Oglala Nursing Home Finally a Reality
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) ta 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.
Broad corridors angle off in eye pleasing directions, and the standard nursing home facilities are present, nurses station, administration offices, activities room, dining area, physical therapy room, but each junction has a large fire place and a lounge area, there is a library, a hair salon, a theater filled with deep, cushioned chairs, reinforced with extra concrete and rebar to serve as an emergency tornado shelter.
“This is just beautiful,” a woman touring the facility says. “We’re very impressed. We’ve never seen anything like this.”
Almost a half century back Oglala recognized the need for a nursing home facility but there were always funding stumbling blocks, South Dakota state restrictions, that prevented building one. During all those years, Oglala elderly were shipped off to facilities all across the country, far from home. Elders can feel isolated and forgotten even when relatives are close by, let alone when loved ones must travel hundreds of miles to visit.
Oglala Sioux Tribal Vice president Tom Poor Bear said during the dedication ceremonies, “This is a great day for our elders. They can come home and be closer to their families. I apologize to our elders for speaking before them, but this is their day, and I am honored to be here for them.”
The Home will not just serve the Oglala elderly, but all tribal elderly from across the region. There are only a half dozen residents currently at the home, construction is not 100% complete, but there is presently room for 60 beds, with space set aside for an additional wing of 20 more beds.
The Home’s Board of Directors are Kathy Janis, Duane Brewer and Leonard Little Finger. Janis began fighting for the nursing home a dozen years back when she was on the tribal council. She is now Chairperson of the Oglala Sioux Lakota Nursing Home, Inc., which according to the Home’s legal council, Mario Gonzalez, is “a tribal nonprofit corporation that oversees the operations of the nursing home.”
Two other key people in bringing the Home to reality are Gary Ruse, Oglala Sioux Tribe Financial Advisor, and Ron Ross, owner of Native American Health Management. According to Gonzalez: “Gary is very dedicated to the Tribe and was instrumental in getting the contacts in the Nebraska legislature necessary to amend state laws to allow the Tribe to receive Medicaid Certified Public expense (CPE) Payments.”
Ross is the former Treasurer of the State of Nebraska, and knows how the CPE payments work. Gonzalez: “It would be hard to manage the complexities of the nursing home without his company.”
There are few professionals more proactively gracious and cooperative than Ross. He took it upon himself to give an impromptu tour of the facility and is readily accessible for any person with questions or concerns.
Ross says: “Our sister company, Rural Health Development, has been managing small nursing homes for over 20 years. A few years ago we decided to help Native Americans with putting nursing homes on their reservations. We manage a nursing home for the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in White River. We are talking to several tribes about their needs.”
Funding is always the main problem for any reservation facility, funding to get it built, but even more importantly, the funding to keep it running. For decades this proved an insurmountable wall against all efforts to actualize a home, but Ross explains the details in CPE and related programs which finally allowed the funding to make the Home possible: “It goes beyond the CPE expenditure that states have with governmental nursing homes. It is part of the Affordable Care Act (Obama Care). With that legislation there are a few pages called ‘The Indian Healthcare Improvement Act of 2010.’ Basically what it says is: if a tribe will add nursing homes to their 638 agreement with Indian Health Service, then the government will pay 100% of the rate for federally recognized tribal members in the tribal facility.”
Ross stresses that this is important in getting states to step up and participate: “The state the facility is in will not have to put their contribution towards the payment. This allows a state to be more willing to work with tribal facilities.”
The total cost of the Home is $16 million. Based upon the guarantee of CPE and related funding, the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community in Minnesota loaned the Oglala Sioux Tribe $13.5 million. The Tribe made up the difference. Once the beds are filled, the Tribe can use CPE and related programs to not only operate the facility, but expand it as well, and pay off the Shakopee loan.
Now that the Lakota elderly are so much closer to their loved ones, and have such a fine home to facilitate visitation, people should make them a bigger part of their lives. But even if you do not know a resident, should you ever take the time to sit