Richard Rangel, project supervisor, converses with staff in the facility dining hall. Photo by James Giago Davies
Oglala nursing home finally a reality
‘Wopila to the State of Nebraska’ - Tom Poor Bear
By James Giago Davies
Native Sun News Today Correspondent
nativesunnews.today WHITECLAY –– Sometimes on even the most broken battlefield, in even the most tortured reality, a flower blooms. Rocks, weeds, boarded up buildings, no matter how disheveled and tragic the setting, a flower often calls that place home. Part of the Pine Ridge Reservation extends south across the Nebraska border, and runs west along the edge of White Clay. This tiny Nebraska town is the last town the state would place on a travel brochure. You cannot drive through it without hurting for the lost souls flopped together in small groups on the cracked sidewalks, sidewalks that front businesses cynically existing only to provide them with the alcohol destroying their lives. But the drive south from Pine Ridge Village to White Clay has changed of late. A towering navy blue water tower now looms over the west side of the highway, OSRWSS (Oglala Sioux Rural Water Supply System) emblazoned at the top in large block white letters. Frank Means, the director of that tribal agency, committed about a million dollars of his funding to erecting that tower, to laying the OSRWSS pipeline that continues south, supplying water to a 50,000 square foot facility that took four years and the heroic efforts of dozens of knowledgeable professionals and hundreds of skilled workers to realize. The Oglala Sioux Lakota Nursing Home is the most impressive building ever constructed in Lakota Country, and any health care professional that has spent long shifts working the wings of any local nursing home, would tell you the same. Inside the glass doors is a spacious lobby, embellished by the skillfully rendered Lakota portraits of artist Toni Rangel, wife of Richard Rangel, responsible for the design and construction of the project, whose previous accomplishments include facilities like Rapid City Regional Hospital.
Read the rest of the story on the Native Sun News Today website: Oglala nursing home finally a reality (Contact James Davies Giago at skindiesel@msn.com) Copyright permission Native Sun News
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