Cheyenne River Episcopal Mission

Life on the Cheyenne River Reservation can be very harsh. The problems include poverty, poor education, sub-standard health care, and high levels of substance abuse. Given that there are very few job prospects on the Reservation, "hope” is not the first word that comes to mind.

 BUT... the Reverends Ellen and Kurt Huber have found an innovative way to bring the Gospel message to the Reservation. They bought a ranch and created a camp for the children, a camp with Scripture study - and horses and ponies! This celebration of Native American culture is intentionally designed to be the inverse of the boarding school experience. The children - and their parents and grandparents - express that the camp brings them joy, and pride, and ... hope. The donations from the November 11 2023 Upstairs/Downstairs concert will go towards the support of the camp and the sponsorship of "Fall Family Day" at the Reservation.

From Father Kurt and Mother Ellen Huber – “Cheyenne River Episcopal Mission serves the people who live in the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation - and that includes visitors! We celebrate and worship together in churches, we feed one another, love one another, teach, learn, mourn, play, repent, assist, build, ride and most of all, listen, bear witness and walk the Way of Love - and when we forget to do that, we try again!”

To learn more about the Cheyenne River Episcopal mission, and the Black Horse Ranch, visit their website at: https://www.cheyenneriverepiscopalmission.com/

CHEYENNE RIVER INDIAN RESERVATION - ANNUAL MISSION TRIP

Since 2014 St. Barnabas has been sending mission teams to the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in South Dakota. We go to live among our Lakota sisters and brothers, to listen and learn, to share stories and the love of Jesus, and by God’s grace, absorb some measure of their grief and pain. We are guided by the theology of “Being with.” Being with involves dimensions of presence, participation, attention, delight and mystery (see Incarnational Mission by Samuel Wells).

In the summer of 2019, the team became “the hands and feet” of the only priest serving ten churches on the reservation. She had recently fallen through a rotting floorboard and snapped the bone in her leg, and as a result she was confined to crutches. One of our small projects was repainting a church sign, and the background was to be white. A young Indigenous man walking by stopped, and then sadly commented, “I wish someone could paint me white.” This experience gave us a whole new awareness of the cruelty of racism.

Each year we are inspired by the faith and resilience of our Lakota friends. We are so grateful for the hospitality, generosity and kindness of the people we come to serve.

Because of the Covid-19 pandemic our visit in 2020 had to be postponed. However, we hope to return in 2021, and in the meantime, we continue to help fund the Cheyenne River Episcopal Mission “Soup Kitchen.”

(Fr. Bob Trask)