You might wonder, what am I doing here?

What am I doing here on the Pine Ridge Reservation? There's a straightforward answer -- my community health nursing rotation (and all that entails) -- and a more philosophical answer. I'll start with the philosophical one.

Vic Glover, a wonderful Lakota writer (funny, ironic, honest, and full of heart) and author of "Keeping Heart on Pine Ridge," gently pokes fun of "people rolling through" -- volunteers, spirituality seekers, historical tourists, documentary crews, and others "rolling through" Pine Ridge as all wanting something, and leaving with more than they left themselves:

"You see a lot of people rolling through this reservation. They come here with various motives. Some want to see if we still live in tipis. Some want to "help the Indians." Some want an Indian name. Some want to be adopted into the tribe. Some just want to take some photographs. Some want to donate their time.

Some want to see the Badlands. Some want to visit Wounded Knee. Some want to tell you how guilty they feel. Some want to tell you their great-grandmother was a Cherokee princess.

Some people may want to come to ceremonies, while others want to go the casino. Some want to eat peyote, and others want to smoke a "peace pipe." Some are looking for a medicine man, and some are looking for Indian artwork. Some are on vacation with their parents, who want to do some of these things and brought the kids along, too. There's one thing these folks all have in common -- they want something."

This got me thinking: what do I want? I'd like say, no, not me, I'm not like them! I don't want anything! And the closest I can truthfully get to that is to say that I'm here because I haven't been here before. I haven't been to the Midwest, haven't been to a reservation or among American Indians, haven't seen such poverty right in the middle of the U.S., haven't seen such community and spirituality. But it's true that there are other reasons why I'm here, and that there are things that I want. I adamantly don't want to aid or help or save. I do want to see what life is like here. I want to learn about the Lakota philosophy, the attitude with which people go through life (part strength, part light-heartedness at best; hopelessness, bitterness, and dependence at worst), and the way people treat each other (endless generosity and respect, but sometimes jealousy or violence). I also want to learn about Lakota ideas about healing, not so much the herbs and ceremonies used by medicine men (secrets too often taken by us people rolling through), but rather ideas about interconnectedness and healing energy that can be incorporated into Western medicine and clinical interactions. This last want comes from reading the book "The Scalpel and the Silver Bear" by Lori Arviso Alvord, the first Navajo woman surgeon. She writes about bringing Navajo ideas about interconnectedness and beauty into the hospital and into her work, and it really made sense to me. Current widely-accepted models of clinical care and interactions seem vastly inadequate to me, whereas the ideas that Dr. Alvord writes about feel familiar and correct. So one of the things I am searching for here on Pine Ridge is a similar philosophy to incorporate into my clinical work, to get me a little closer to being a healer and not just a diagnoser and prescriber.