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FEBRUARY 2013
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HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
Indians from somebody who looks like
me, you can hear about what the Indians
did—and
do
—
from an Indian.”
RANDALL BLAZE LIVES
on the edge
of Cuny Table, a lush agricultural plateau
that abuts the SouthUnit. The Indian art-
ist has spent the past 15 years creating his
most ambitious sculpture yet: his home, a
boxy, glass-fronted structure that’s visible
for miles in every direction. But the build-
ing is not found inany guidebook—at least
not yet. Blazehas beenwarming to the idea
of running a bed-and-breakfast, and was
willing to put me up for a night.
“
When I first came up here, it felt like
I had come home,” he says over a beer in
a sunroom filled with paint-splattered
ketchup bottles, glue guns and freshly
stretched canvases. Blaze, who grew up
in Montana and lived in Oregon for many
years, is descended from Adolph Cuny,
a French trader who married a Lakota
woman in the 1860s. As a member of the
Oglala Lakota, Blaze came to the reserva-
tion to reclaim160acres of his family’s land.
A er a divorce and some soul searching,
heparkeda trailerhomehere. Itwasn’t long
beforehestartedrippingoutwallsandtear-
ingupthefloor; pre ysoon, the foundation
was theonly thing le of theoriginal trailer.
A master scavenger, Blaze redid his home
with material that was once refuse, from
the dri wood inhis garden to the polished
granite countertops in his kitchen.
Blaze and I hop into his blue pickup to
drive out past the old Cuny cemetery and
to the edge of the plateau. The grassland
drops away, and the canyon in front of us
offers the kind of vista you might expect
in the desert Southwest. He points to the
distant StrongholdTable, where this entire
saga began playing out over a century ago.
“
The ghost dance came about as a way to
make the white man disappear,” he says.
Now, a new dance of sorts is being
choreographed to invite them back. I
wonder aloud whether that’s necessarily
a bad thing. “Well, it
is
fun to have people
up here,” Blaze says, grudgingly.
BRENDAN BORRELL,
who writes for
Smith-
sonian
,
Bloomberg Businessweek
and other
magazines, spent at least one stormy night
on the reservation chasing his tent through
a horse pasture.
FEATURES
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GOODNEWS IN THE BADLANDS
»
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 79
A Mandan-Hidatsa Indian from North
Dakota, he spent 35 years working for the
National Park Service. “It was tough com-
ing up in the park service as an Indian,” he
says. Most U.S. national parks, including
YellowstoneandYosemite, were established
on lands that once were home to Native
Americans; for Baker, his loyalties were
o en difficult to reconcile.
A er ge ing his start as a janitor, Baker
rose through the ranks to eventually
become superintendent atMontana’sLi le
Bighorn Ba lefield National Monument.
There, he made few friends by emphasiz-
ing theNative American version of history
over the government one. And things didn’t
get any easier when he became the super-
intendent of Mount Rushmore National
Memorialin2004,astheOglalaLakotawere
ba ling for the return of their landnearby.
That’s where the story of the Baker
brothers really begins. Not long after
Gerard took the top spot at Mount Rush-
more, his older brother, Paige, became
superintendant of BadlandsNational Park.
Paige Baker made it a priority to rebuild
trust with the Lakota: Among other ges-
tures of goodwill, his administrationbegan
training Ecoffey and other tribal biologists
inwildlifemanagement, part of which has
involved restoring the swi foxpopulation.
A er Paige retired in 2009, it didn’t take
long for the Lakota to connect with his
brother—thinking, correctly, that Gerard
would be an ideal bridge between the
government and the tribe. He knew how
to talk to Indians like an Indian; he knew
how to write reports and file paperwork
like a bureaucrat; and, as an outsider to the
conflict, he could be objective in weighing
the disparate voices on the reservationand
brokering an agreement.
Last spring the Lakota hired Gerard
Baker as interimexecutive director for the
OglalaSiouxParks andRecreationAuthor-
ity. It was a timely hire: Three months
later, the tribe signed an unprecedented
accord with the National Park Service in
which the latter agreed to give back the
South Unit land—which, at 133,000 acres,
makes up more than half of Badlands
National Park. The tribe had weighed a
number of options for the land, including
scrapping the parkdesignation completely
or managing it as an independent tribal
park, but decided instead to help create an
entirely new breed of national park, one
that would be run by the tribe but meet
federal regulations.
That decision was enthusiastically
received by Secretary of the Interior Ken
Salazar. “Our National Park System is one
ofAmerica’s greatest storytellers,” he saidat
the time. “Aswe seek to tell amore inclusive
story of America, a tribal national park
wouldhelp celebrate andhonor thehistory
and culture of the Oglala Sioux people.”
The next step is for Congress to formally
designatetheSouthUnitasanindependent
park. In themeantime—despite persistent
complaints frommemberswho’d rather see
the land returned to the familieswho once
lived there—tribal leaders are developing
plans for a visitors center and studying the
prospectofreintroducingbison(whichcur-
rently live only in the North Unit). If the
Oglala Lakota can prove themselves here,
it opens the door to other tribes desiring
greater involvement inparks set on former
tribal lands.
It all adds up to an ideal situation, says
Steve Thede, deputy superintendent at
BadlandsNational Park, who alsohappens
to be white. “Instead of hearing about the
