Our little house on the Lower Brule Sioux Reservation rests along the bend where the Missouri River makes a large S-shaped curve. Having moved our family in 1996 from the suburbs of Minneapolis to the serene setting of the reservation, I often walked the river’s edge contemplating the new direction in my life. Hiking the narrow shoreline one day, I thought about the rich history of the Lakota people and all the changes that were forced upon them. A log floating mid-river triggered a story an elder named Altwin Grassrope once told me. 

When I was about twelve years old they took me off the rez and told me I had to go to boarding school in Fort Pierre. I had a bad teacher and they made me cut my hair. They didn’t treat me real nice, so I escaped three times. 

The last time I escaped I snuck out at midnight and went down to the river. It had just rained and the Bad River was running pretty swift. I stepped into the black water until it was chest high and I let the current carry me away in the darkness of night. 

The Bad River flows into the Missouri and there I caught a log and hung on through the night.   When the sun came up I saw some trees that looked kinda familiar. I was exhausted and could hardly pull myself onto dry land. 

I saw a rider on horseback and ducked down in a grove of sandbar willows, too tired to swim any farther. Then I recognized Fred LaRoche and he gave me a ride home. Your dad was a real nice man.

The words floated across the river as though Altwin had just said them. I closed my eyes, imagining my father riding up on horseback to save the young boy. 

In my assimilation into the Lakota culture I learned when the old ways of our people were taken away, things changed, most often for the worse. Yet there are many individuals like Altwin—and my father— who carried the Lakota spirit forward with humility, integrity, and justifiable pride.