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Cleo Weasel Bear smiles widely as she shows visitors the cluttered living room of her trailer home on a bright March day. "This is where I make my star blankets," she says, and picks up one of her prized creations, an antique-white quilt with a shimmering blue star stitched onto its surface. Star blankets are valued highly in Lakota culture-they symbolize a deep reverence for celestial bodies that watch over the Earth-and Cleo's face glows with pride. "But I've hardly been able to work in here this winter. No heat," she says. "I sleep next door at my daughter's." Like many women on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, making and selling arts and crafts is her sole source of income.
Cleo faces additional challenges beyond heat. She was recently diagnosed with cancer, and doctor visits as well as ongoing treatments cloud her future in unknown ways. The smile on her face belies these material hardships. She briskly escorts her guests-two contractors and an anthropologist from Colorado, and me-through her trailer and around her yard. Her words brim with optimism.
We've come to Cleo's at her invitation, to decide where to place a solar heating system. Tomorrow and the next day we will come back with a crew, tools, and materials. But as we tour her surroundings, we can't help but notice more. Clothes are piled high in all the rooms; a few flat spots are swiped clean for sitting or sleeping. Windows are broken and covered with plastic, as are holes in the walls. The water isn't working. Outside, the trailer is surrounded by detritus-household trash, junked cars and trucks, and broken toys. Several friendly dogs follow us and lick my fingertips as we walk around.
Across the reservation this scene replays itself. Later that afternoon, we drive to the village of Porcupine to inspect the small home of Shirley Bisonette, who has also requested a solar heating unit. Shirley is not feeling well and stays in the bedroom; her wheelchair sits outside the bedroom door. Angel, her boyfriend, escorts us around.
Shirley's house is in even worse shape than Cleo's. The roof leaks and the ceiling is literally falling in, patched with stapled-up plastic to hold back the sagging insulation. A few broken windows...