Hope on the Reservation

For almost two years Hank Rogerson 89 and wife jilann Spitzmiller '89 have documented the lives of four familiies on the Lakota Sioux Indian Reservation in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, the poorest county in the United States. Pin Ridge has a homeless rate of 30 percent, unemployment is at 85 percent, and 60 percent of the housing is substandard.The families, with central figure of a medicine man, a Lakota Sioux artist, a femele community activist, and a grandmother, will be featured in the couple's film-in-progress, Homeland.

Rogerson was first introduced to Native American culture at Dartmouth, in part through his wife, who has Cherokee ancestry. The two worked together on a him about Native American elders, Bless Me With A Good Life, which won "Best Documentary Short" at the 1994 San Francisco Native American Film Festival. Homeland is the first feature-length film they have worked on together.

Rogerson and Spitzmiller have made four visits from their home in Los Angeles to the reservation over the past two years.

"This project has shown me a universal truth," says Rogerson. "When things ate difficult and you have a bad day, you fall back on hope and humor and your family."

The warmth of the Pine Ridge citizens was extended to them. One night Doris Eagle, a grandmother with custody of eight grandchildren, called to say she was getting up at dawn to see a newborn white buffalo. In American Indian culture, the birth of a rare white buffalo means peace will come to the world.

Rogerson and Spitzmiller joined her and the grandchildren in the back of a pickup and watched the buffalo. "It's a symbol of hope and a reminder that all Indian people must stick together," whispered Eagle.

"Well, we need more of those buffalo then!" replied her six-year-old grandson Renza.

'89s Spitzmiller and Rogerson.