INDIAN SUMMER

By MARYANNE VOLLERS/EAGLE BUTTE, S. DAK.

Forty young Lakota warriors stand in prayer at the edge of a South Dakota pasture. They bless themselves with sage smoke and thank the spirit of the buffalo that is about to give up its life. A few bison look up from their grazing as a pickup truck churns slowly across the field. Then the crack of a rifle scatters the herd: Rocky Afraid-of-Hawk drops a yearling bull with one clean shot. The teenage warriors, dressed in Fila sneakers and No Fear sweatshirts, scramble in for a closer look as the older men skin the carcass. Later the meat will be hung to dry at the traveling teepee village that these kids are calling home for the summer.

"Who wants a piece of liver?" asks Jay Cook, holding up a dark purple slab. "Long time ago, our ancestors ate this raw. It will make you strong."

"Gross," says Chad White Face, 11, as he forces down a warm sliver.

And so begins another day at Wolakota Yukini Wicoti, a spiritual boot camp on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, where the borderline between this world and the past can sometimes be lost on the vast and trackless prairie.

Like most campers, the Lakota teens swim and toast s'mores over the campfire. But these kids, most of them recruited from troubled reservation towns, are trying to break a grim cycle of alcoholism and despair by living as their forebears did: sleeping in teepees, traveling on horseback and learning their once forbidden language and ceremonies from tribal elders. "This camp is more than a camp," says Gregg Bourland, chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. "In a way it is the rebirth of the Great Sioux Nation."

This may be a heavy agenda. But for the Lakota--what the western Sioux tribes call themselves--and many of America's nearly 2 million Native Americans, the situation is critical. Tribal health-care specialists say that on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, an area about the size of Connecticut where 10,000 Lakota live, 85% of the population between ages 12 and 35 binge on alcohol and other drugs; child abuse is rampant; and gangs like the Crips and Bloods have been offering a brutal form of sanctuary for lost or neglected kids.

Now, though, Cheyenne River is being swept up in the quiet revolution--both a temperance movement and a traditional, spiritual revival--that is moving across many reservations. The four-year teepee-camp program is being funded by an $803,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as part of its Healthy Nations program to reduce the damage caused by substance abuse among Native Americans. The foundation is sponsoring 12 other similar programs, including an Inupiat kayak expedition near Nome, Alaska, and an Apache multimedia campaign against alcohol and drugs in the White Mountains of Arizona.

Not everyone in Cheyenne River agrees that living in the past is the best way to save the next generation. Some say the real problem is the lack of jobs on the reservation, where unemployment hovers at around a staggering 80%. Monica Lawrence, a counselor at Cheyenne River, notes too that there is only one substance-abuse counselor for teenagers on the whole reservation, and wonders if the Healthy Nations grant money is being used effectively. "It's nice to experience something that our ancestors did," she says, "but what happens when summer is over and the kids come back to the same mess they left?"

Members of the new breed of elected tribal leaders hope the youngsters will return fortified against that mess, with traditional Lakota values they can inject into their communities, such as respect for the earth and the connectedness of all living things. "We call it seventh-generational thinking," explains Bourland. "Seven generations ago, our ancestors loved us so much that we are still here as a people. We have to create a world not only for today, but for seven generations to come. The young people from this camp are going to be the messengers for the future."