Posted on by — Leave a comment

The Blogmore Hunt

By Lee Schoenbeck

Photos by Jeremiah M. Murphy

For the last several years, sometime in November on a farm southwest of Holabird, a not-so-secret conclave gathers. Ostensibly their mission is to chase and bag the wily South Dakota ringneck. The Mount Blogmore hunt accomplishes that mission well each year and, even with loaded weapons in hand, it proves that the divide between red and blue in South Dakota is not too wide.

The Origins of the Hunt — a Wosterism

Somewhere along the interstate of life near Reliance, one of the infamous Woster brothers, this time Kevin, came up with the outrageous idea that political bloggers across the political spectrum could join together civilly, be properly armed, and share the bonds of friendship that are a natural by-product of a South Dakota pheasant hunt. Kevin is the founder of the political blog Mount Blogmore and the outdoor blog Take it Outside, hosted by the Rapid City Journal. Kevin is one of South Dakota’s founding brothers, the Wosters: Jim, Terry, Kevin and probably a few other siblings that haven’t been quite as newsworthy. Kevin’s politics lean a little left of center, he claims. But when you’re talking about somebody from Lyman County, left of center may just mean that they were a few days late with their annual John Birch Society dues.

The Place — as Blue as you can get in Hyde County

Kevin’s wife hails from Highmore, and through that relationship, Kevin is friends with Holabird rancher Nick Nemec. Nick’s not much into hunting, but he and his wife Mary Jo are lots into company and political talk around the dining room table. Nick’s got plenty of pheasants, which he is about as interested in chasing as he would be the beautiful blue jays that populate the shelterbelts by his home. But if company wants to visit and chase around his fields, then for a day, Nick’s a pheasant hunter. Between shelter belts, a few cattail sloughs, and sunflower fields, the Nemecs have the kind of traditional pheasant habitat that you only find with a real farmer who practices real conservation. It’s easy to find the Nemec farm in the fall in even years — just look for the only Democrat signs along Hwy 14 between Holabird and Harold, and turn south!

The Crew — Eclectic, Political and all South Dakotan

Birds, dogs and hunters of all political stripes at the 2009 Blogmore Hunt.

Kevin handles the invites. Just about anybody that’s posted on a blog and cared about South Dakota politics appears to be eligible, although the size of the crew of actual attendees ranges from 5 to 15. Tony Dean was at the first hunt. John Thune and Tom Daschle have been invited. This summer George McGovern was anointed the 2012 hunt captain — unfortunately that couldn’t come to fruition. Jon Lauck, Pat Powers, Bill Fleming, one of the Nielson brothers (of polling fame), and Doug Wiken are a few examples of politicos who have graced the hunt. Each of these would be colorful in his own right, but a few others stick out.

My son, Jake, has been along and asked me if the guy that said he was a Methodist-Buddhist (Todd Epp) really was such a thing. (And if so, what is that?) Jake also wanted to know if that Cory guy (Heidelberger) was serious when he said he didn’t carry a gun and shoot pheasants because he was a pacifist. (I assured him he was.) But my all-time favorite may have been the first year, when staunch defender of the right, Sibby (Steve Sibson), attended the hunt and missed five consecutive roosters my dogs put up in front of him. When I poked him later about the Second Amendment also including the requirement that you know how to bear a firearm well enough to hit a barn from the inside, he seemed to laugh along — but he never returned to another Blogmore hunt.

The Hunt — Who Could Captain this Ship?

Every good hunt I have ever been on has, at least unofficially, a person in charge to provide some order for these armed primates. Blogmore is an exception. The unofficial hunt photographer, Jeremiah M. Murphy of Rapid City (he’s not a pacifist — he’s just excellent at self-assessment and knows which weapon he shoots most capably) captured the organized disorganization in one of his candid shots accompanying this article.

In past hunts, I’ve gotten the credit for laying out a successful plan for hunting large sunflower fields with small groups (section it off and hunt it cross rows). Plus, since most of the dogs are mine — and all of the ones that behave are — I get to have my share of input. This year our gracious landowner did lay out a plan of attack that on its face looked crazy, but in spite of our inartful execution, worked brilliantly.

The temperature ranged from 9 to 17 degrees, and the wind was at least a steady twenty miles per hour from the west, with even stronger gust. With dogs, you always hunt into the wind so they have their best shot at trailing the birds’ scent. But Nick convinced us that when the birds flushed at Mach 1, the cover we wanted them to land in was his and it was to the east, so we needed to push them with the wind out of a cattail-filled dam and draw. Skeptically, we started into the cattails. To the east we had only three blockers, who were spread out over several hundred yards of pasture and draw. The walkers included me and my three labs on the north side, and Kevin, Nick and one very rangy spaniel thing named Rosie on the south side. What Rosie lacked in discipline she made up for in raw energy. Within less than two minutes Rosie had put dozens of pheasants into that jet stream headed east. Kevin and I each dropped one, and the blockers enjoyed many opportunities to fire their weapons — unburdened by the task of recovering downed birds.

And never bet against the landowner — the birds all came down in the shelterbelts to the east, still pleasantly huntable on the Nemec land.

The Meal — Stories Shared, Friendships Made and Renewed

Kevin Woster and Bill Walsh in the Nemec dining room.

After the hunt, the group gathers at the Nemec dining room table for a feast of chili and whatever else Mary Jo has chosen to warm the hearts and stoke the bodies for the discussions to come. In years past the debates and discussions have included such diverse topics as everybody telling their favorite Frank Kloucek story (that should be a book), to assessing the fall of Tom Daschle and the rise of John Thune on the political landscape. This year, for the first time, former congressional candidate Bill Walsh joined the hunt. It took some prodding, but he shared recollections from the 1978 Democratic US House primary.

With Woster moderating the discussion, as long as the chili holds out, the South Dakota stories flow at the Blogmore Hunt. Real friendships are made by the most unlikely of people. Personally, there’s a strange character from Rapid City named Bill Fleming that has become a close pen pal (or whatever we call keyboard friends now) ever since meeting at the early hunts.

The Secret to World Peace

As hunts go, when the wind chills are below zero, 5 hunters yielding 10 birds — and missing another hundred — is a good day. It may be a few days before the frostbite goes away, but the friendships, camaraderie and experience hand around for a lifetime.

The real magic of the Blogmore Hunt is the Red and Blue sharing that takes place at the Nemec dining room table. History is filled with examples of the healing power of this phenomenon. Senator Karl Mundt and his colleagues used a weekly poker game. President Reagan and Speaker O’Neill shared a bump on the back porch at that white house. So here’s my thought. Senators Johnson and Thune and Representative Noem should get the Nemecs to lend them the dining room table for a week, ship it to DC, have Mary Jo make a roaster of her chili and get Harry and Nancy and Mitch and John all together for a little bonding and bridge building, Blogmore style. It can’t hurt, and if they play nice, Kevin might invite them to the real Blogmore Hunt next year.

Lee Schoenbeck grew up in Webster, practices law in Watertown, and is a freelance writer for the South Dakota Magazine website.


Posted on by — Leave a comment

Gorillas, Honkers and Beetdiggers

A fierce fiberglass ape welcomes fans to Gregory’s football field.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2001 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.


Unless a small town is blessed with a tornado or some other natural disaster, its residents are pretty much resigned to the fact that they’ll never see their community on the evening news. That’s why high school sports are so important in South Dakota — they’re an opportunity for small towns to get statewide recognition without having to experience death and destruction.

Because towns identify with their teams, the powers who decide such things often look to graceful, powerful animals for mascots. Bears. Bobcats. Golden Eagles. But there are those who take the road less traveled, mascot-wise, and opt for…something else. Which is how the Gregory Gorillas, Turton Frogs, Claremont Honkers, Waverly Woodchucks, Bruce Bees and Provo Rattlers came to be.

Others forego the animal kingdom for dashing role models. Knights. Cavaliers. For those who want a little outlaw in their mascots, however, we have the Sioux Valley Cossacks, Ethan Rustlers and Bristol Pirates. Other communities choose to honor less romantic figures. The Keystone Dynamiters, Armour Packers and Newell Irrigators, for example. Two schools even found inspiration in the sugar beet fields, which yielded the Vale Beetdiggers and Nisland Beettoppers.

Then there are those officials who truly went where no man had gone before, like the ones who settled on the Irene Maroons. (No doubt to the team’s relief, they later became the Cardinals.) Lastly, we salute the too-clever-for-their-own-good group, which would certainly include whoever came up with the Quinn Tuplets.

One South Dakotan, Jerry Miller, has been collecting sports stories for a long time — he started cutting basketball pictures out of the newspaper when he was still in grade school. His list of state schools and their sports team nicknames grew out of that hobby.

One of the more unusual state names belongs to the Sturgis Scoopers, which most people assume has something to do with mining. Not so, according to Miller. Back when nearby Fort Meade was a frontier fort, the soldiers would make their way into town, where they were often relieved of their pay by dance hall girls and card sharks. The local term for those folks was “scoopers” — they scooped the money out of the soldiers’ pockets. Hence the name honoring these previously ignored citizens.

“My favorite is Monroe,” said Miller.”They were the Canaries to begin with. Then just after the turn of the century a lot of Dutch people moved into the area, so they became the Monroe Wooden-Shoed Canaries.”

When ESPN had a program on unusual sports team names, Miller submitted the Monroe mascot to its producer.”They thought I made it up,” laughed Miller.”They wanted to know what I’d been drinking!”

There will be no Wooden-Shoed Canaries in this year’s matches. Monroe’s school is long closed, and for reasons unclear, no other has taken up the name. Likewise, no Beetdiggers or Beettoppers will take the court. Such names will live on only in the memories of”guys as goofy as I am,” laughed Miller.

When longtime Yankton sportswriter Hod Nielsen wrote a column about Miller and the sports team names he’d collected, it prompted a tongue-in-cheek follow-up story about new and improved names.

How about an athletic team known as the Allen Wrenches? Who would want to meet the Blunt Instruments on a football field? Could any athlete hold his head high if he was a member of the Custer Puddings or Lemmon Aides? Imagine the time announcers would have if the Florence Nightingales, Garretson Keillors, Gregory Pecks and Clark Kents were thrown together for a tournament.

What about the Irene Good Knights? Marion Ettes? Wall Papers? Emery Boards? Faith Healers? Last but not least, can you imagine having to face the Webster Dictionaries on the field of athletic battle? Consternation would almost certainly ensue if they prevailed.

“We hasten to assure anyone who might take offence that there is none intended,” said Nielsen of his efforts.”It’s just that, in the middle of a cold winter, the mind wanders.”

Posted on by — Leave a comment

In Search of the Lone Prairie Windmill

By Christian Begeman

The last part of October found me cruising the back roads of southeastern South Dakota in search of the prairie windmill. I was looking specifically for ones that stood away from tree belts and visual clutter. These are the type that I love to position against a sunset sky or dramatic cloud scene. The problem is, such windmills are proving harder and harder to find. In my travels, I noticed that there are far more windmills in disrepair than not. I would say roughly 80% don’t have blades anymore. I suppose it is a sign of better technology as well as better farming and ranching methods in rural America. Still, there is something special about seeing a prairie windmill in a farmyard, or even better, standing alone against the elements in an open stretch of pasture. It is sort of hard to describe. I guess a scene like that simply reminds me of home, for lack of a better explanation.

Over the years, I’ve noticed that well-composed photos of these prairie sentinels seem to resound well in photo contests and other showings as well. It seems folks still like their windmills. As a photographer I’m drawn to them as well. South Dakota’s regular offerings of majestic sunsets often work best if a silhouette of a recognizable object is added in the frame. Whether in the foreground or on the horizon line, a well-placed windmill silhouette can transform a nice sunset shot into a breathtaking photo infused with a common piece of symbolism. This allows personal emotions and memories to be added to the photo on an individual and unique basis. I think that is what good art is all about. That said, I readily admit that such high-minded thoughts rarely enter my mind when out shooting photographs. My method is simply finding a scene with potential and then working it to get a shot that speaks to me. Within those moments are where the fun and joy of photography are for me.

One early summer night a few years ago, I was back home near Isabel, SD shooting the Milky Way in the southern sky with a lone windmill in the foreground. The night was very dark and I was working alone. All of the sudden, the windmill began to turn and whine. Soon it was pulsing a faint metallic tone while turning briskly. I was a bit startled since there was no wind at ground level. The sound was loud in the otherwise still night, reminding me of the opening scene of one of the best spaghetti westerns of all time, Once Upon A Time in the West. At first it was spooky, but after I told myself it was simply a wind current well above ground, it became sort of a soothing sound as I worked. When it stopped turning about 10 minutes later, the night was too quiet.

This September I was chasing the last big thunderstorm of the season near Epiphany, SD, and happened to stumble upon an abandoned farmhouse with a windmill near it just off the county road. I set up my camera in the post-storm wind and pointed it at the scene with plenty of room in the sky to try to catch some lightning. I got a couple decent shots, but the cool thing was being able to go back and re-shoot the scene in October against an evening sky on a nearly full moon night. Those old windmills have seen a lot of storms and skies, yet they still stand and endure, even if the times have passed them by. There’s probably a good life lesson in there somewhere — and even if not, a lone windmill standing against the South Dakota sky will always remind me of home.

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog. To view Christian’s columns on South Dakota’s state parks and recreation areas, visit his state parks page.


Posted on by — Leave a comment

Unknown No More

By John Andrews

Jack Thurman remembers the photograph as if it were taken yesterday. He was standing on the slope of Mount Suribachi on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima. It was the 25th or 26th of February, 1945. American forces were in the heat of a battle with the Japanese for control of the small island about 650 miles south of Tokyo. As a member of the United States Marine Corps’ 5th Division, 27th Regiment, Thurman had volunteered to help the 28th Regiment secure the mountain. They had been on Iwo Jima since the 19th. They were making progress.

On the 23rd a group of Marines made it to the top of Mount Suribachi and hoisted an American flag. A few days later, Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal gathered those soldiers again for another photo around the flag. One of them noticed Thurman standing a few yards down the mountain and invited him up. After the photo was taken, the soldiers returned to the fight and Rosenthal left with another good war picture. In this one the soldiers were jubilant. Some held their helmets in the air. Others raised their guns. Rosenthal was able to identify everyone except one man — Thurman.

For more than 55 years, the smiling young Marine standing on the far left side of the photo was identified only as”unknown.” But his name is no longer a mystery. After years of silence, Thurman identified himself as the only unknown soldier in that image from Iwo Jima.

Thurman, the oldest of 15 children, grew up on a dairy farm outside of Mitchell. He remembers”a lot of hard work,” milking cows and farming with a team of horses (Thurman’s father finally bought a tractor in 1939). He rode a horse to country school before enrolling at Notre Dame School in Mitchell.

When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, thousands of young men across the country clamored to join the military. Thurman was no different. When he was 17, he told his family he wanted to enlist, but his father wouldn’t sign the necessary paperwork, saying he needed him on the farm. So Thurman waited until Sept. 27, 1943, his 18th birthday. He walked into the recruiter’s office in Mitchell and joined the Marine Corps.

“As I looked over my right shoulder, I saw that flag going up…it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw in my life.”

After training at Fort Snelling, Minn., and San Diego, Thurman became a member of Carlson’s Raiders in the South Pacific. In early 1945, Thurman found himself on a ship heading west from Hawaii. Only after a few days at sea did the Marines find out they were headed for Iwo Jima. As they approached the island they saw nearly constant gun flashes along the horizon.”We were all thinking to ourselves, ‘How can anything survive on that island with that kind of an attack?'” Thurman recalled.

On Feb. 19 the 5th Division’s 26th, 27th and 28th regiments landed on the southern coast of Iwo Jima. Thurman remembers chills running down his spine as he stepped over dead Japanese soldiers lying on the black sands of Iwo Jima’s beach.”We didn’t know what to expect,” he says.

The 28th Regiment was assigned to take Mount Suribachi, an inactive volcano on the southern tip of the island. The 26th and Thurman’s 27th Regiment were to take an airstrip that sat just a few hundred yards northeast of Mount Suribachi. The Marines set to work, firing on foxholes and rooting out Japanese soldiers, many of whom were hidden within 11 miles of tunnels.

While Thurman and other members of his regiment fought the Japanese on the ground, the 28th Regiment started its slow ascent up Mount Suribachi. On Feb. 21 the men had nearly surrounded the base of the mountain and started to climb. At a little after 10 a.m., on the morning of the 23rd, as Thurman was fighting in the middle of the airstrip, a soldier noticed activity on the mountaintop. Marines had reached the summit and were raising a flag.”As I looked over my right shoulder, I saw that flag going up,” Thurman said.”It was the most beautiful thing I ever saw in my life. The ocean breeze hit it and the flag itself unfurled. It was just a beautiful thing up there. And there were a few of us who had some tears in our eyes, because we lost a lot of men between the 19th of February and the 23rd of February. We lost a lot of men, so we weren’t ashamed to shed a tear.”

Marine Corps photographer Lou Lowery captured the first flag raising. A few hours later, another group of Marines reached the top of the mountain with a larger flag. As they took the smaller one down and hoisted the bigger flag into place, Rosenthal snapped a picture. The image, which was given the title”Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima,” won a Pulitzer Prize and became one of the most reproduced photos of the war.

Thurman was a bit hesitant days later when that soldier from the 28th Regiment invited him into Rosenthal’s group photo.”I said, ‘Well I’m 27th Regiment.’ And he said, ‘That makes no difference. You’re still one of us.’ Well, that sounded pretty good to me,” Thurman said,”so I went up.”

Thurman is standing directly behind Ira Hayes, one of the six men immortalized in Rosenthal’s flag-raising photo. John Bradley, Franklin Sousey and Mike Strank–three other soldiers from the flag raising–are also in the photo. As the only man who was not a member of the 28th Regiment, Thurman became the only unidentified soldier.

Many of the men standing alongside Thurman, including Sousley and Strank, were killed days later as the Japanese continued their attempt to hold Iwo Jima. The fighting continued until American forces finally secured the island on March 26, 1945. Thurman left Iwo Jima that same day.

In a few months the war was over. Thurman came back to the United States and bounced around the West Coast looking for work before coming back to South Dakota. He had a number of jobs in Mitchell, Aberdeen and Rapid City before he and his wife, Carol, headed for San Diego. It was there that he was introduced to drafting and embarked upon a career in architecture. He finally settled down in Boulder, Colo., where he designed many of the buildings on the University of Colorado campus.

After years of silence, Thurman identified himself as the only unknown soldier in that image of Iwo Jima.

For more than 30 years after the war Thurman remained silent about what he had experienced.”I just didn’t particularly care to talk about it,” he said.”It was hard for me to hold back my emotions when I got into the real messy part.” In the late 1970s, though, Thurman was invited to speak at a Denver-area Kiwanis Club. Since then he has been open about his war experiences and has written a book detailing his military career.

The country was re-introduced to Iwo Jima in 2000 with the publication of Flags of Our Fathers. Written by John Bradley’s son James, the book chronicles the lives of the six men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima. The picture of those men from the 28th Regiment, plus an unknown Marine, gathered on Mount Suribachi is included in a section of photographs from the battle.

After the book came out, Thurman’s family members and friends were sure they knew the unidentified soldier.”People in the family were calling me asking ‘Isn’t that you in that picture?'” By saying yes, Thurman finally ended a half-century of mystery.

In 2006 Clint Eastwood turned Flags of Our Fathers into a movie. Thurman saw the film in Denver with a host of other Iwo Jima veterans. Shortly before Christmas that year, Thurman met Lt. Keith Wells, the platoon leader whose men were charged with putting the flag on Mount Suribachi.

“So you’re the guy in that picture?” Wells asked.

“Yes, sir,” Thurman said.

“We’ve been wondering who in the hell that guy is,” Wells said.”We could not figure out who he was. We’ve got a name for everybody but that one.”

“Well,” Thurman answered, with a laugh,”I’m the lone ranger.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2008 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a back issue or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.


Posted on by — Leave a comment

South Dakota Web Roundup

By Laura Johnson

Participants in Platte’s Paralyzed Veterans of America Hunt are feasting today in preparation for a little hunting tomorrow. The event helps veterans with disabilities to take part in a favorite South Dakota tradition.

Box Elder will be celebrating Veterans Day weekend with a parade honoring the Iwo Jima Flag Raising Unit, World War II veterans, and all those who have served the United States. Veteran Ralph Griffiths will tell the story of the battle for Iwo Jima at a luncheon following the parade.

Lakota culture has long honored warriors. That respect extends to modern-day veterans as well. Rose Kern writes about that respect at Prairie Edge.

We’ve written about many South Dakota heroes and their sacrifices. Lemmon’s Gordon Lippman fought in World War II and Korea before falling in Vietnam. Herbert Littleton of Spearfish met his end in a split-second act of bravery in Korea. Joe Thorne was a football star in Beresford and at SDSU before he went to Vietnam. Take a moment to remember them and other veterans this weekend.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Keeping Time

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 2011 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a back issue or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.


Guidance from a legendary wrestling coach helped turn Daktronics into the world’s leading scoreboard builder.

Al Kurtenbach and Duane Sander were electrical engineering teachers at SDSU when they founded Daktronics in 1968 as a medical device manufacturer. They built other projects, like an electronic voting system for state legislatures, but the fate of the business was sealed when Kurtenbach met Warren Williamson for coffee.

Williamson, an SDSU coach, was involved with college wrestling nationally. He told Kurtenbach the scoreboards used for national tournaments were too big and didn’t display pertinent information. Kurtenbach and Sander developed a prototype and used it during a meet at SDSU in 1970. Other coaches liked it so they built 17, and with help from Williamson the new boards were used in the national wrestling tournaments that year.

Those were the first of thousands of scoreboards the Brookings company has built over 40 years. As of 2011, Daktronics had equipment in 26 of 30 Major League Baseball parks, 29 of 31 NFL stadiums and 20 of 29 NBA arenas. Early scoreboards used simple incandescent lamps, but today’s huge, colorful boards are illuminated by thousands of tiny light emitting diodes, or LEDs. They convert energy to light more efficiently and don’t have a filament, so instead of burning out they gradually grow dimmer.

Much of Daktronics’ business is sports related, but the company also designs computer software, billboards and the signs along South Dakota interstates displaying road conditions and Amber Alerts.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Museum Pieces

Lori Holmberg, Dakota Discovery Museum director, says Gilfillan’s wagon is a permanent exhibit.

By Katie Hunhoff

The coming winter will force South Dakotans to seek indoor amusement, and high on our list should be a visit to local museums. You might be surprised at what you find. Our writers found all sorts of treasures when we did a search for our state’s most interesting and unusual museum artifacts.

Right beneath our noses, in our hometown of Yankton where we publish South Dakota Magazine, we found a Native American pipe bag with an amazing story at the Dakota Territorial Museum. The bag was the centerpiece of a collection of Indian artifacts gathered by Andrew J. Faulk, a 1860s trader and later the third governor of Dakota Territory. Crow Indians probably made the tanned, 43-inch long deer hide bag.

The bag’s recent history is almost as intriguing as its past. In 1995, it was stolen from the museum. For eight years, Yankton County Historical Society board member and artifact collector Larry Ness carried a photograph of the bag, and asked other collectors if they’d seen it. He found it in New York in 2003, and after some legal maneuvering he was able to bring the pipe bag home to the Yankton museum, where it is once again on display.

The Thoen Stone, located at the Adams Museum in Deadwood, is another prized museum piece with an interesting story. The stone is an 8 1/2 by 10 inch scrap of sandstone, purportedly found near Spearfish in 1887 by Louis Thoen. Inscribed on both sides is a message that is still the subject of controversy. The rough script describes how a band of seven men found”all the gold we could carry” in the northern Black Hills, and then were killed by Indian warriors — all except for the writer, Ezra Kind.

Kind supposedly wrote that he was out of food,”without a gun and hiding for his life.” The inscription is dated 1834, 40 years before the Custer expedition into the Hills. The fate of Mr. Kind is unknown, as is the validity of the stone itself.

Another famous stone can be found at the Cultural Heritage Center in Pierre — and its validity is certain. In 1742, Pierre Gaultier de la Verendrye sent his sons from Hudson Bay in Canada to find a water route to China. On foot and horseback, Louis-Joseph and Francois trekked west for over a year — until their Indian guides refused to go farther. The French-Canadians did not find a route to the sea, but they were among the first Europeans to see the Dakota plains. Camping with Indians along the Missouri on March 30, 1743, they buried a lead plate on a hilltop near the mouth of the Bad River to commemorate their journey. Three teenagers found the Verendryes’ partially-exposed lead plate in February of 1913. The artifact helped historians map the Verendryes’ route in their search for the Pacific.

Some of other amazing discoveries we found at local museums include paintings, like the Harvey Dunn originals at Brookings’ South Dakota Art Museum, sculptures like Borglum’s Statue of Lincoln at Keystone’s Borglum Historical Center and more Native American treasures like parfleche containers at Akta Lakota Museum in Chamberlain. Sometimes the museum building itself is a treasure, like the Pettigrew House in Sioux Falls or Adams Museum and House in Deadwood.

Ranchers will be nostalgic about Archer Gilfillan’s sheepherder wagon at the Dakota Discovery Museum in Mitchell. The early-day”mobile home,” a double floored and heated covered wagon, came to the museum 50 years ago. Gilfillan, a popular Harding County writer and speaker, was born in White Earth, Minn. in 1886, the son of an Episcopal missionary to the Ojibway Indians. Gilfillan studied Latin and Greek in prestigious universities and traveled in Europe. He returned to the West to homestead in Harding County. That venture failed and he worked for other ranchers, keeping a journal of the people and events he encountered. He gave a speech about sheep, coyote and human behavior at a wool growers’ convention at Helena, Mont., in 1924 called”Secret Sorrows of a Sheepherder,” and it was so well received he compiled his stories into a book, Sheep: Life on the South Dakota Range.

Every South Dakota museum, large and small, has treasures awaiting us. What better time to discover them than on a cold winter’s day?

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Invisible Citizens

By Vi Waln

November is designated as Native American Heritage Month. There’s plenty of attention focused on American Indian Heritage Month elsewhere. But there isn’t much hoopla surrounding it all on the Rosebud Reservation. We really shouldn’t have to acknowledge the month as a time to recognize ourselves because we are Lakota every day of our lives, not just during one month of the year; right? It is also up to us as individuals to maintain the genuine Lakota heritage set down for us by our ancestors in our daily walk of life.

Even though there are lots of activities across the nation recognizing American Indians and all the contributions our people have made to mainstream society during this month, I still believe the Lakota people of South Dakota remain largely invisible to mainstream society in many ways.

Our tribes are often referred to as sovereign nations even though as individuals we are also considered American citizens. We are residents of the counties and states in which we reside but many of their economic statistics overlook the conditions our people live in on our reservations. For instance, I do not believe South Dakota’s unemployment statistics include all the people who cannot find work on the rez. On the other hand, our conditions are acknowledged when the counties in which we live are singled out by census statistics as the poorest places in the country. This is one of the few times we are recognized by state officials.

November is the month when we recognize our soldiers on Veterans Day. Countless brave Lakota men and women have served in the United States military. Many of our family members are currently deployed to places far away from their homelands. Grandparents, parents, siblings, children and many other relatives pray for their safe return every day.

November is when many American households will cook a big dinner to feed several family members and friends to acknowledge Thanksgiving Day. This is the annual day set aside in order to celebrate family, abundance and thanks. But there would be no Thanksgiving holiday without the contributions of the Indian tribes in this country. I say Indian tribes for the lack of space to list over 500 tribes that reside in this country. Many of their members are like me: I would much rather be called a Lakota than Sioux or American Indian or Native American.

And here on the rez, Thanksgiving is not much different from any other day of the year because many families living here cook a big meal every day of the year to feed many of their relatives who cannot afford to buy their own food. People all over the country are celebrating abundance while many of our Lakota and other tribal people are lucky to have a daily meal. Abundance of material possessions is not something we can celebrate on a regular basis on the rez.

Still, we give thanks for all that we have. Lakota people do not wait until Sunday to pray nor do we wait until the official Thanksgiving Day to appreciate what we have. Many prayers are said each day by those of us who are grateful for the little things, such as another sun rise or having water to drink in the morning. Daily prayers of appreciation are also given for good health and the love of our families.

Lakota people even pray for those ignorant non-Indians who wish we would all just boil quietly away into the American melting pot. We pray that the open hatred directed at people of color will one day be overcome and be replaced by peace in the shallow hearts of those who judge. We also give daily thanks for Unci Maka (Mother Earth) and all the gifts of sustenance she provides us with.

In closing, I want to offer a public thank you to all of our young Lakota people who struggle to take the proper steps to ensure the survival of our way of life. There are many Lakota teenagers who regularly attend ceremony to pray and sing. They make a point to learn the protocols of ceremony. These young people are our spiritual leaders of tomorrow and we must always encourage them.

Vi Waln is Sicangu Lakota and an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. Her columns were awarded first place in the South Dakota Newspaper Association 2010 contest. She can be reached through email at sicanguscribe@yahoo.com.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

4 Yes, 2 No and a ‘Present’

By Ken Blanchard

I think that the initiative and referendum process is a very bad idea. Like all the other states, South Dakota elects a governor and a state legislature. We expect them to do only three simple things:

  1. provide generous services to the people of this state;
  2. keep taxes very, very low; and
  3. balance the state budget.

That looks a lot like my personal weight loss program: everything is on the table except dieting and exercise.

Giving the legislature an almost impossible task would make it too easy on them. So we also keep tying their hands by referendums and initiatives. There is one big problem and another bigger problem with this. The big problem is that we frequently use the state constitution to make policy. That is a little like trying to put the arrangement of furniture into a blueprint. A constitution should spell out the rules of governing; it should not be a means to fix legislative outcomes.

The bigger problem is that initiatives isolate a particular question from its effect on the rest of the laws and the budget. When the legislature decides to spend money on something, it has to face the fact that that money cannot be spent on something else. When the voters decide to spend money on a particular issue in an initiative, they are sheltered from that reality. This makes for irresponsible policy.

I find that these reflections make it a lot easier to decide how to vote on the various ballot issues. I apply them in the following analysis of this year’s ballot.

Yes on Amendment M. The state constitution is not the place for restrictions on laws governing corporations. Since M removes such restrictions, yes is an easy call.

Yes on Amendment N. A five cents per mile constitutional restriction on travel reimbursement for legislatures (enacted in 1889!) is an absurdity. Again, this has no business being in the state constitution. We should remove the restriction.

Yes on Amendment O. I don’t think that cement is a constitutional issue so I would rather see the business taken out of the state constitution. Amendment O replaces a dollar amount with a formula, which is at least a mild improvement.

No on Amendment P. A balanced budget is necessary for any government that cannot print money, and maybe for those that can. There is neither any need nor any use in stating the obvious in the state constitution.

So much for the alphabet issues. Now for the sexier, numerical issues.

Yes on Referred Law 14. The governor and the legislature created a”Large Project Development Fund,” which I suppose is intended to allow the Governor to encourage the development of large projects. I have no strong feelings about such a fund and neither do you. Or if you do, vote against the rascals who enacted it. Reversing the legislature’s work shields them from your criticism and shields you from having to find out how your representative voted.

Referred Law 16. I am going to weasel out on this one. On the one hand, the legislative package that is referred to the voters here looks like a very big solution chasing a very small problem. On the other hand, anything that my South Dakota Magazine colleague Cory Heidelberger is so vehemently opposed to can’t really be a bad idea. Much as I disapprove of the referendum process, it exists and I would vote against something I disliked as much as Cory dislikes this one. So I am taking the sub-courageous course of voting”present” on this one.

No on Initiated Measure 15. If you think that taxes should be raised and more money should be spent on education and Medicaid, I might agree with you. What both of us should do is talk to the people we send to Pierre and vote accordingly. Taxing and spending on such issues is something that should only be done with an eye to the state budget as a whole. That is what we pay our legislators to do. If we are going to bypass the legislature and create pools of money for specific purposes, why bother to fund a legislature at all?

We give our legislature an almost impossible task and yet they manage to accomplish it. South Dakota is a well-managed state, fiscally speaking. Let them do their job and then fire the rascals if you think they haven’t done it well enough. Meanwhile, let’s clean up the state constitution.

Editor’s Note: Ken Blanchard is our political columnist from the right. For a left-wing perspective on politics, please look for columns by Cory Heidelberger every other Wednesday on this site.

Dr. Ken Blanchard is a professor of Political Science at Northern State University and writes for the Aberdeen American News and the blog South Dakota Politics.