Gabe Yellowhawk

Gabe Yellowhawk doesn’t spend much time thinking about his journey.  After all, he’s just a typical teenager.  But that doesn’t mean he’s unaware of the importance of his Native American heritage and the Lakota legacy that is being passed down to him through his father and grandfather.“I guess it’s pretty cool,” says the 13-year-old, who attends middle school in Hill City.While he may not remember it specifically, Gabe started dancing with his father and grandfather when he was only three years old. 

The circle is a symbol in Native tradition, and dancing alongside his father and grandfather, Gabe, representing the youth of the next generation of Lakotans, adds a richness and poignancy to the dance that otherwise would not exist.

(Read the rest of this story in the Fall ‘07 FACES)

Jim Yellowhawk

JIM YELLOWHAWK grew up knowing he had big moccasins to fill.  There were those of his father’s, an elder, holy man and artist, and there were also those of his ancestors, whose roots were deeply grounded in the Cheyenne River area soil where Jim would spend his youth.As opposed to Jim’s father’s generation, who grew up with the constant pressure to extinguish their Lakota traditions while being thrust into the white man’s world, Jim’s generation, growing up in the increasing ethnic tolerance of the sixties and seventies, was challenged to choose a path in life that could be productive both on or off the reservation and true to Native ways.By all counts, Jim Yellowhawk, named Taowihayble Kpago (which means “marks his visions”), has embraced this challenge and exceeded expectations in ways that make his father, certainly, and just as importantly, his ancestors, proud.That Jim would grow up to be artist seems inevitable.  His grandmother, Annie Elk Head, was a highly respected beadstress and quill artist and his father Gerald has spent a lifetime painting memories of his Cheyenne River childhood on canvas.“I have been draw to the arts since I was a youth,” Jim says.  “My family always encouraged me to pursue my art.”

In many ways, Jim has incorporated the art forms of his relatives into diverse media forms that defy description yet speak clearly to Native people.  Jim has used such “canvases” as umbrellas, motorcycles, satellite dishes, broken beer bottles and even IHS pharmacy sacks as canvases for his work—and clearly likes the challenge of pushing himself to try unconventional techniques that invoke great emotion in natives and non-natives alike.

(Read the rest of this story in the Fall ‘07 FACES)

Gerald Yellowhawk

Gerald Yellowhawk is a lot of things to a lot of people—husband, father, grandfather, artist, speaker, pastor, traditional dancer and Lakota translator.  These are titles he’s acquired through a lifetime of hard work and dedication to family, ministry and service.  But another title transcends all others, and has been bestowed on him by natives and non-natives alike.  Gerald Yellowhawk, or Jerry, as he is called by family and friends, is an Elder.“Jerry’s sisters called him an elder in his twenties,” explains Johanna Yellowhawk, with whom Gerald recently celebrated 50 years of marriage.  “It is a term of respect that has nothing to do with years,” she continues.  “Being an elder means you are looked up to with honor.”Gerald is silent through this exchange, probably because like many Native Americans of his generation, he is quiet and introspective, but also because humility is part of his nature.

A striking figure in Wranglers, cowboy boots, and a multi-colored denim shirt, Gerald wears a western hat from which a long, thin braid snakes down his back.  A beaded cross at his throat symbolizes the elements of his dual Native and Christian spirituality, which for him coexist without contradiction.  Most arresting is his face, his deep-set dark eyes both piercing and twinkling, set off by powerful and quintessentially Lakota features.  Unquestionably, there is wisdom etched in the angles of his face.

(Read the rest of this story in the Fall ‘07 FACES)

Kelli Braun: Wolf People Howl

t’s 9:30 in the evening. Kelli Braun, a 28-year-old mother of three, steps onto her deck, tilts back her head and gives a long, melancholy howl. Down the hill, her mother, Cindy Swanson, stands on her deck and joins in with a beastly wail of her own. To the uninitiated among the onlookers the women might appear to be moonstruck. Then, out of the darkness comes the eerie cry of real wolves, overwhelming the feeble sounds of their human imitators.

The scene takes place every night at Wolf People, a combination nature center and campground located on Iron Mountain road in Keystone. The 18.9-acre facility, about a 20-minute drive from Mount Rushmore, provides for travelers seven campsites and four tepees. It also is home to two full-grown wolves, Wakan Tanka, a male, and Akia, a neutered female. Braun gives a 15-minute talk on wolves in the wild and invites visitors, which include school, church and youth groups, as well as tourists, to see the primordial canines. Some people talk to them as if they were favorite pets. Others lay their hands against the outside of the heavy-gauge chain link enclosure in the hope that one of the animals will come to greet them. “People love hearing the wolves howl,” says Braun. “You can buy tapes of wolves howling, but here you can hear it in person and even howl back to them. It really enriches the experience of seeing the wolves.”

(Read the rest of this story in the Fall ‘07 FACES)

The Great Joshini

 “Pick a card, any card.” The tall youth stepped out of the starlit night into the FACES office. I gingerly pulled a card from the fanned deck in his hand. “Look at it, remember it…don’t tell me what it is. Put it back in the deck and give me three chances to find your card.” I didn’t think finding a card in three tries was as impressive as finding one on the first try, but I didn’t say anything. If the young man was trying to learn to do card tricks, I thought, far be it from me to discourage him.  “Is this your card?” He asked, pulling a card from the top of the deck.   “No,” I replied.    “OK, is this your card?” His voice betrayed just a hint of concern.  “No,” I repeated, sort of wishing that it was–I hated to see someone trying his hardest and failing. It was embarrassing.  “All right then, is this your card?” He asked, definitely worried now.   I thought about lying and saying it was; I felt sorry for the guy, like, “Don’t give up your day job.” However, I simply said, “Well, no. It’s very similar to my card though, I mean, mine was red too.”  At this point he started choking. I felt that I should do the Heimlich maneuver or something. Just because a guy is a lousy magician is no reason to let him die on your doorstep. I was about to step behind him when he coughed again, reached up to his mouth and pull out a folded card.

  “Is this your card?” He asked, and of course it was. I was floored. There had clearly been no card in his mouth when he’d been talking. How had it gotten there?

(Read the rest of this story in the Fall ‘07 FACES)

Steve Bernard: Domestic Dad

I had some doubts.  To put a finer point on it, I wondered how I could interview Gail and Steve Bernard on a weekday night at 7 p.m. with four small children in the house.  Maybe, I told myself, they got a sitter who would keep the children corralled in another part of the house while I interviewed the parents.  Or maybe the children all went to bed at 6:45 p.m.Get real.  Who puts their children to bed at 6:45 p.m.?So I drove to the Bernard’s home in a Rapid City neighborhood I didn’t even know existed –between the Meadowbrook and Arrowhead golf courses.  Gail is outside with the four girls, three of them on two-wheel bikes: Abby, 8; Emma, 6; Clare, 4 (yes! riding a two-wheel bike!), and Katie, 2 – who assures me that she also has a bike.  I commented on the beautiful landscaping (“A real selling point when we looked at the home and bought it in 2000,” Gail tells me).  She directs me to a huge colorful, thriving section of marigolds that came up unexpectedly this year. As I enter the house, the only noise I hear is the low hum of the dishwasher.  Steve has finished cleaning up after supper and extends a warm handshake as we are introduced.  To use a worn cliché, the house is spotlessly clean, another surprise.  “And where are the toys?” I ask, seeing none in the entry way, the living room, or the kitchen.  Gail and Steve look at each other and together explain, “Well, they’re in the family room downstairs,” as if my question were a non sequitur.  It’s been a long time since I had small children, but in my limited experience most of the homes I’ve visited with small children have the well-worn evidence practically everywhere in the house.

Not at the Bernard’s.

Read the rest of this story in the Fall ‘07 FACES

Faces of Faith: Dan and Karen Derrick

Why would a married couple on the brink of retirement bliss sell a lovely home, get rid of their accumulated treasures, say farewell to their children and head to Africa to live in relative poverty? Dan, 63, and Karen Derrick are planning to do just that. They are selling their home of 17 years situated on a 24-acre meadow south of Custer because they believe that God is calling them to be missionaries.

For Karen, 58, it’s the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. Born in Burke in south central South Dakota and raised on a farm, she had known since toddlerhood that she wanted to become a nurse like her mother. And, she sealed the specifications when a missionary nurse gave a presentation on her work in Africa at the church Karen and her family attended. “I was about eight or 10 years old at the time,” Karen says. “I remember watching the slide show and thinking that’s what I want to do.”

Read the rest of this story in the Fall ‘07 FACES

Learning Curve: Norsky and Dutch

Our learning curve assignment: to become Ole and Lena. We would eat Norwegian food, sing Norwegian songs, wear Norwegian clothes, dance Norwegian dances, and laugh at Norwegian jokes.  FACES advertising director Ann Henrichsen is, in fact, one fourth Norwegian, but of the non-observing variety, so it would be an opportunity for her to reclaim a part of her heritage. My ancestors lived on the other side of the North Sea in the Netherlands, but I felt that every South Dakotan should know something about Norway. This is, after all, the state in which Ole Edvart Rolvaag’s fictional immigrants ground out their miserable lives in the unforgettable classic “Giants in the Earth.” Doesn’t the main character freeze to death at the end? I forget. At any rate, Norwegians and their descendants  have long been culturally and demographically important in this region, and it was high time we learned something about them–something beyond the comic stereotypes, by yiminy!

Ann and I began our indoctrination by attending a Sons of Norway potluck at the Canyon Lake Senior Citizens Center in Rapid City. By good luck a contingent of real Norwegians happened to be visiting, which enabled us to hear the language spoken by native tongues. There were introductions and speeches, followed by the singing of the old Bjornstjerne Bjornson favorite, “Ja, Vi Elsker Dette Landet,” which, loosely translated, means “Yes, [something  something  something something.]” Wiping the tears from our eyes, we all (the Norwegians, the Norwegian-Americans, and the two Norwegian wannabees) trooped into the Senior Center’s Viking Hall (so named because the Sons of Norway contributed the lion’s share of the money to build it). There we had our pictures taken in front of RaVae Luckhart’s impressive Viking-ship mural before returning to the dining room to eat.

Read the rest of this story in the Fall ‘07 FACES

Tom Warner: The Eye of the Storm

There are a lot of reasons why people fall in love with the Black Hills, and given my unique job of meeting and writing about fascinating faces, I thought I’d heard them all.  There’s the friendly, small-town atmosphere, the clean mountain air, and the relative lack of traffic that allows us to get just about anyplace we care to go in a matter of minutes—variations of which I hear all the time and heartily agree with.  But this summer I met a man whose attraction to the Black Hills was one I’d never heard before.  Aviator and photographer Tom Warner could have lived anywhere after his eight-year stint in the United States Air Force, but he chose Rapid City, secondarily for all the reasons mentioned above, but primarily because we have something that he finds simply irresistible: spectacular thunderstorms.While loving a place for its storms may seem a little odd to someone like me who spent countless hours as a child scanning the prairie skies and imagining even the tiniest most benign clouds turning into terrifying tornados, I am surprised—yet oddly comforted—to discover in Tom a child who actually spent his summers hoping for even a tiny clap of thunder that might grow into something bigger.  For young Tom, a tornado would have been like a dream come true.

Interestingly, Tom’s hometown of Paradise, California, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, is in a setting very much like Rapid City’s.  But the weather patterns of these two places couldn’t be more different.  “The weather in Paradise is boring.  We would get maybe one or two cracks of thunder a year,” he says with a smile, obviously long accustomed to the irony of even the slightest negative connotation associated with a place called Paradise.

Read the rest of this story in the Fall ‘07 FACES

Cover Story – Yellowhawks: Tradition and Transition

It’s a perfect Black Hills evening.  Powder blue skies have begun to fade into white behind the green and black of needles and bark.  Typical of early fall, the warmth of the day gives way quickly to the coolness of impending dusk and accentuates the cleansing smell of pine.  The people gathered on a hillside between Hermosa and Keystone on this particular evening are from Switzerland, Germany and Austria and have come to the Black Hills primarily to immerse themselves in Native America culture.  They are not tourists, but rather admirers of a rich and fascinating heritage they hope to better understand.  They chatter boisterously in various German dialects among themselves until they hear a striding cadence of bells in the distance—at which time they become quickly silent.  There is a barely audible collective intake of breath from the small crowd as three generations of Yellowhawk men, splendidly and colorfully adorned in furs, feathers, beads, quills and leather, emerge into their circle.For the next 45 minutes, the European visitors watch Gerald Yellowhawk, his son Jim Yellowhawk, and grandson Gabe Yellowhawk dance the dance of their ancestors.  Between dances, with their host acting as interpretor, the visitors hear Gerald and Jim explain the symbolism as well as the historical and emotional significance of the costumes, colors, drum music and the dance itself.  In many ways, their words are like a condensed Native American history lesson—the kind not chronicled in textbooks—and they couldn’t have more attentive students.The Yellowhawks have come to educate and entertain this appreciate audience, but they’ve also come for themselves.  Dancing in the grandeur of He Sapa, they have come for reconnection and rejuvenation, and, as Elder Gerald Yellowhawk says simply, for the “journey.”