Pine Ridge Connection

Brian Stillwater with some of the goods he collected for his 2013 trip to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Brian Stillwater, owner of Stillwater’s Grill by the Bay in Fish Creek, remembers being moved as a boy by the 71-day siege that took place between members of the American Indian Movement and the federal government in 1973 at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

“I always wanted to go to Wounded Knee, ever since I was a kid,” he said. “Some of those people became my modern-day heroes, fighting for the people. But nobody would take me there.”

It would be decades later, well into the 21st century, during a vacation out West, that Stillwater finally got to visit Wounded Knee, stopping at the memorial to the victims of the Dec. 29, 1890, Wounded Knee massacre.

“I had my own spiritual experience at the memorial at Wounded Knee,” he said. “I went back to my vehicle and I bought a dream catcher from one of the craft makers out there. We talked awhile and exchanged names. His name was Ben Cheyenne. That handshake when I said goodbye to him, I said, I’ll see you again, not knowing that I would be there six months later with my first clothes drive.”

Inspired by the poverty of the people of Pine Ridge, Stillwater returned to Door County with an idea on how he could help in his own small way. He collected some clothing, packed it into his pickup truck and made the day-and-a-half drive to the reservation in South Dakota.

“It was just one of those things. I can’t let my heart down,” he said.

The only problem was that Stillwater was returning to the reservation with no real contacts, just the one person he had met on vacation, Ben Cheyenne.

“I went looking for Ben Cheyenne on a two million-acre reservation with 45,0000 people,” Stillwater said.

But luck was with him. “I just happened to pick up the right hitchhiker. His mother was Ben Cheyenne’s cousin.”

He arrived at the Cheyenne home on a cul de sac.

“I just opened up my truck and said anything in this truck is for you guys. If you want it all, take it. If you don’t want it, leave it,” Stillwater said. “It was really strange. It took about two hours for those people to warm up to me, when they finally came closer and said, ‘Let’s see what he’s got.’”

The family took what they wanted and needed and then sent Stillwater to a couple of other locations.

“I went down to Pine Ridge Boarding School. That’s the school where the kids are boarded for the school week and go home on weekends,” he said. “From there we went to an orphanage, then to an elder’s home. Then we went to Whiteclay, Neb. [a place with about a dozen residents and four liquor stores, known for selling more beer per capita than any other place in America]. That’s where the natives can get their alcohol. That’s where what I call the ‘sick ones’ live, the alcoholics and the homeless people.”

Stillwater felt the pain of those living on the reservation, and being of Indian descent himself – his father was a Cherokee/Choctaw who ran away from his reservation boarding school in Oklahoma – he wanted to help.

“We see these pictures of living in poverty in Third World countries, but we never see them living in our country. It can be one of the most depressing places you’ve ever seen, but then it can be one of the most beautiful places you’ve seen, too,” he said.

“I’ve been to houses and trailers that aren’t part of the housing authority with broken windows, doors don’t close, no furniture, young families living in there with infant children and the grandparents, no running water, an outhouse outside with maybe four or five holes dug already for the winter move. It’s like, really? How does it get any better? I don’t know. It’s 95 percent unemployment there. The only employment is government or tribal jobs. There’s no private industry.”

That first trip was in 2009. Stillwater has returned to the reservation when the busy season ends in Door County every year since, each time with bigger loads.

“It just blossomed into a yearly thing,” he said. “I started out with a pickup truck. The next two years was my pickup truck and an 8-foot trailer. The next two years it was my truck and a 12-foot trailer. This year I’m going with a 24-foot truck. You can see how it’s grown. It’s not just me. It’s not just Brian Stillwater’s project. It’s the community’s project.”

While Stillwater started out in this alone, as soon as others heard about it, they wanted to help.

“I started by myself, but other people joined with a couple blankets here, a couple blankets there. It’s just grown. It really hits me in certain ways the way the community has responded to somebody so far away but so close to us, and for people who actually live within our own borders. They don’t realize what these people go through every day. I don’t think we could do it. I really don’t.”

He mentioned that Thrivent Financial in Sturgeon Bay got involved and became a drop-off point for donated items.

“Some people have even given small donations of cash to help with the rental of the truck or gas cards to help pay for the trip,” Stillman said. “These are not things I’ve gone out and asked for. It’s not my nature. There’s a group of ladies from Evanston, Ill. who got involved. They read about it in the Pulse last year. Just the other day they brought up two big SUV loads filled with clothes already packed, so this has moved into another state. This is old-fashioned. This isn’t technology talking. This isn’t the Internet or Facebook. This is people talking one on one. That’s the way I wanted it to be.”

He also gained support from the student members of the National Honors Society at Gibraltar, who took on the clothing collection as a yearly project.

“It was so simple. It’s just a conversation that has blossomed into one of the most remarkable things I can think of. It takes a lot of time but very little money,” Stillwater said. “It was the simplest thing, that somebody needed something. It was really the simplest thing.”

Thrivent Financial will continue to accept donations at its office at 160 S. Madison Ave., Sturgeon Bay through Oct. 24. Gibraltar students and Shepherd of the Bay Lutheran Church are accepting donations through Oct. 30. “I always get asked for space heaters and candles,” Brian Stillwater said, “because when the electricity goes out, candles are the only lights. Once the propane goes out, either they can’t afford more or can’t get the truck down to the propane tank, an electric heater is the only source of heat. Without that, they only have the oven to gather around for heat.”