09/05/2024
The Grinnell Rotary Club held its regular weekly meeting on Tuesday, September 3, 2024. Following the opening of the meeting, members shared good news and general club business regarding the upcoming Kites Over Grinnell event on September 28.
The guest speaker was Sharon Falck, a member of First Presbyterian Church. For more than ten years, Sharon has visited churches in the Dakota Presbytery, which is not defined by geographical boundaries like most presbyteries but consists of churches on Indian reservations located in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana. The tribes who live on these reservations are the Dakota, the Lakota, and the Nakota.
During her visits to these churches and reservations, Sharon has learned about their culture, traditions, and challenges. During the first seven years of her visits, she just went and listened, learning American history from a different perspective.
One challenge of the churches on the reservation is ordaining pastors to lead their churches. The University of Dubuque recently discontinued a program for training Native Americans for ordination so the Dakota Presbytery has developed a program for lay preachers to achieve ordination following a three-year study plan. They recently ordained seven new pastors.
The tribes continue to feel the lasting effects and trauma of mission schools which, a couple of generations ago, forcibly took children away from their families and placed them in boarding schools where they were punished for speaking their native tongue. In recent years, though, the people are re-learning their native language and culture.
Poverty, drug and alcohol addition, and a high rate of su***de are also affecting these tribes. Additionally, there are many missing girls and young women from the tribes. In Minnesota, 27-54 Indian girls and young women went missing in any month between 2012 and 2020, and reports of abused females range in ages from 3 months to 83 years old.
During Covid, Sharon, a sewer and quilter, remembers calling a friend at one of these churches to see if they needed masks. The reply was affirmative but the friend also mentioned that if they had machines then they could make masks for themselves. So, Sharon bought three sewing machines and was given one and she shipped them to the church. Since then, Sharon has taken 81 clean and repaired machines to the Dakota Presbytery churches. Now, the women want sewing machines in their own homes. They are making traditional ribbon skirts and shirts to sell at pow-wows and regaining their creativity.
The Rotary Club thanks Sharon Falck for sharing information about the Dakota Presbytery and her commitment to providing sewing machines to the women of those churches. If you are interested in joining the Grinnell Rotary Club, please visit our page for more information.
--Submitted by Donna Fischer
