- Group Goes West
- Wilmington,
Delaware
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- July 31st
Candace Whitehead planned to leave Smyrna for South
Dakota with Jimmy Bliose and a caravan of three other
cars. Whitehead, 49, wasn’t making just any road
trip. She, Bliose and the rest of the crew are members of
the Morningstar Fellowship Circle, a fledgling
organization dedicated to helping needy families on
America’s Indian reservations.
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- Her Ford Explorer is
crammed with more than two dozen bags filled with warm
clothes, thick blankets and slightly worn toys the
organization has collected. For the American Indians who
live on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Christmas falls in
August this year.
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- "Some of these
people are so poor, for central heating they use an oil
drum and light a fire in it," Whitehead said.
"Some don’t even have running water in their
houses." So Whitehead and her fellow "East
Coast Indians" .. Morningstar members hailing from
Delaware and Maryland who have some American Indian blood
.. adopt such families and bring them staples.
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- The reasons for their
poverty are fairly simple. The reservations are in remote
areas, transportation is nearly nonexistent and jobs are
scarce … unemployment can run as high as 80 percent.
"A lot of people out here don’t realize what
it’s like in the full-blooded Western area,"
Whitehead said. "If you’re full-blooded,
you’re discriminated against."
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- Whitehead’s
American Indian blood, a mix of Delaware and Shawnee,
lies four generations back. But she and other Morningstar
members have embraced their heritage by practicing the
religion, regularly attending pow-wows and making
goodwill trips to reservations across the country.
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- This three-week
venture will take Whitehead and the others not only to
South Dakota, but also to a Crow reservation in Montana.
Though the items they bring to the families are
tax-deductible donations, the costs of the caravan come
out of the members’ own pockets. Gas for the
Explorer, for example, will be purchased with the
proceeds of a yard sale Whitehead held last week.
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- On the road,
Whitehead said, the group will "try to keep it as
cheap as possible." They bring their own food and
sleep in tents pitched on the reservations. "None of
us have a lot of money," said the Wilmington High
School art teacher. "We’re just trying to help
out." It’s not easy. "Native Americans are
proud and don’t like to accept charity," she
said. "You have to sort of make friends with them
first, so then it’s like getting help from a friend.
Which I guess is what we really are."
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- Lara M.Zeiss
- Copyright 1996, The
News Journal, Wilmington, DE
- Posted for Non-Profit
Educational use under the Fair Use Provisons of the
InterNational Copyright Laws.
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