ON THE first day of camp at the Cheyenne River Mission, in South Dakota, the little girl approached the pony shyly. Her ancestors were Lakota people, with a vibrant culture of horsemanship that was both spiritual and practical. The connection between the community and their animals had been broken many decades before by the United States army, and the little girl was wary of the animal in front of her. As the pony walked away, the child said, “Oh, she doesn’t like me.”
What could seem to be a difficult start is an opportunity for the Revd Kurt Huber and his wife, the Revd Ellen Huber, who launched the Black Horse Ranch last year.
“So, what happened next was that we asked the child to tell us more about what they think might be going on with the pony,” Mrs Huber says, “and soon they can make sense of what’s happening around them. It can be the start of something very powerful: a journey of compassion, healing, and joy.
“What we see in the horse is often what we unconsciously see in ourselves. Horses facilitate self-awareness and healing when provided the opportunity. We hold that learning space gently open, and guide the process of healing as it unfolds between the horse and child.”
When the Hubers first explored the possibility of serving the people of the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, they did not have an exact vision of what that could look like in practice. “It was a watching and listening process,” Mrs Huber says. “We are not Native Americans, and we didn’t come with any preconceived ideas. We had to see what the need was before we could attempt to meet it.”
Cheyenne River MissionSome of the horses used in Equine Facilitated Learning at the Cheyenne River Mission
Cheyenne River Episcopal Mission is in the diocese of South Dakota, and the Hubers had moved there in 2020, with the youngest three of their five children, four dogs, and a horse. “We serve ten churches,” Mr Huber says. “The reservation itself is about the size of the state of Connecticut; so, from corner to corner is a couple of hours’ drive. And Sundays, for us, often involves visiting a couple of churches. So, we’re driving 30 minutes, 45 minutes — an hour or more. We arrived here in the middle of Covid; so we had a lot of time to start listening to the needs and talking with people.”
“What we saw”, Mrs Huber says, “was that the majority of the kids had very little sport or activities. There’s just not enough for them to do here. And that was a theme that we’ve heard over and over. And, as they age, they start doing what they see their older siblings and the adults in the community doing, which, unfortunately, is a lot of drugs and alcohol.”
THE Hubers had bought a ranch with 20 acres to house their horse at the edge of the main town of Eagle Butte on the reservation. “The children we were meeting had no experience with horses at all, and we started to have an idea,” Mrs Huber says. “We’d heard of equine-facilitated learning, and so we attended a programme on another reservation that borders this one. It was led by a Lakota leader called Jon Eagle, and he cares deeply about the horse-human connection.
“He would weave stories throughout his teaching . . . about days gone by when horses would come and rescue their warriors, and lead families out of conflict. And he started to impress upon us and the other participants about the trauma caused by everything that was done to the indigenous people here. But we hadn’t previously heard about the trauma caused by the loss of their horse nation.
“The Lakota lived with the horses; they were really interspersed with one another, they relied on each other. And then the army gathered most of them up over the decades, and slaughtered them all. They didn’t retrain them, they just killed them all. So, that’s a trauma to the community that really hadn’t been discussed a lot.
“We really love horses, and we paid attention to that, and Jon Eagle said: ‘This is something that you can do in Cheyenne River. You can be a part of this, and there are people out there that can work with you.’
“So, we took that idea and opened a horse and pony camp for the kids. Then we offered equine-facilitated learning: a holistic wellness approach that tackles problems in the community, such as addiction. And we also try and open up our ranch to the community as much as we possibly can.”
THE Hubers held their first horse and pony camp in 2022. The day camp was held again for four weeks this summer. Thirty children, from the ages of six to 15, attended and learnt about the animals, but also had the chance to try different skills, such as archery, or how to rope a baby calf. So far, this year, open days have attracted between 55 and 70 children.
“It is all about the horses; but it’s also about creating a safe, loving, and nurturing environment,” Mr Huber says. “Our aim is to participate in restoring that Lakota culture with kids who live in town and don’t really have access to horses any more like their ancestors did. We hire local tribal members to do that.
“We also aim to provide a place where kids are just unconditionally loved and accepted for who they are — a safe place from the kinds of pressures that some of them might be facing. Addiction is incredibly high in the community; I would say everyone here is touched by addiction. If it’s not active in the home, it’s active in the family, and that’s drug and alcohol.
Cheyenne River MissionChildren interact with horses at the Cheyenne River Mission camp
“Along with that is extreme poverty, as well as abuse, and abuse can be in the form of physical, verbal, or simply neglect. Many of the kids come in and they haven’t eaten yet; so we provide snacks all day, and a big meal — there’s a lot of food. We also see a lot of the children unattended outside of camp.”
“There’s no judgement here,” Mrs Huber adds. “We’ve seen suicide and depression, anxiety, all of those things that ferment in a culture where there’s so much historical, generational, and current trauma. That all feeds together into the addiction problem, and there’s not a lot of addiction services here. That’s one of the reasons that we’re offering equine-facilitated learning, to offer healing in the community.”
EQUINE Facilitated Learning (EFL) is similar to Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy: both approaches seek to facilitate a healing process. EFL is carried out by a trained facilitator, however, not necessarily a therapist.
“EFL is about interacting with horses and allowing the participant the opportunity to make sense of their interaction with a horse. So, we invite people to camp, like Jon Eagle, who can tell stories and sing songs in Lakota, and teach them about that connection between their horse relatives and the people, so that that can start to be a part of their new history.”
The Hubers point out that the Episcopal Church has been in the lives of Lakota people in Cheyenne River since 1872. “There are a number of generations worshipping in the church here,” Mr Huber says. “And the majority of people who consider themselves Christian are Episcopalian. Many times, when a funeral happens, the request is for clergy of the Episcopal Church. So, we can deepen our spiritual connection working with creation and the horse nation.” The Lakota belief in Mitakuye Oyasin — meaning “all are related” — comes alive in the equine programmes as the community connect with their horse relatives.
“At horse and pony camp, at the end of every day, we finish with a story — and it’s often a story or a song from the Christian tradition or Lakota tradition,” Mrs Huber says. “And we have a little chapel set up outside that we use at the end of every day.
“When we were pondering the call to come here, we sought the opinion of Bishop Steven Charleston, the former Episcopal Bishop of Alaska and a citizen of the Choctaw Nation. This is what he said: ‘Walk humbly, listen carefully, share joyously, and practise love in all things and at all times.’
“That’s what we try to do. Every morning before camp starts, we often have new volunteers. Our staff is consistent for the most part all summer, but every morning we do an orientation for new volunteers. It’s safe-church training, but the main thing that we impress upon all of our volunteers is that statement about practising love at all times.
“Children react to their environment, often based on other things in their lives, and so we teach our staff and volunteers to always respond with love, no matter what’s going on with the child, no matter what’s happening in that moment, or how they’re responding to their day.”
This approach has led to the acceptance of the Huber family by the community — and a need to grow the mission. The Hubers are currently fund-raising for an indoor arena, which is much needed because of the harsh climate in both winter and summer. “The temperatures here are so extreme,” Mr Huber says. “We’ve had to cancel camps because of the heat, and also because we’re walking on four or five feet of snow all winter. There’s mud season, too.
Cheyenne River MissionCheyenne River Mission
“In an indoor arena, we can do so much more safely. And there is a need to do much more. When I’m in public, running to the grocery store, or getting gas in town, it used to be the adults who would say ‘Oh, hi, Father. Hi, Mother.’ Now, I’m hearing the kids say that to us, and they’re asking, ‘When’s the next event?’”
“And we’re seeing people open up to us about their needs now, because they trust us,” Mrs Huber says. “Poverty is so present in this community; but, if they don’t know you, they will not let you see what’s going on in their lives. We’ve had camp kids come over to borrow medicine for a child who’s coughing and can’t stop and can’t stop, and they don’t have the five bucks for cough syrup. And another camper knocked on the door and asked, ‘Do you have any spare food for us that we could have?’
“Our focus is not just on the children. We stress this with our volunteers. It’s about everyone around the child that may bring them to camp: their older sibling, grandparents who are caring for grandchildren. Because of so much addiction in the parents, it can be the grandparents who show up.
“We invite them to sit down and have coffee, and just be a part of things and have a safe place to go. There’s so much trust-building; but we are here, and our kids are in schools, and we’re part of the community as well.
“The ranch and the horses help with our mental health, too, because it’s heartbreaking here every day. We have so many funerals, sometimes three a week, and addiction plays a part in most of these deaths, and many are young people, young parents, teenagers. Covid isolated further what was already a very isolated community. We are three hours away from most major things, including hospitals and even larger grocery stores.
“In all that we do, though, we pay attention to the idea that, if it’s not about love, it’s not about God. Spreading the love and joy of the Beloved Community happens in every moment — with each smile of welcome, each hand held, each heart listened to. And that is how healing happens — moment by moment.”
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