Bari Goodblood Lehn
Wetzel County, WV

Born to a Santee Sioux mother and a German father in the Midwest. They met and married when she was relocated to the city as part of termination policy for reservation Indians in the 1950’s. Four babies later, for reasons I never knew, she left us, taking with her the better half of who I was. Not until as an adult I quit a gravy civil service job to work on a Reservation was I able to steep myself in my Sioux mother’s culture. From my pious German farming grandparents I learned the love of God and the love of the land. Living among Indians, I sensed a profound spirituality evoked by living relationally with the land and one another. I try to keep the Indian in me alive and strong while adapting to the dominant cultural environment in which I have largely lived my life.