Clearing My Head- Reflections of a Sunday Long Run on the Rez

It was 9am before I finally got out of bed. Feeling guilty about sleeping so late (and making our trip to Bismarck even later), I drank some water, sneezed about 10 times, and threw on my running clothes. Without needing a headlight or ankle light- or wanting an iPod, I stepped out the door; it was 18 degrees, perfectly sunny, and with just a small hint of a south breeze, the first of that direction in quite a while.

It was the same tiny little town I've started running from every day- the school staff housing, the elder apartments, the highway with cars that you can hear from miles away, and the occasional dog bark. The only difference between this run and other runs is that I can see everything around me: the grass swaying in the field, the plastic garbage bag stuck to piece of corn stubble, the 99.8% water emissions from the energy plant about 30 miles to the south. I begin running south and immediately I'm slowing climbing uphill. Mile 1, mile 2, mile 3- all of it un-shouldered highway with traffic, and all of it rolling up and down, with the ups more than the downs.

I then take a rare opportunity to turn and run on the gravel. Usually on early morning or late night runs, I avoid the gravel roads out here because the rocks are big, I'm not entirely sure where all the roads go, and I've heard of past mountain lion sightings off the main highway. Today, in the middle of a sunny day, I choose gravel. This choice led me to not see another car for the next hour. I begin a mile-long climb up out of the valley.

As my shoes make the scraping sound of shoe meeting dirt, I turn and look from where I've come.

Physically, I've come from town. I notice that I'm actually looking down upon the little village, and that I'm higher in elevation than the top of the water tower, standing at least 150 feet tall. Earlier this year there was a beautiful morning where fog settled through the whole valley, and climbing out of it revealed a vast low-lying area right here, where the town is. When the seasons changed and the thousands upon thousands of snow geese were in the middle of their large-scale migration, anybody in town could hear their incessant yet calming noise from a large slough not more than a couple miles from town. It's a calm and refreshing presence on the sometimes stale and difficult North Dakota prairie, yet the beginnings of this lie in something a little more sinister.

This town hasn't existed as long as towns around it. Nearby Garrison was founded in 1905 and Parshall, to the north, 1914. 40 years later, White Shield was put together. In the early 1900s, the Missouri River meandered its way through western North Dakota, but by the 1950s, the behemoth Garrison Dam was built to create a massive lake called Sakakawea. Ironically, the lake named after a Native woman flooded out an enormous amount of fertile homeland of the tribes along the upper Missouri. Entire towns were forced to pack up and move, relocating to some place far less stable to live off of and farm. There was one major problem with moving, however: most of the local land had already been claimed by European homesteaders through the Homestead Act and the US Government allowing white settlers to take land on reservations as well.

So the conundrum was thus: we have a group of people that we don't really like, that need to be moved somewhere already claimed by people that we like. The decision was a place where sloughs and low-lying areas made farming difficult, if not impossible, in some areas; a depression in the land. Welcome to White Shield, ND.

Mentally and emotionally, I've come a long way from where I was. As cliche as it sounds, I've really been trying to figure out who I am in these post-college days. A year ago I graduated from college, and during those...ahemfiveandhalfyearsahem...I self-identified as a Christian student-athlete, even down to my last on-campus semester, where I drastically trimmed down my credit-hours and basically focused on running, writing about running, and being a leader of FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes). I had at least 5-6 hours a day that I could devote to training-related things without worry. We traveled, competed, trained, and played an immense amount of foosball.

Now,  I live in a different world. I have a structured, clock-in/clock-out job and my wife as the only person to run with. No foosball, no travel for races, no young people to spend time with every day. Running while the sun shines is at times a distant memory, and as it gets colder, the morning darkness becomes harder and harder to penetrate with my mind and will. It gets pretty lonely out here without much for friends within an hour of 'home'.

Just about every person I've ever met in this 98% Native American town is really, really nice. I've struck up conversations with people in the gas station, people drive to the other side of the road when passing me running, and the school has been supportive of me as a teacher. However, I cannot help but shake the fact that all my students are a different color than me, with a background seeped in anger and betrayal directly stemming from people that look like me. There are not many places in America where a white guy can go to be in the minority, but I found one in a place that most ND people don't even know exists, within a 30 minute drive of a major tourism destination.

You know, some of America's darkest days didn't fall during the 'Indian Wars', because peoples have warred against each other since the beginning of time, but rather the successive combination of signing treaties that were not going to be honored, the scale-down of reservation sizes, and- lastly- boarding schools. We've all (hopefully) read about hair-cutting, language banning, and harsh punishments, but in reality the main idea was cultural assimilation. This, not unknown to history by any means, is when a group of people are defeated (physically, culturally, spiritually, etc) and forced to become a part of the majority culture. However, with the concept of reservations and our Bill of Rights, that's not how America was supposed to operate.

This leaves me questioning myself often about discipline decisions while at school. At what point am I shoving my culture and ideas about behavior onto another group of people? At what point do I realize that the students here and really not all that different than students at other schools? I have noticed that even within the reservation itself there are huge disparities about ideas of how to teach, govern, and live. This shouldn't be surprising, but many people in America tend to lump "Native Americans" into one category of people, with one set of ideas. This ignores that reality of our world.

The reality is that we all drive cars. We all make late-night shopping trips to Walmart. We all eat crappy fast food. We (almost) all burn natural gas and propane for heat. We all use computers, phones, and internet. In pop culture, even in 2017, we have a warped idea about the "Native American" while ignoring the simple fact that we are all humans beings trying to figure out how to live in this world.

Often, I'll get a chance to sit down with the school cook and have a talk about, well, everything. He once told me about how it frustrates him when people come to schools like this one with the wrong intentions. He's seen people coming in simply to try 'help out the poor Indian kids', or to seek something for themselves, rather than for the students. He told me, instead of seeing themselves as teachers, they see themselves as a teacher of Native students. There's a distinction there. By suggesting that you're teaching specifically Native students, the idea is that you are approaching your teaching completely different due to something about these people that is different. As I sit and watch snapchat-addicted students struggle to put their phones away, come to school with new widgets purchased at Walmart, and talking about Netflix shows they binge-watch, I wonder if the education process really needs to be all that different. I mean, I didn't come here looking for anything other than a chance to substitute teach close to home. I'm here to teach math (and some life skills), not to make social commentary.

Yet here I am, doing just that. Look, we have a race issue in this country. Ignore it or hate it, it permeates everywhere. The difference between now and 20 years ago is that now people are talking and making people uncomfortable about it. Last year, when I started teaching here, I was asked by students about my opinion of the DAPL protest, and thinking about that whole situation made me uncomfortable, because it demonstrates that we still struggle with an 'us versus them' mentality when it comes to white (US government)-native relations.

One thing about running in the middle of nowhere, you get to clear your mind. Everything above I mentally struggle with every day. How can I get every single one of my students exactly what they need in their mathematics education? But, running takes everything away. People that use running as a workout regimen or a way to stay in shape will see running as a difficult task to endure to succeed in a goal. Afterwards, they say, you get tired. No, running is invigorating. It produces life and gives me a bounce in my step. My problems disappear for a time, and all I can hear is that sound of the wind, or call of the birds. As mile after mile ticks away, I find myself at peace. I can't feel my brain actively telling my legs to move forward, my heart rate is calm, my breathing is comfortable. I bounce up and down, moving forward steadily. The ditch grass sways on the side of a water-carved valley down to the valley floor. On the highway miles away, busy cars fly past at 65mph on their ways towards who-knows-where. That'll be me in about and hour.

I feel accepted here, and I've been taunted less while running on a rural highway on a reservation than any other town I've ever run in. Maybe people aren't insecure about themselves here, or maybe there's a little more respect for others around here; either way I enjoy it. Later when I drive to Bismarck, the parking lots are packed in every lot- Christmas is a week away, and hundreds of people just like us are coming in from the countryside for a last chance at shopping. Sitting in a Barnes and Noble and reading a book about the National Parks while my wife visits friends, I can't help but transport myself back to that lonely gravel road as I came over the highest hill. There in front of me was a stunning view of the other side of the lake- the hills and buttes cutting through the prairie on their way down to the water. The water was a deep blue and gently flowing northbound with the wind. I couldn't help but keep looking at it, but deep down I was also sad; if only I could have seen it before the lake was created. There were towns down there- thriving. Now here we are, in a forgotten part of the country with only a tough, dry soil to sustain us. I know God created this beautiful place, and I know that He will guide in my every step throughout my life, whether it's here or somewhere else, but for now I just want to go for another run. It helps me process life a little easier.

So yeah, in the last three months I've decided to be a teacher, meteorologist, grad student, college coach, athletic director, principal, lawyer, environmentalist, firefighter, police officer, and farmer/racher. Where I go, no one knows. However, right now I should probably go back to planning out the next few days in math. Some of these class have a lot of moving parts to pay attention to.