The Rapid City Journal reported the other morning that the Bear Butte Lodge, a retreat center owned and operated by the Rosebud Tribe at the base for Bear Butte, has been destroyed by fire.
The Journal ran a picture taken by Meade County Emergency Management of the center going up in smoke. It was sad to see, and it’s sad to think about. I have driven by that simple structure in its beautiful surroundings many times, and always felt elevated even in passing.
The butte does that to you, if you’re open to it, as indigenous people naturally are. And the retreat center added to that.
I usually imagined, in passing, tribal people gathered there to seek fellowship with the mountain and spiritual connections with that which is beyond our corporeal understanding.
Losing that place is losing a lot.
The fire is being investigated. As that work continues, the Rosebud Tribe and those who would use the center on spiritual retreats are without a facility at one of the most sacred places to Northern Plains tribes.
Which got me thinking about another story in the same Journal. In it, Gov. Kristi Noem announced the award of a meat processing grant for a business from Noem's home country in northeastern South Dakota that is expanding to the Black Hills.
The owners of Dakota Butcher say the grants totaling $86,292 came at the perfect time for them, as the business community recovers from the effects of a pandemic. Money matters, especially during tough times.
And not just to meat processing plants. Even more so, perhaps, to centers for spiritual revival and connections.
And that got me to thinking: Is there a way that Gov. Noem and the state could help the Rosebud Tribe -- with which she has cooperated in the past -- on rebuilding its retreat facilities at Bear Butte?
Surely there is state or federal funding available to help? With all that COVID cash floating around? Or with all that COVID case as the cushion in the budget allowing the use of other funds elsewhere?
And wouldn't it be a nice gesture for any South Dakota governor, but this one in particular? Noem says she wants better relationships with the tribes but instead has done many things to make those relations worse.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if she were to reach out with an offer of help? To rebuild that which has been burned, near a sacred place?
It would be shades of reconciliation efforts past, wouldn't you think?
It's the kind of thing that would have made big George Mickelson proud.
And we could sure use more of those things these days.
