Troubled youth finds a voice; a city in South Dakota has adapted an Indian custom to reach troubled teens

Insight on the News, August 11, 1997 by Gayle M.B. Hanson

A city in South Dakota has adapted an Indian custom to reach troubled teens.

Rapid City, S.D., is the kind of frontier town that retains some of the flavor of its reckless past. Despite a population of only 60,000, the city has big-time crime problems, many related to the area's eight youth gangs, including chapters of the notorious Bloods and Crips.

But no community in the city is more troubled than that of the Lakota Sioux, where substance abuse and unemployment are rampant. For many young Lakotas, the rituals of gang life are more relevant than the tribe's traditional culture.

But some residents are fighting back, emphasizing old values even as they engage the youngest members of the community. Joe Valandra, director of Neighborhood Ministries, and members of St. Matthew's Episcopalian Church have founded Talking Circles, an unusual program that provides troubled teens and young adults with an environment where they can air their differences away from guns drugs and violence.

Talking Circles consists of a group of about 50 teenagers who meet five times a week. Counselors teach them job-hunting skills and provide them with educational resources to earn their high-school diplomas.

This may sound like any number of groups that have sprouted up across the country in the last decade. But TaLking Circles draws on the Sioux tradition that requires enemies to dispense with animosity. Honesty is the central precept of traditional Sioux theology. And the sacred trust of the circle is never broken. "You must worship with a man to begin to know him," declares a Sioux adage. Tribal legend holds that George Armstrong Custer's army was slaughtered because Custer violated the sacred trust of the circle.

Valandra has worked with local American Indian teenagers for about 15 years, urging troubled kids to take responsibility for their actions. A1though the changing climate in Rapid City has given his message new urgency, he was surprised to find the parishioners at St. Matthew's pledging more than monetary support after he addressed the congregation in 1995. Rather than pass the hat, they vowed to create a place for teens to learn to respect themselves and each other Talking Circles.

"We don't run our circles in the traditional way. I don't know very many people who do," Valandra tells Insight. "We don't pass a feather or anything like that. But we give them respect and a place to say what they need to say. Even members of rival gangs will listen to each other within the circle."

This is no small accomplishment for the juvenile criminals participating in Talking Circles. For them, the concept of honesty had little bearing on their lives prior to joining the program.

Valandra also emphasizes confidentiality. "If a parent wants to know what their child said at the Talking Circle, we tell them they must ask their child themselves," he says. "The kids will talk about things here that they can't talk about anywhere else."

A family-focus group involves parents in the process, but some of the young people coming to TaLking Circles themselves are parents. They say Talking Circles gives them the emotional and spiritual support to better their lives and the lives of their children.

"I was having a lot of problems with certain friends," says Jeanie, a 21-year-old mom who started coming to Talking Circles for help in raising her 3-year-old. "They were using drugs, and I was in an emotionally abusive relationship with my boyfriend. I needed support, but I couldn't talk to my mom about what was going on. I can come here a couple of times a week and talk about what it is like to try and raise a kid on my own." Jeanie is attending college and hopes to become a lawyer.

Talking Circles has been so successful in such a short time--it has been operating for 18 months--that other communities are looking at the program as a model. Rapid City has awarded Valandra and the Rev. George Benson of St. Matthew's a $60,000 grant to expand the program.

"Usually when we think of ministry we think of something paternalistic," says Benson. "But what we did here was assemble some youth and ask them what was important to them and how they would conceive of a program to help them."