The Highway and The River

Bisy is an aware, observant girl. Growing up in the family of an evangelical pastor in the Dakotas of the 50's and 60's, she had many opportunities to sort through those question. She found "goodness" where she had been taught it shouldn't be and "badness" in the people she was supposed to trust the most. As a teenager, she shelved the question and opted to find "happiness" instead. She ultimately found that to be life-threatening. The Indians across The River on the Standing Rock Reservation showed her kinship in terms of having been disrespected, abused, and dominated and she finally uses their example to find a way back to "goodness."

As the daughter of an evangelical pastor in a rural portion of South Dakota, her young life is spent absorbing a rigid belief system that makes no allowance for creative thinking. She learns quickly to "do as she is told," and to model good behavior as a reflection of her father's ministry. She grows as a very dutiful child without realizing that she could be separate, apart from the expectations that had been put on her. She is taught to believe firmly in the "Power of Satan" and that she was a foot soldier in the "Lord's Army." As she grows into her teenage years, she is first full of questions, and later frustrated by the lack of continuity between what she was taught by her beloved Daddy and the workings of the world outside the doors of his church. Meanwhile, she had formed a close kinship with the Indians who lived across the River. She had been warned about them from her early days as being "unsaved," irresponsible and even dangerous. She found them to be warm, accepting, people who could teach her a lot about spirituality, more than she had known in the evangelical upbringing of her childhood. She had come full circle in her questioning of good and evil.

Darlice Dockter holds a BA in English/Education and a MA in Counseling/Human Services. Throughout her thirty five years as a teacher and counselor, her main focus has been working with people who have issues surrounding anger, violence and abuse. She is a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, a student, a graduate, a teacher, a school administrator and a survivor of both physical and emotional abuse.