DAY 62 WEDNESDAY 7th NOVEMBER 2007

Sidney, Nebraska (Miles to date: 6670)

Today we travelled down to Sidney, Nebraska. There no real reason for doing this apart to break up the journey to Colorado Springs. On the way down Mark decided to visit Wounded Knee, which is found in the Oglala Sioux reservation, and is the site of the last battle between the US military and the Sioux. Many view this as a massacre, for at the end of hostilities 146 men, women and children of the Lakota Sioux lay dead. For a couple of weeks Mark has been reading the book “Bury my heart at Wounded Knee” which details the often tragic outcomes of major conflicts between the Indian Tribes and US government during the period 1860 to 1890.

As we entered the Oglala Sioux reservation the first thing you see is a newly constructed casino but as you travel deeper into the reservation towards the town of Pine Ridge the signs of the quality of life for these Native Americans is quite apparent. The housing is made up of ramshackle modular homes, and the filth is almost indescribable – with garbage and wrecked cars everywhere. It just seems there is no sense or civic pride and there is a projection of hopelessness all around. We are all deeply moved by what we see around us – it is hugely depressing and we’re just visitors to all of this. A little further down the road we pull into a gas station and as Mark was filling up Karen gets talking to two young girls with babies in strollers. When Karen gets into the car she explains that they had asked for money and she had given them some. We normally don’t give money to street people, preferring to give them food instead (our concern is that the money we give will be spent on alcohol or drugs). There is little hope for these people, the land is not very good for farming and employment prospects are poor in the area. It is very sad but we think it is important for Jack and Emily to see the realities of life and that not everyone is as well off as we are. Leaving Pine Ridge behind us we set-off to find Wounded Knee, which proved to be not as easy as we might have expected. After searching we find a rather scabby sign beside the road across from a tatty looking building which passes as a visitor centre come gift store – which unfortunately is closed. As we sit there some locals pull up to us in their van and ask if were interested in some craft products – explaining that our van limits us to what we can buy they quickly leave, obviously we did not look like good customers. We contemplate the powerful words on the historical marker, but we are saddened by the fact that we have seen some beautiful visitors’ centres across the country in National Parks and yet at this important location to the Sioux Nation nothing was here apart from this simple, worn looking placard.

With our hearts full of sadness we continue our journey towards Nebraska. This part of our tour was pretty uneventful as we cross more of the Great Plains – yes more fields and prairie lands. Yawn!! We do find an interesting pull off, which Jack recognised from his book – Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, Car Henge, which is similar in design to it’s stone age inspiration, but instead of hulking rocks the construction is made of cars. We do love roadside art – really brightens our day. Stopping long enough to consume our made- up lunch we set off and eventually arrive at the delightful Holiday Inn in Sidney, Nebraska next to the mighty, cross country highway, I-80.