Dear Friends of Plenty,

A good friend of ours has written a true, funny and passionate little book titled “Keeping Heart on Pine Ridge.” Vic Glover is a Vietnam veteran combat medic who has been living on the reservation in southwest South Dakota for the past several years. The 5,000 square mile Pine Ridge Reservation is home to about 30,000 mostly Oglala Lakota people. With 80 percent unemployment, and $3,700 average annual family income, most of the people live well below what is commonly known as the “poverty line.” Most live in overcrowded substandard housing. Alcoholism and fetal alcohol syndrome are rampant, as are diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. People survive on USDA surplus “commodities” which are typically high in fat, salt and sugar and preserved in God knows what from God knows where. Life is hard on the rez, “hard core” as Louis Bad Wound described it. On the other hand, these people, and you will meet many of them in Vic's book, exhibit a culture of tolerance, good humor and generosity as rich, if not richer, than any I have come in contact with in 30 years of traveling the world. The Oglala spiritual path is rigorous and demanding. From sun dances to sweat lodges to peyote meetings, Oglala rituals are not for the faint-hearted or weak-willed yet, since arrogance and pretense cannot survive these ceremonies, the people who participate tend to be exceptionally kind and patient as mountains.

When we met the Mayans after the 1976 Guatemala earthquake, our eyes were opened to what the world's native peoples have had to endure. In “Keeping Heart” Vic quotes Milo Yellow Hair saying, “What you had here was a clash of cultures, where the natural inclination of one was to give and the other was to take. So it worked out fine. They got it all, and we ended up with nothing.” Later we would understand that the “nothing” was more valuable than the “all.” As our dear friend Karen Flaherty used to say, “all you have is what you give away.” We have come to believe that the survival of the planet and a future for our great grand children's children, requires a very special creative partnership between native and non-native peoples, where the guidance of cultural and spiritual wisdom takes precedence over a quest for material wealth and political power. Both wisdom and common sense compel us to take care of each other. Over here, everywhere I look, I see the People struggling. We rely on one another to get by and keep the fire lit. —Vic Glover, from “Keeping Heart on Pine Ridge.”

Plenty is a non-profit, non-governmental, non-political, non-sectarian, non-idealogical organization. We look for common ground and ways to build bridges. Peace, love, fairness, compassion and nonviolence are the values and ideals on which Plenty was founded. We're most effective when we can act as a catalyst, connecting people with people, ideas with projects, and projects with donors. You are the heart of Plenty. As long as you care we'll be making a difference, together, for real people, in the real world. This matters. This is how we get by and keep the fire lit. This is how we give thanks.

Yours truly,
Peter Schweitzer
Executive Director