Veterinarian services can be difficult to access in remote and rural areas, which is often where the buffalo – and dogs, cats, horses and other animals – roam. Kathleen WoodenKnife of Soldier Creek on the Rosebud Indian Reservation has worked for years to help provide affordable animal care to her community. She has organized numerous low-cost/no-cost pop-up clinics in Mission, enlisting veterinarians and volunteers to deliver wellness checks, vaccinations, spaying/neutering, food and medicine that serve hundreds of animals for the Sicangu Lakota Oyate.
WoodenKnife dreamed of building a permanent animal clinic in Mission where “tribal communities can access affordable pet health care.” For the last six years, she partnered closely with Dr. Eric Jayne and Sovereign Nations Veterinary (SNV) to connect tribal members with animal care. Jayne, a veterinarian based out of Des Moines, Iowa, founded SNV with the mission of providing training and funding for tribes to build and maintain their own self-sustaining clinics locally.
Combining their determination, resources, and love for the four-leggeds, WoodenKnife, Jayne and SNV partner Dr. Lori Gossard established, with grants and private donations, Wamakanskan Wawokiye Oti, a veterinary hospital in Mission. The Lakota name translates to “Helping Animal Center.” The hospital is located in an existing building in Mission that WoodenKnife and volunteers are remodeling into a clinical facility.
As manager of Wamakanskan Wawokiye Oti, WoodenKnife has helped over 1,500 dogs, horses, cats, and rabbits receive affordable care in 2021 alone. For her, the clinics have always been a labor of love, but perhaps never more so than recently. In July 2021, Dr. Jayne was killed in a traffic accident near Grand Forks, North Dakota. “He believed in and was so excited to bring this clinic to our reservation,” WoodenKnife posted on Facebook. “He brought many fellow veterinarians and groups to our homeland to help build this clinic.”
Even in the aftermath of this devastating loss, the care continued. Then in early December, WoodenKnife’s husband of many years, Verdell, made his journey after battling cancer and a stroke. WoodenKnife balanced her husband’s palliative care with the needs of the animals. “Working with the animals is my therapy while this experience changes my life, my future, “ says WoodenKnife.
Clinics By and For the People
Nikita Eagleman, 29, lives in Antelope Community. Growing up with cats and dogs, she dreamed of becoming a vet since she was 6-years old. On her first day volunteering at Wamakanskan Wawokiye Oti, Eagleman was cleaning cages and mopping the floor when Dr. Jayne, short-staffed for post-op recovery, requested her assistance. “Ever since that day, Dr. Jayne was always extremely happy and relieved to see me coming back to volunteer,” says Eagleman. Eagleman routinely assists with vaccinations and recovery and is entering a GED/Vet Tech program with support from the SNV Dr. Eric Jayne Scholarship. “I really love helping out at Kathleen’s clinic. It makes me feel useful. I hope to use my experience to support the clinic and help save injured animals faster, and to help my people out, educate on proper animal care, and hopefully encourage them to see vet tech as a future career.”
“Get It Done Now, Freak Out Later”
Tashina Red Hawk likes to say she’s been riding horses “since the womb.” The 18-year-old grew up on a ranch in Ring Thunder. Red Hawk, who is Sicangu Lakota, was raised with horses. Like many Lakota, she considers horses to be relatives. “I refer to them as my family members. Culturally, they are very important to us. I was raised to take care of them, learn about their nutrition, doctor their wounds.”
Red Hawk recalls two experiences in her youth formative to the woman she is today. Years ago, when her chestnut Appaloosa Aguyapi Skua (Sweet Bread) went missing, the Red Hawk family met with a medicine man, who directed them to a lone tree on their 160 acres. Aguyapi Skua had died. “He was just laying perfectly laid out under this beautiful tree, on the other side of a barbed wire fence, which was not broken or disturbed,” says Red Hawk. “The medicine man informed us that sickness was coming to our home, but the horse chose to take the illness upon himself, so we could be happy and healthy. This is the power of the horse.”
Years later when she was 10, Red Hawk and her father found their horse Wakeya Wi (Lightning Girl) severely wounded. Chased by a stud, the 15.5 hand mare had gashed through barbed wire. “Her whole front quarter was hanging off, like a giant chunk of meat,” says Red Hawk.
Veterinarian services, let alone emergency care, are over an hour away from the Mission area. Red Hawk and her father lifted the wounded animal into a trailer and went home to bind the wound in a butterfly bandage. “Every morning before I would go to school, I would take off all of her bandages, clean her wounds, bandage her back up, give her pain meds, go to school, come back from school and do that process all over again,” says Red Hawk. “It’s almost 100 miles round trip to get to the closest vet clinic. So, I was raised with having the common sense of, ‘Okay, well, there’s an emergency. Get it done now, freak out later.”
Like Eagleman, Red Hawk was volunteering with Dr. Jayne and Kathleen WoodenKnife when the surgery room became very busy. Red Hawk – a champion barrel racer currently serving her second term as South Dakota State High School Rodeo Queen and who recently received the 2022 4-H Youth in Action Award for Agriculture – made herself useful. “We had like over 300 animals. It was like a tornado.” Red Hawk will study Pre-Veterinary Medicine at SDSU this fall. When she is a licensed veterinarian, she plans to bring her skills back to the Sicangu Lakota Oyate. “Kathleen and Dr. Jayne started everything and got it to where it is today,” says Red Hawk. “Kathleen is making the right connections to see out her dreams. My being able to volunteer right now is because of Kathleen’s dream and realizing her goal of helping the animal nation.”
“We had a plan, a dream and together we were moving forward,” WoodenKnife wrote.
“This will be the first of its kind clinic model. We are excited to have our own tribal members be a part of caring for the 4-legged right here at home.”
Masterpiece All Creatures Great and Small Season 2, based on the beloved books by British veterinarian James Herriot, premieres Sunday, January 9, at 8pm (7 MT) on SDPB1.