Today started out slow, but by the time it ended, it’s
amazing how much we crammed into it.
After traveling all day yesterday, many of us were quite ready
for showers this morning. Since we are
staying in the Head Start building (essentially a school facility) we need to
go to the community swimming pool next door to use their locker room showers. Although the pool is not open on Sundays, we
were told someone volunteered to come open the showers around 7:00. The first of us were outside the building
probably 7:01, only to find the doors were still locked. Over the next 90 minutes or so there were
frequent trips by anxious volunteers to
check the doors, to no avail until Michelle made a phone call on our behalf. Soon, a very apologetic Myrna (“don’t call me
Shirley”) showed up to open the pool for us.
The showers were welcome, and a few of us even got in a swim.
Our orientation meeting started at 9:30 in the meeting room,
one of the classrooms, and it was attended by all but three of us; Rachel, who,
as of the night before had been up for 36 hours and was desperately in need of
sleep, and Larissa and Tatum, whose plane landed at the airport sometime during
our orientation meeting.
Our capable leader, Michelle, started with a little
background on our program. We are the
final team this summer, which is the 13th year GV has been
volunteering at the Blackfeet Reservation.
Team sizes have varied over the years, but our team of 20 is one of the
largest, the average being closer to six.
Our orientation meeting covered a lot of ground, including GV
Objectives, Philosophy of Service, Policy and Guidelines – all good material, which
generated a lot of questions and interactive discussion, but the team-building
activities were the most interactive and energetic part of the meeting.
Considerate Charlie
Sharing Susan
Resourceful Robert
Persevering Porter
Relentless Ryann
Brilliant Bridget
Light-hearted Laura
Perky Pam
Nice Nancy
Mighty Margaret
Crazy Colin
Dirty Diana
Daring Danielle
Kind Kevin
Magnificent Max
Prepared Paul
Enthusiastic Emily
all led by our feerless leader,
Marvelous Michelle.
The names were not quite as imaginative as some of the
Blackfeet names we have heard, but should nevertheless give you an idea of who
we are. Or at least, what we think of
ourselves. After our naming exercise, we
moved on to an exercise to identify the 15 Characteristics of an Effective
Team. Virtually everyone has worked on
teams before, so it there were a lot of characteristics offered by the team:
innovative creative
cooperative functional
communicative unified
purposeful goal-oriented
flexible kind
sharing respectful
generous tolerant
empathetic open-minded
responsive understaning
thoughtful energetic
humorous accountable
cheerful fun-loving
honest diverse
humble
We ran out of time before we could add, “verbose” and “mathematically inaccurate” . Given the task of choosing the top three
from our list of 21, we chose cooperative, communicative, and flexible.
·
to share/serve/be with family,
·
to learn (mostly about the Blackfeet),
·
to see Montana/Indians/mountains/,
·
to be of service
as well as the individual goals:
·
open my awareness
·
get out of my rut
·
return blessings
I think in the end, we all resonated with all of the goals –
showing our first major step as a team.
For our final meeting topic, Michelle went over our
opportunities for evening entertainment after our work was done. Almost all of these afforded us the
opportunity to learn more about our hosts, the Blackfeet, including attending a
sweat lodge, horseback riding on a ranch, attending a rodeo or a pow wow, and
visiting the museum and Tipi village art gallery. So many great opportunities, and so little
time!
Just before lunch, the final members of our team, Larissa
and Tatum arrived from the airport. It’s
not all that easy to find the Head Start facility, so many of us fanned out to
stand outside along the street as guides.
With their arrival, our team of 20 was complete!
After the meeting and a lunch of leftover lasagna and
sandwiches, we piled into three vehicles and took off for an acclimation tour
of the reservation, stopping to pick up Joe Jesseppe as tour guide for one of
the vehicles. This tour allowed us to
get a sense of the size of the reservation, and where any one of us might be
working over the course of the week.
It was a beautiful day, sunny, warm, and dry. We took off north on the Duck Lake Road,
driving across the prairie through terminal moraine, past cattle and horse
herds towards the northeast corner of the reservation, then cut west and
paralleled the US/Canadian border.
Michelle gave us a chance to stop and photograph Duck Lake, a campground
used by the tribe.
 |
| Duck Lake, by Charlie |
At this point, the land had changed from the rolling prairie
to the foothills of the Rockies. A little
bit west from Duck Lake, we turned south, and traveled down the western end of
the reservation to St. Mary.
 |
| Glacier National Park, by Charlie |
Continuing south, we wound our way up through the mountains
to a vantage point over Two Medicines lakes.
 |
| Two Medicine Lake, by Charlie |
From there we headed back to Browning, where, what can only
be called a feast, awaited us for dinner.
Chicken, acorn squash, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, salad, fruit,
fed the hungry travelers. After supper, Bob
Tailfeathers came to visit. Bob is an
instructor at the Blackfoot Community College.
He is a charming, gentle giant of a man who has been a great supporter
of the GV teams, and he filled us in on the higher education programs for the
Blackfeet, and life on the reservation, patiently answering questions for what
must have been an hour, after which he showed us his beautiful artwork. It was a fitting end to an informative and full day.
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