I’m a big fan of the homecoming story: soldiers, college graduates, triumphant athletes, that sort of thing.
I read a fascinating one this weekend in Indian Country Today, a national source of news on all things Native American. It’s about a woman named Juana Plenty Wounds, who was born into the Lakota Tribe of South Dakota but taken to central Mexico by her father as an infant, her ties to her tribe effectively severed.
As an adult, she discovered the truth of her past. She set out, as best she could, to reconnect with the heritage she never knew.
But for decades, immigration status and financial circumstance have kept her from reconnecting with the tribe she left behind 75 years ago. That will soon change, as Plenty Wounds prepares to depart San Diego, where she now lives, for South Dakota in the weeks to come.
The story raises a lot of questions I’d love answered. If I have time over the next several days, I’m going to try to track down her family and learn a little more. If you have more information or questions of your own, please shoot me an e-mail at adrian.florido@voiceofsandiego.org.
— ADRIAN FLORIDO