We've been in South Dakota for just over a week now. Last Monday (1/11), Hannah got her second dose of the COVID vaccine, we packed up Sharon's Subaru, and headed west 7.5 hours for our block-long adventure.
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| Views from our government compound housing at dusk. The skies in South Dakota are incredible. |
One of the first things that struck us on arrival was that we weren't able to find much by way of infrastructure and (what we've come to think of as) "essential services" like grocery stores, post offices, gas stations, quaternary care hospitals.
(Just kidding on that last one.)
We had thought about bringing groceries with us but, due to lack of time and perhaps planning, we elected to figure it out when we got here. Turns out, it was less that we weren't able to find fresh produce and postage stamps and more that there aren't any accessible resources, and perhaps that's the lesson lived here: right here, smack dab in the middle of the country, on the open prairie and right next to a federal hospital, we are living in a food desert, a critical access site, and among Americans who are, in so many senses of the word, underserved.
It's been a steep learning curve and daily-- hourly-- work to stay humble, interested, and grateful to serve this community and to learn from it.
After four years, the medicine and clinical aspects of the work are very familiar; mornings are spent rounding on the inpatient ward, and we've been doing afternoon clinic (one each in pediatric clinic and internal medicine clinic). This past weekend, we made the three hour drive to Rapid City (the closest "big" town) for groceries and stopped by for a quick hike in Badlands National Park along the way.
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| Dr. Lee on the Notch Trail - Badlands National Park, SD. |
With any immersive rotation, the lessons and reflections on culture, equity, justice, lifestyle, access, and history are myriad, and this is no exception. On our drive for groceries, we listened to a podcast and did some reflecting on one in particular we've like to share: the role of language in culture. Certainly, neither of us are experts in linguistics or Native American language, so we won't pretend to be. Instead, we'll direct you to listen to this episode of All My Relations, a podcast by Matika Wilbur and Adrienne Keene aimed at reframing how the world sees Native American culture. They talk about the inextricable connections between language and a culture's history-- and how indigenous communities across the country are preserving, spreading, and, in some cases, reawakening long-sleeping native languages. It's no huge news that native peoples were on the receiving end of massive population oppression and extermination-- this particular episode underscores how native cultures, too, suffered the same.
From under the South Dakota sky,
Sharon and Hannah
