Twenty-five-year-old Brooklynite Chris Bashinelli of The Sopranos fame brings a new meaning to the term cultural exchange in Bridge the Gap to Pine Ridge. In two eventful weeks, Chris gets a taste of what it means to be a modern-day Oglala Lakota Indian on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota--a part of the United States that at times, is either in the media for its poverty statistics or is completely forgotten.

By walking in local residents' shoes, Chris hopes to bridge the gap between viewers and the lives of the people on Pine Ridge--their daily struggles, their successes, their culture, and their dreams. Chris is honored to participate in a sacred buffalo harvest and joins in on the celebration that ends in a big bite of raw liver. But that's not all, he gets to take part in hard-labor farm work in order to better understand employment, gets 'schooled' by the women's basketball team at the Pine Ridge's Community College, and visits with a fourteen-year-old girl who has devoted her life to suicide prevention.

Talking with youth and young adults, Chris poses the question, "Do you want to live on or off 'the Rez'?" Touching talks and classroom visits with school-aged youth uncover stories of hope and Chris learns how culture through the generations has prevailed in the face of adversity.

Jane Goodall, Ph.D. sums it best--"Bridge the Gap shares exciting and inspirational stories of daily life from the developing world and encourages us to realize that at the end of the day, we really are all the same, and every single one of us makes a difference."