Janice Richards: "It all begins with the person being able to say they want something different, something better."

“I recall the great vision you sent me. It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives. Nourish it then, that it may leaf and bloom and fill with singing birds. Hear me, not for myself, but for my people; I am old. Hear me that they may once more go back into the sacred hoop and find the good red road, the shielding tree.”      – prayer by Black Elk from the summit of Harney Peak, SD

The banyan tree of tropical Africa and the Indian peninsula sends down from its branches many shoots into the soil, which then take root and become new trunks. Thus a single tree may spread over a large area. The tree lives through many ages, and although the original trunk may decay, the younger ones remain to support it. The banyan tree has heart-shaped leaves and bears little blossoms which in turn become small, scarlet fruits that feed the birds.  Like a banyan tree, Oglala Lakota College sprang from the soil of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation community in southwestern South Dakota. As it grew, the tribal college put down shoots in the form of college centers in each of the reservation’s nine districts as well as Rapid City.

In the 30 years since OLC was founded on the Pine Ridge Reservation, the college has partnered with a variety of entities to accomplish an array of goals. Its most crucial and enduring partnership, however, is with the people. The ongoing symbiosis between the college and the communities continues to enrich and enhance them both, lending itself to allegorical comparison with that African tree.

“The college is in partnership not only with a district’s government but with the students and the families within the communities,” said Dennis King, the Pejuta Haka district’s representative to the board of trustees. “And the community can also use those centers as a resource.” King tells of community members bringing questions to center staffers, who serve as the community’s encyclopedias. The people ask questions ranging from treaties to how to contact federal elected officials or agency directors. This interaction enhances the people’s sense of being stakeholders in the college. “These college centers are really a big benefit,” he said.

Because a member of each district’s board sits on the college’s board of trustees, the elected district boards are directed by and more sensitive to local community wishes. They have the influence to implement those wishes in their community center. Each of the district centers has a director and its own elected board with delegated authority from the board of trustees to manage the center, make course and personnel recommendations, and approve community and other activities for their respective districts.

Enhancing the cultural fabric

From the college’s beginning, the community and the college’s founders wanted the college to help keep the Lakota language, culture, and perspective alive and vital. That is the bedrock of OLC. Every student is required to take 9 to 15 hours of Lakota Studies courses, and the staff and faculty are expected to have or be working toward fluency in the Lakota language. They wanted to provide tribal program directors and personnel who were well trained and were steeped in their historical culture and traditions. Working toward that goal, the tribal college established a master’s degree in Lakota Leadership and Management. OLC partnered with the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard to establish this degree program.

Newton Cummings has represented the LaCreek District on the OLC Board of Trustees for 28 years. A spare-figured, gray-haired older man, his Western dress bespeaks his many years as a rancher on the reservation. He also served on the tribal council, as tribal president, and as chair of the LaCreek’s district government. A soft-spoken man, firm in his commitment to the college, he never misses an opportunity to remind OLC’s students that they are the flower of the tribe’s hopes. As he said at this year’s graduation, “I hope that as you get educated you all remember that we need you here on the reservation to do this work for us, to provide a future for our future generations.”

Cummings believes the college enhances the tribe’s cultural fabric. “OLC strengthens the community and makes Indian people really realize who they are through the culture that they teach,” he said. “Many of our students aren’t too familiar with our culture, and when they get into the Lakota Studies classes they begin to understand and appreciate where they came from and who they are.”

Cummings thinks the most valuable thing the reservation community gives to the college is ongoing support, which takes many forms. “They help the college recruit students by encouraging high school students to get good grades to be eligible to attend the college. They’re really involved, and they care,” he said.

At the time OLC was founded, most of the teachers and administrators in K-12 schools were non-Indians. There were few eligible educators from the culture. From the perspective of many, that’s changing.

“A few years ago, all the schools were BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) schools,” said Cummings. “We had teachers from all over the world and every state in the nation. Today it isn’t that way. We have an awful lot of our own Indian people teaching school on the reservation.” Many more serve as principals, business managers, and in other key positions. They’re graduates of Oglala Lakota College. Today only two schools on Pine Ridge are still BIA schools; most of the rest are tribal schools.

The tribal college has provided more qualified people for positions throughout the reservation and elsewhere, Cummings said. “That’s one thing they really give back to the people. I really notice the difference in the school administrators and tribal program people we have now compared with the ones we had before there was college available.”

Newton Cummings never misses an opportunity to remind OLD's students that they are the flower of the tribe's hopes.

A legacy of partnerships

Through its partnerships, the college is fulfilling the goals of its founders 30 years ago, a group of visionary tribal members, including Marie Randall, Birgil Kills Straight, and then-tribal chairman Gerald One Feather. They felt the reservation’s people needed to have better access to higher education to improve their individual lives and the future of the tribe as a whole. Initially meeting with skepticism, they succeeded in getting the school chartered by the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council in March of 1971 as the Lakota Higher Education Center.

The center offered regular extension courses established in partnership with the University of Colorado, which were taught by volunteers. That beginning fed the need and desire of the community for a broader range of courses and for post-secondary degrees and certificates. The center expanded its partnerships to include colleges within the state. “The University of South Dakota, South Dakota State, and Black Hills State University all had programs and courses here,” said Dr. Dowell Casselli-Smith, who recently ended his third tenure as OLC vice president to become its director of assessment.

After the college obtained accreditation on its own, the pattern of partnering continued. Working with the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, OLC seeks to increase the number of Indian students in science, engineering, and math. They look for high school students with interest and capabilities in those areas and make them aware of the expanded opportunities in those subjects at OLC. This partnership is supported by the National Science Foundation’s Model Institutions for Excellence (MIE) program.

The MIE program also emphasizes to the students that science, math, and engineering were part of their ancestral culture. “Indians were, in the past, natural scientists by practice,” said Stacy Phelps, MIE program director. “We had to learn how to figure out how to live within our environment.”

Other community-based initiatives at OLC have grown through the years. In response to community desire to re-establish bison on the reservation, OLC has joined with Iowa State University in a project studying the bison. To strengthen cooperative relationships between all Lakota-Dakota tribes and reservations, OLC has collaborated with four other tribal colleges to form the Oyate Consortium as a model for distance learning.

Oglala Lakota College interacts with K-12 students beyond direct recruiting. “Right now, in the Education Department we have a special ed grant and a teacher training grant in which we are partnering with the schools in Porcupine and Kyle,” said Casseli-Smith. The college students are a resource for the schools’ teachers, serving as teachers’ aides while getting hands-on experience in their course material and concepts.

OLC provides high school students with enriching experiences in post-secondary studies via early-entry courses that allow them to earn college credit. The college exposes them to possible career paths through such programs as the INMED Hospital Careers Opportunity Program in a partnership with the University of North Dakota. The six-week summer program encourages student interest in health careers through study of math, scientific research, technology, science lab, and group work on a related research project of their choice.

Flowers for the people

“When I was a student back in the ‘80s, a lot of these collaborative programs weren’t available to us,” said Janice Richards, director of the Pahin Sinte district center in Porcupine. “I always encourage students to get involved in these; take advantage of them while they’re here.”

Richards speaks in a quiet and modest tone of voice, but there is no mistaking either the warmth of her personality or the strength of her dedication to her family, her community, and her college. Her open, attractive face and smile welcome and encourage any who might speak with her. A graduate of OLC, she openly expresses her appreciation for the opportunities the school provided her, as well as the support of the community and her family.

She’s not only pleased by the chance to repay those things but to participate in increasing opportunities for today’s students. As center director for the last three years, Richards has emphasized keeping the college’s relationship with her community a vital one. “My focus as a director is also to help people build their self-confidence and self-esteem. It all begins with the person being able to say they want something different, something better. As my grandmother always said, ‘Give me my flowers while I’m alive.’ What she meant was, ‘Honor me, respect me, listen to what I have to teach you … that’s giving me my flowers.’”

Richards lives her grandmother’s teaching by “giving flowers” to all members of the community as well as the students. She has established partnerships between her college center and many entities throughout her community. “It’s a challenge for me to really network within my community,” she said. “And by networking I mean working with the Head Start programs, with the Porcupine Year Round School, Our Lady of Lourdes, the district government … I really focus a lot of my attention on getting out there. A lot of times we wait for people to come to us. But our mission at Oglala Lakota College is to do more than that.”

“I take OLC’s mission and purposes to heart,” Richards said. “My staff and the board at Porcupine know that my focus is getting out there and sharing resources with the community. The people also have resources that we as a college can use.” By sharing education, the college can help them make a positive change in their lives. “That’s what the college did for me,” she said.

As the partnership between Oglala Lakota College and the people of the Pine Ridge Reservation continues into the future, the tree grows more branches. Those branches send down more shoots into the rich loam of the community, binding them as one organism that flowers, flourishes, and bears sweet fruit. Black Elk would be pleased.

Laura M. Dellinger is a photojournalist who has worked within Indian communities for several years. She was managing editor of the Lakota Journal, is a correspondent for Indian Country Today and has done projects for Oglala Lakota College and the Lakota Heritage Society. She resides in Rapid City, SD, and some of her landscape and wildlife photos hang in establishments there.