MARTIN - Intermittent flashes of light burst from a horizon of gray clouds, lighting up the dark sky and wide-open, tumbling grasslands of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation on Wednesday evening.

It was not a scene Brian Twenter figured he could have witnessed from a classroom seat at a university.

"It's so cool out here," he said.

Twenter, a University of South Dakota doctoral student, was about halfway through a weeklong workshop at the Center for American Indian Research and Native Studies - commonly called CAIRNS - when a lightning storm hit just outside the research center.

CAIRNS is a nonprofit research and education center on Oglala Sioux Tribe trust land near Martin. The center is part of a larger facility called Wingsprings that is being built by Oglala Lakota College professor Craig Howe.

Howe, a native of the area, coordinates the workshops and lives on the land. The workshops are meant to teach people about the Lakota culture by immersing them in it.

Howe lives in a building on a piece of high ground, and he has built a cluster of tipis in the valley below. Participants gather in the main building for workshop sessions, and many sleep in the tipis in the evening.

During the week of workshops, Howe takes the groups on educational trips throughout the reservation and brings speakers to the Wingsprings facility.

As he sat under an awning outside the research center and watched the storm unfold, Twenter talked about how valuable the field-trip experience is to him.

"I think he has the right idea of studying it in the place where the culture comes from and in the place where the art comes from, as opposed to studying in a classroom," he said. "It's better to get out here, live it, see it, and then the discussions become more poignant."

Howe hopes to add to the learning experience by providing a realistic Lakota atmosphere.

He moved back to the area in 2000 and begun construction on the facility on his family's land, about a mile and half from where he grew up.

Howe received his bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Nebraska and earned a doctorate at the University of Michigan.

After school, Howe spent time as the deputy assistant for cultural resources at the Smithsonian Institution. He said he always wanted to return to the West River area and is happy to be living in the area where he grew up, educating others about Lakota culture.

"Part of it is the experience of being on reservation land, so people can see what it's like to be on this land, live on this land," he said.

The group spent Wednesday taking in art displays around the reservation and discussing Lakota art styles and artists' techniques. One of Howe's main goals is to provide materials that participants can use to teach their own students about the Lakota culture.

Many of the participants are educators, but Howe welcomes anyone seeking to learn more about the Lakota culture.

This week's workshop was one of four that Howe will conduct this summer. The workshops, funded in part by the South Dakota Humanities Council, are among many projects Howe coordinates at the facility.

Virginia Kennedy of Milford, Penn., visited the CAIRNS facility this week on a grant from Cornell's American Indian Studies department. She said Howe excels at bridging the cultural gap between people seeking to learn about Lakota culture and those who know it.

"Part of what makes it exceptionally exciting … is that it's about a conversation between cultures," she said Wednesday evening. "His main question to theses artists today was, 'What would you say to these teachers who are not Lakota people?'"

Naomi Colberg, who worked this past year as a counselor for the White River School District, said this week's course has helped her learn more about different cultures, which will continue to serve her well as a counselor.

"Learning more about Lakota culture enables me to develop a stronger rapport with Lakota clients and their families," Colberg said.

Creating understanding between cultures is one of Howe's main goals.

"In our state, it's important that we all know more about each other," he said.

For more information about the workshops and the CAIRNS program, go to www.nativecairns.org.

Contact Ryan Woodard at 394-8412 or ryan.woodard@rapidcityjournal.com