September/October 1985 RAIN Page 7 in 1837, the government forced the native Sauk people west of the Mississippi River. The settlers came with John Deere's new invention and used the tool to open the area to a new kind of agriculture. They ignored the traditional ways of the Sauk Indians and used their sod- busting tool for planting wheat. Initially the soil was generous and the farmers thrived. However, each year the soil lost more of its nurturing power. It was only 30 years after the Europeans arrived with their new technology that the land was depleted. Wheat farming became uneconomical and tens of thousands of farmers left Wisconsin seeking new land with sod to bust. It took the Europeans and their new technology just one generation to make their homeland into a desert. The Sauk Indians who knew how to sustain themselves on the Sauk prairie land were banished to another kind of desert called a reservation. And even they forgot about the techniques and tools that had sustained them on the prairie for generations unrecorded. And that is how it was that three deserts were created —Wisconsin, the reservation, and the memories of people. A century later, the land of the Sauks is now populated by the children of a second wave of European farmers who learned to replenish the soil through regenerative powers of dairying, ground cover crops and animal manures. These third and fourth generation farmers and townspeople do not realize, however, that a new settler is coming soon with an invention as powerful as John Deere's plow. The Bereavement Counselor The new technology is called "bereavement counseling." It is a tool forged at the great state universities, an innovative technique to meet the needs of those experiencing the death of a loved one, a tool that can process the grief of the people who now live on the Prairie of the Sauk. The counselor calls the invention a service and assures the prairie folk of its effectiveness hy invoking the name of the great university while displaying a diploma and certificate. As one can imagine the final days of the village of the Sauk Indians before the arrival of the settlers with John Deere's plow, one can also imagine the arrival of the first bereavement counselor at Prairie du Sac. In these final days, the farmers and the townspeople mourn at the death of a mother, brother, son, or friend. The bereaved is joined by neighbors and kin. They meet grief together in lamentation, prayer, and song. They call upon the words of clergy and surround themselves in community. It is in these ways that they grieve and then go on with life. Through their mourning they are assured of the bonds between them and renewed in the knowledge that this death is a part of the past and the future of the people on the Prairie of the Sauk. Their grief is common property, an anguish from which the community draws strength and gives the bereaved the courage to move ahead. The counselor's new tool will cut through the social fabric, throwing aside kinship, care, neighborly obligations, and community ways of coming together. It is into this prairie community that the bereavement counselor arrives with the new grief technology. The counselor calls the invention a service and assures the prairie folk of its effectiveness and superiority by invoking the name of the great university while displaying a diploma and certificate. At first, we can imagine that local people will be puzzled by the bereavement counselor's claims. However, the counselor will tell a few of them that the new technique is merely to assist the bereaved's community at the time of death. To some other prairie folk who are isolated or forgotten, the counselor will offer help in grief processing. These lonely souls will accept the intervention, mistaking the counselor for a friend. For those who are penniless, the counselor will approach the County Board and advocate the right to treatment for these unfortunate souls. This right will be guaranteed by the Board's decision to reimburse those too poor to pay for counseling services. There will be others, schooled to believe in the innovative new tools certified by universities and medical centers, who will seek out the bereavement counselor by force of habit. And one of these people will tell a bereaved neighbor who is unschooled that unless his grief is processed by a counselor, he will probably have major psychological problems later in life. Several people will begin to use the bereavement counselor because, since the County Board now taxes them to insure access to the technology, they will feel that to fail to be counseled is to waste their money, and to be denied a benefit, or even a right. Finally, one day, the aged father of a Sauk woman will die. And the next door neighbor will not drop by because he doesn't want to interrupt the bereavement counselor. The woman's kin will stay at home because they will have learned that only the bereavement counselor knows how to process grief in the proper way. The local clergy will seek technical assistance from the bereavement counselor to learn the correct form of service
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