"We have to start
sharing humanity. We HAVE to figure it out. Dream big - make no small
plans." - Chase Iron Eyes, Lakota Sioux and founder of the website 'Last Real Indians'.
Measuring some 11,000 square miles, Pine Ridge is the second
largest reservation of its kind in the U.S. The Lakota Sioux make up just one
group within a population of nearly 19,000 residents. The True Sioux Hope
Foundation reveals a 90 percent unemployment rate; understandable, given that
Pine Ridge has “no industry, technology or commercial infrastructure” and just
“one grocery store of moderate size ... tasked with providing for the entire
community.”
This translates to 97 percent of the Lakota Sioux living far
below the U.S. federal poverty line. As a result, many homes in this area house
an average of 17 people with 33 percent of these buildings having no
electricity, basic water or sewage systems. An estimated 60 percent of these
homes are deemed health hazards as a result of potentially fatal black mold.
Due to a lack of insurance or government programs, residents are forced to
remain living in these often toxic environments.
Eight out of 10 families are affected by alcoholism, which
contributes to a death rate 300 percent higher than that of the average U.S.
population. Along with alcohol abuse, nearly 50 percent of adults over the age
of 40 on the reservation suffer from diabetes. The infant mortality rate
measures 300 percent higher than the national average. Of those who make it
past early childhood, 70 percent drop out of high school. To put this all in
bleak perspective, the teenage suicide rate is 150 percent higher than the U.S.
national average.
Another recent survey showed that the Lakota language is
critically endangered, with a decline of almost 66 percent of people speaking
their native tongue in the past decade.
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