For the past six years Dallas and Becky Chief Eagle have been providing a safe, nurturing, healing environment for people on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Men’s and women’s training followed by food and celebration at their home. Becky told me they have fed as many as 300 people at one event.
They call it the ALL NATIONS TRAINING CENTER.The training’s have grown, and so have the participants. They need more room and now their goal is to build.
Dallas and Becky have articulated their vision, values, strategies, and goal all clearly defined. All they needed were a half dozen of their top priorities identified to get the project rolling. So they invited my partner Bob Christensen and me to lead the process.
We were there for a weekend of celebration, history, traditions and lots of love.
I was totally shocked at the end of the night when they honored Bob and me with a blanket. My heart was in altered space. Completely full of love for my new brothers and sisters of the Pine Ridge Reservation.
I have had the pleasure of working with many different beliefs, cultures and diversity. My partner Bob has traveled the world and experienced even more!
When we left there on Sunday morning we both agreed that our experience was transformative. We were different people because of our time with them.
We KNOW that the peoples of the Lakota Way are unique.
The Lakota people of the Pine Ridge Reservation have survived genocide, Wounded Knee is proof. That means it is time to recognize, once and for all, that they have a place in this land. It’s time to recognize that fact, and BE with them.
My invitation to you is to see for yourself. Meet them where they are at. Read about them.
They are the direct Descendants of great leaders like Red Cloud, Black Elk, Sitting Bull, Fools Crow, and Crazy HorseAll right here in the heartland of this country.
As survivors of genocide they are demonstrating the ultimate sign of forgiveness. Creating for ALL of us The ALL NATIONS TRAINING CENTER.
If you ever get the chance to hear their native tongue you might experience what I havemusic to my ears. It has a cadence, like a song. The beauty of it makes me think that perhaps their language is music from the heavens above. A gift.
My hope is that my friends of Pine Ridge, Rose Bud, and other reservations find a way to heal the wounds of the past. So their traditions can survive.
That they can meld their beautiful traditions with the technologies of today. So ALL can prosper.
In service and love
AHO!!!
Hi Jerry,
Just wanted to say how much I appreciated your overview of the Lakota way of life and your time at the All Nations Training Center. Having a house in their sacred Black a Hills, Michael and I have developed a strong respect and love of the Lakota people and their way of life. We enjoy our time there throughout the year and have appreciated the relationships and interactions with the Lakota that this has afforded us. Wish I could have joined both you and Bob there!
Great story, Bird. Keep up the good work.
Hey Jer,
I honor you and the crew for your work and giveaway. I am yet to take the trip and it is on my list. Great article.
Jerry,
You and Bob were magnificent. It was done it a good way. You listen well. I am proud of you in so many ways.
Jerry , nice read , I was there in Pine Ridge delivering a motorhome for CBS news ! There was commotion and confusion and in the short distance away were gunshots! The news crew was in a frenzy as I left in a blaze to get out of the town. Sand bags on the corners of the roofs on some of the taller buildings . On my way out and on the road I experienced fear of me being in harms way. Today I know there was fear and anger with the tribe as well and knowing it will live with them for a long time as well as myself and I wasn’t in their space taking the severe heat of it . Seems with the work being done now healing can come . Although it may take a generation to change the way of life with calmed spirits it seems you all have them on that road !