Last updated on 2013.12.11
[Commenter turns columnist! The spirit moves friend and frequent blog conversationalist Shane Gerlach from Yankton to contribute his thoughts on South Dakota's American Indian population. Here's Part 1 of his two-part guest column.]
I feel for the people affected by the flooding of the Missouri River. I also am empathetic to the people of Arizona and Texas dealing with fires and drought. I commend the neighbors stepping up to help neighbors. This inspiring community spirit seems to be the way in the Dakotas. When I was growing up, if a farmer couldn't get his crops in, the surrounding farmers helped. If there was the loss of a loved one, the community rallied around the survivors. I see jars on counters filled across the state in banks and gas stations helping victims of fire, storm or disease. The examples are limitless; the compassion, immeasurable.
That said, did you know 300 miles west from where I live there is a third-world country suffering daily loss and devastation? A place with a life expectancy of under 50. A place where you are more than likely going to end up addicted to a chemical of some sort. A place where the average income for a family is under $12,000. A place with the highest teen suicide rate in the country.
I speak of Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
Veronica Bright provides statistics supporting the third-world claim:
- 65% of the residents of the Reservation live in sub-standard conditions such as no electricity, running water, and often, without heat.
- Many of the elderly (some of whom still live in sod houses) die of hypothermia each year.
- Due to lack of sustainable jobs on the Reservation, unemployment is approximately 85-95%.
- Infant Mortality rate is 300% above the national average.
- Diabetes is 800 times the national average.
Freelance writer Stephanie M. Schwartz lists numerous disturbing statistics about the reservation. Among them, for your consideration over coffee and toast:
- According to the most recent Federal Census, 58.7% of the grandparents on the Reservation are responsible for raising their own grandchildren.
- According to 2006 resources, about 97% of the population lives below Federal poverty levels.
- In most of the treaties between the U.S. Government and Indian Nations, the U.S. government agreed to provide adequate medical care for Indians in return for vast quantities of land. The Indian Health Services (IHS) was set up to administer the health care for Indians under these treaties and receives an appropriation each year to fund Indian health care. Unfortunately, the appropriation is very small compared to the need and there is little hope for increased funding from Congress. The IHS is understaffed and ill-equipped and can't possibly address the needs of Indian communities. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
- School drop-out rate is over 70%.
- Even though there is a large homeless population on the Reservation, most families never turn away a relative no matter how distant the blood relation. Consequently, there is an estimated average of 17 people living in each family home (a home which may only have two to three rooms). Some larger homes, built for 6 to 8 people, have up to 30 people living in them.
- Over 33% of the Reservation homes lack basic water and sewage systems as well as electricity.
- It is reported that at least 60% of the homes on the Pine Ridge Reservation need to be burned to the ground and replaced with new housing due to infestation of the potentially-fatal Black Mold, Stachybotrys. There is no insurance or government program to assist families in replacing their homes.
- The predominant form of travel for all ages on the Reservation is walking or hitchhiking.
- Many wells and much of the water and land on the Reservation is contaminated with pesticides and other poisons from farming, mining, open dumps, and commercial and governmental mining operations outside the Reservation. A further source of contamination is buried ordnance and hazardous materials from closed U.S. military bombing ranges on the Reservation.
The New York Times has reported that 5000 young Oglala Sioux men are involved with at least 39 gangs on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Residents and law enforcement blame these gangs for "vandalism, theft, violence and fear that is altering the texture of life here and in other parts of American Indian territory."
Why aren't we doing anything about this? I'm not saying we ignore other tragedies, but why don't we take care of our own? Why must we fix everyone else while sweeping the problems of our own society under the rug? Are we so conditioned in this area that "that's just the way things are" that we stopped caring or trying?
Good subject. Will be interested to see part 2. Not commenting until I see it all. The issue has so many "heads" it is too easy to get caught up in details and lose the big picture.
A agree. Let's get the whole story out on the table. Then start thinking together about what we as South Dakota Citizens and fellow human beings can do about it. And then ACT. Good work Shane and Cory.
Apparently, Shane, Troy, and Bill just arrived on the planet. Welcome to red state collapse, boys.
Btw, children: Stace Nelson's rant at the War Toilet suggests that the only answer to Mr. Gerlach's Socath-his-eyes-opened moment is more prisons. Surprise!
Thank you for publishing this Cory.
Larry, sometimes you are just such a ridiculous pain in the ass.
You and Stace have a lot in common, actually, Kurtz. Obnoxious, pushy, negative, in your face, know it all.
Thank for the article Shane/Cory. Yes, it is a many-headed problem, but supporting the Native-led changes is the best way to get in there and partner with them. There are many Oglala doing incredible work on the Pine Ridge to make life better for their people. I'll post some of those organizations if that's o.k.?
[CAH: Absolutely, Deb! Share that knowledge, post those links!]
Have any of you been to Pine Ridge? I had family living there a few years ago. We visited and stayed. It was an eye-opening experience.
[CAH: Stay tuned, Michael! That's Part 2, coming tomorrow....]
More: http://buffalopost.net/?p=15290
and more: http://buffalopost.net/?tag=pine-ridge-indian-reservation
still more: http://64.38.12.138/News/2011/002262.asp
I'm on the rez even as I type this and look forward to his suggestions.
We apologized, http://www.indianlaw.org/node/529 ,,, or did we?
""Is an apology that’s not said out loud really an apology? What if the person expressing the apology doesn’t draw attention to it?""
What's next?? I've said before that conversation needs to happen.
You can't help those who won't help themselves.....especially when there is no accountability.
christians burned the library at Alexandria during the fall of the Roman Empire, imagine what they can do on the rez.
The Sioux raped and tortured women and children when they attacked the Arikara in modern day SD and forced them north to ND. Did they give reparations to their victims?
Dan, your comment about accountability is hilarious given the other comment you just made about your total support for the completely unaccountably local economic development corporation.
So says you. I've seen what they have done first hand. They have been burnt in the past by unfaithful entrepreneurs who took the money and ran, but they have done a lot to help keeps college grads like myself around by spurring growth in technology. Also, last I checked, you can do something about who is involved if you are unhappy with what they are doing. You really shouldn't drag topics together. It only shows how weak of an argument you have.
"So says you"? Hilarious, Dan. I'm just reading your words. I'm pulling arguments together to show the big picture of your utter inconsistency. You come here and mutter about accountability, but you don't hold your masters to the same standard. That's a perfectly valid observation demonstrating the weak sophistry of your position. You're not even laying out a position. You're just flailing about for words to rationalize some ill-thought prejudices and personal agendas that your parents or your boss or someone in authority told you to believe.
And really, you want to talk reparations for rape? Who stole the land? Who wiped out the buffalo? Who lied on the treaties? Who killed women and children and Wounded Knee? Who handed out blankets with smallpox? Who's the conquering nation here? Look in the mirror, Dan. If you think it's all even-steven, you're in deep rhetorical trouble. Your inconsistency today is ragingly obvious.
They ARE held accountable. The only people pissed are the ones who think they should be running it and they get left out. Sounds like you, Carl..... Care to show me how they aren't held accountable?....Just maybe post it in the right topic this time.
You act like we owe a lot to the native Americans, when in fact, I don't believe we do. They are victims of war, war that they also imposed on their own enemies. I follow their steps first and provide no assistance to those we have conquered. We destroyed the natives, while they wiped out nations themselves. The only difference is, for some reason the white people are the only ones who are supposed to step up to the plate and help the ones they conquered out. The best thing we can do for them is assimilation. Disband the reservations and make them the same as any other citizen. Creating dependent voting classes is the goal of the Democrat party and what they are doing to the native Americans is disgusting.
Mr. Gerlach writes a relevant and perceptive viewpoint.
Essential to the understanding of Pine Ridge and the other reservations is that they were carefully designed to be detention camps on marginal land that was guaranteed to keep its residents in a state of dependence and to inspire a defeated despair in them. Only in the past ten years has honest reporting and scholarship with books on Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse presented the rationale behind the reservations as explained in the correspondence of government officials and in government documents. Sitting Bull, for example, embraced the agriculture urged upon him with energy and earnest effort, but like the white farmers around him on Standing Rock, he experienced devastating crop failures and the resulting realization that the agriculture forced upon him did not work on those soils and in that climate.
It was assumed that by our time the pogrom of elimination by the Indian wars and the physical and mental barrens of the great detention would have produced a final solution of the indigenous people. The creators of the reservation system did not give serious account to a deeply spiritual culture that could be driven underground but never be vanquished. What happens with the Black Hills settlement will probably set the course for any future resolution.
Shane, reading your post again, I glossed over your questions which I do think can get some initial "answers" before your full text.
1) "Why aren’t we doing anything about this?" By implication, you appear to be asserting we aren't doing anything. We are spending a boatload of money and getting dismal results. In my opinion, the Einstien quote on insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is relevant. Maybe the question, is what we are doing the wrong thing?
2) "I’m not saying we ignore other tragedies, but why don’t we take care of our own?" Agree, especially in the collective we. This isn't just an Indian problem or a problem caused by Whites. It is all of our problem and both sides need to start self assessing where they aren't doing their part.
3) "Why must we fix everyone else while sweeping the problems of our own society under the rug?" Agree especially with sweeping it under the rug. Again, I think both sides spend too much effort blaming the other for the problem with out self-assessment.
4) "Are we so conditioned in this area that “that’s just the way things are†that we stopped caring or trying?" I disagree with the idea people don't care. In some cases, they are bewildered on solutions so in their confusion they become paralyzed (both by those on and off the reservations). In some cases, they are tired of being called racist for their ideas. I know sometimes I've been tempted to just shut up so I don't have to deal with the accusation but my admonition to love one another keeps me going. And in some cases, they don't have the ability to deal with tragedy of such proportions. I think of a friend who aspired to be a teacher on the reservation. She did it for a few months. Her quitting wasn't because she didn't care but she cared too much.
Troy thank you for your thought out response.
1. I understand that the government is doing something about it and also completely agree with your referance to insanity. When there isn't even a grocery store on the res and limited transportation off the res; what good are food stamps? I guess my "we" was a collective address of frustration. ( I hope you will understand more tomorrow.) My question more deals with why aren't community leaders, state representatives and Church leaders there listening to what is really needed instead of telling people This is what will work.
2 and 3 Agreed completely. This isn't a color issue this is an issue of humanity. The system as we know it, created by one and implemented by the other, is entirely broken. There must be a new way of thinking and planning. One of unity and solutions instead of blame and lingering in the past.
4. I do believe there is a perception that the Reservations are a wasteland of alcoholics and drug addicts. I also think there is a perception that White Dakota doesn't care about the Lakota/Dakota/Nakota nation. These are the perceptions that need to be destroyed before any work can actually be done. The century of reconciliation that Governor Mickelson declared, has to this point, been a failure.
Stay tuned to tomorrows post which I believe will address much of this and more.
Shane
Good points, Troy. I worked in Yankton State hospital for a while during my college years. My first few weeks there were totally intimidating. I couldn't imagine my having to go there every day, and I had nightmares when I got home.
But after a while I "adapted." It was a form of detachment at first. I had to both care, and not care... try to objectify, which of course is also impossible. Toward the end of my employment there, I began to notice that the "old timers" there (people who had worked there for 5-15 years or more) had something going on that I could feel, only slightly happening to me. They (we) had fully identified with the place — in essence, becoming just as insane (i.e. disconnected with reality) as the patients they were there to supervise and care for.
It was the only way to survive there.
This will be an interesting discussion.
Shane, I will stay tuned but tomorrow might not allow me to monitor this like I can today. I agree perceptions are part of the problem both the perception themself as well as the perception of perceptions! But the century of reconciliation is an admission the problem is big and will take a long time to resolve.
Mr. Newquist you have touched on a very telling part of the culture and what I personally believe needs to be reinforced for there to be any substantial change. The native spirituality. It is that force that has kept a culture, that should be by all logic dead, alive.
I'm not even talking so much in the belief of a higher power, but more the belief that we are all, regardless of color, a connected part of each others life. We share the same wheel and travel the same path. Think of the amazing will it took to maintain the traditions that they have despite the best attempts of missionaries and the US Government to wipe it out.
Imagine being told you can't speak your native tongue or be addressed by your given name. Imagine being taken from the land you know and sent to a school far away from family. Imagine in a land partly on the escape from religious persecution, being told that what you believe and practice is illegal and immoral. This is exactly what the Natives dealt with and still, by pride and respect for their traditional ways the language, the dances, the rites and the stories survive.
It is that devotion and passion that I believe needs to be tapped into for real change to happen.
Shane
Imagine in a land partly on the escape from...
should read
Imagine in a land partly BUILT on the escape from ...
sorry. Ideas flowing faster than fingers.
Exactly Troy. Until established ways of thinking and patterns are destroyed there will never ever be a solution.
Perceptions of perceptions...love it. Sadly too often, perception becomes the warped reality.
I grew up in Flandreau and we hated Dell Rapids and Dell Rapids hated us. Why? None of us knew. I asked my mom who grew up in Dells why the hatred. She recounted pennies being thrown at a basketball game in the 50's by Flandreau fans. Really? So generations should dislike each other based on that!?!?!
When I was growing up the relations between town and tribe were not good. Now you have a joint force of tribe, town and county that has been praised for their work together and held up as a working model on how different cultures and government entities can work together for the benefit of all. Some of the same people I heard disparage natives while growing up are now working with and accepting of those same people. Natives I saw with nothing but scorn for whites (or as we were called "Pilgrims") now serve side by side with white community leaders for a better now and tomorrow. Flandreau isn't perfect by any means and it's smaller tribal roll and location make it easier to create success. But the PERCEPTIONS had to be changed for any of it to work.
Perceptions of perceptions...thanks for contributing!
Shane
Doc nailed it: this little group grope will solve nothing.
From the Fort Peck Journal: "Youth have been misguided and recruited by other misguided youth and to join these hybrid gangs of the Fort Peck Reservation. These hybrid gangs have taken their cues from non-Indian, inner city gangs portrayed and glamorized in the media. The youth are attracted to this identity as victims with the symptoms of a people with post colonial stress disorder. This can be blamed on the lack of Dakota/Lakota/Nakona cultures and linguistics that were traditionally passed from generation to generation before reservation life became a reality. Assimilation tactics were utilized on generations of our people, who were purposely taught to be ashamed to be Dakota/Lakota/Nakona. Positive reinforcement for behavior that perpetuated the non-Indian culture was also a tool to assimilate our people in order to take our land and resources."
There is an insurgency building from Quebec to Yellowknife to Fort Yates to Pine Ridge to the Tohono O'odham that is direct blowback from the so-called "War on Drugs."
You ain't seen nuthin' yet.
Shane, thanks for your thoughtful piece on the troubles we in SD all need to learn about so that we can be more educated in our comments and our search for solutions.