asked for anyone interested to send us an email back so we could roughly get a number. over 60 people responded back!
On Friday, we reached out to Annie Mackenzie and Patty Pond about a list of Native American alums we could contact. They are still getting the lists together and we should have them by next week. We also watched Dances With Wolves a four hour long adventure/love story about Native Americans, specifically the Lakota.
Avery and I thoroughly enjoyed our first week, although we were busy it was very worth it and we gained lots of knowledge, and feel like we will really make a difference!
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