Pine Ridge Indian Reservation

A FEW FACTS

History refers to Lakota people as the Sioux (derived from a French word meaning "snake"). Yet, the people refer to themselves as the Lakota Nation. (The word Lakota comes from a word meaning "friend"). The Lakota Nation consisted of great leaders such as Red Cloud, Big Foot, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, American Horse, etc. The people who presently live on the reservation are a wonderful people. They have a beautiful culture filled with respect and generosity. Yet, they have been forced to live on land that is not conducive to farming, ranching or industry. (There is a reason that much of this area is referred to as the "Badlands".)

Thus, their plight: The following are a few facts about the reservation today.

By the Numbers
The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is 2.8 million acres, making it the second-largest reservation in the United States, larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined.

The Pine Ridge Reservation is home to the Oglala Sioux Tribe. The reservation is located in the southwest corner of South Dakota on the Nebraska border.
There are nine Native American tribes located in South Dakota: Cheyenne River Sioux, Crow Creek Sioux, Flandreau-Santee Sioux, Lower Brule Sioux, Oglala Sioux, Rosebud Sioux, Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, Standing Rock Sioux and Yankton Sioux.
The Pine Ridge Reservation is tribally governed by an elected President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer and 18 tribal council members.

Populations
The population of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is one of the most difficult statistics to confirm. United States Census Report counts put the Pine Ridge Reservation resident population at 15,521. However, a 2005 study conducted by Colorado State University and accepted by the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates the resident population to be approximately 28,787. Jim Berg, Executive Director for Oglala Sioux Lakota Housing, states that “the real number is closer to 40,000.”

Lakota Language and Culture
It is estimated that there are 6000 fluent speakers of the Lakota language today, according to The University of California-Los Angeles Language Materials Project. The study found the language is in severe danger of becoming extinct.  In the early 1990s, about half of the population of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation could speak the Lakota language. Today, that number has fallen to less than one-quarter on the Pine Ridge, and is as low as 4 percent on other Lakota reservations.
Because the average fluent speaker is nearly 65 years old, it is estimated that the vast majority of current fluent speakers are first-language speakers. The rate of teaching second-language speakers is falling drastically behind.
Red Cloud’s curriculum development project for the Lakota language is an effort to reverse these trends, and has strong potential to do so through the ability to share the materials widely with technology.

Economic Realities
80 percent of residents are unemployed.
49 percent of residents live below the Federal poverty line.
61 percent of residents below the age of 18 live below the poverty line.
The Pine Ridge Reservation is located in Shannon County, where its per-capita income makes it the second poorest county in the United States, at $6,286.
If the Oglala Sioux Tribe were to equally disperse revenues from the Prairie Wind Casino to all enrolled tribal members, each resident would receive $.15 per month.

Health and Well-being Realities
The infant mortality rate is 5 times higher than the United States national average.
More than 4.5 million cans of beers are sold annually in White Clay, Nebraska, just over the border from the Pine Ridge Reservation. This amounts to more than 12,500 cans of beer a day. The reservation, itself, is dry.
Obesity, diabetes, and heart disease occur in epidemic proportions on the Pine Ridge.
Native Americans’ rate of amputations related to diabetes is 3 to 4 times higher than among the general United States population.
Death rates due to diabetes among Native Americans are 3 times higher than among the general United States population.
Unhealthy diets and lack of exercise are two main contributing factors behind these high numbers, despite the fact that in the early history of the Lakota, diabetes was virtually unknown.
Life expectancy on the Pine Ridge Reservation is the lowest anywhere in the western hemisphere, except for Haiti. A recent study found the life expectancy for men is 48 years, for women it is 52 years on the Reservation.

Shannon County Residents
Shannon County has the highest population rate of Native Americans in the United States, and the lowest percentage of Caucasians.
About 70 percent of residents have attained a high school diploma, while 12.1 percent have attained a bachelor’s degree.
On the reservation, 13 percent of residents lack complete plumbing facilities, while 9.2 percent lack complete kitchen facilities. Also, 22.8 percent lack phone service.
Shannon County has the interesting distinction of having the highest percentage of Democratic votes for President in the 2004 election of any county in the United States.
Youth Risk Behavior
A report from the South Dakota Office of Comprehensive School Health indicates that among South

Dakota high school students:
67 percent had intercourse at least once in their life.
88 percent used alcohol during their life.
31 percent seriously considered attempting suicide.
15 percent attempted suicide in the last 12 months.
90 percent tried cigarette smoking.
80 percent tried marijuana.

Charitable Giving
Of all the foundation dollars infused every year to worthy causes, less than 1 percent of all philanthropic money goes to Native American causes, concerns and organizations.
In 2008, South Dakota ranked fourth lowest in terms of money received from grants when compared to other states. North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming received fewer. In terms of total number of grants, South Dakota received the second fewest when compared with all other states. South Dakota received 127 whereas North Dakota received 112 grants in 2008.
During the recession of 2001, South Dakota recorded easily the lowest level of charitable giving as a percent of income, at 0.4 percent. Just one year earlier South Dakota posted 1.8 percent of income earmarked for charities. South Dakota had a significantly larger decrease in percent of income donated to charities during this 2001 recession than other states, a decrease of 78 percent.

College Debt
According to a news release by the Rapid City Journal in November 2008, South Dakotans rank 1st in the amount of average college debt owed upon completion of college.

Blogger Philosophy

My Philosophy of Blogging



There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or to be the mirror that reflects it.
- Edith Wharton

Ms. Wharton sums up how I think of blogs. My desire is to reflect the articles and pictures that inspire me when surfing the Web by posting them on my blogs. Blogs create a scrapbook of events to review later inspiring me for a second time. This is a great pleasure and an educational activity providing me with learning missed when I was in school. The Web has demonstrated its great value in generating and spreading new ideas. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Occupy Wall Street and other revolutions have gained momentum on the Web.
If you have a favorite cause like animal rights, you can play a part in education the world by posting to your blog. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.


"To read means to borrow; to create out of one's reading is paying off one's debts."
- Charles Lillard

Communicating my worldview, as seen from my backwater home town situated on an island in the Pacific, is my way of staying engaged with current events.  Multiple Sclerosis has reduced my physical energy and keeps me close to home so I need to adapt and find new ways of relating to the world at large.

Drug use highest among American Indian teens, lower among blacks | California Watch

Drug use highest among American Indian teens, lower among blacks | California Watch: "A national analysis of drug abuse among teens released yesterday – among the most comprehensive to date – found that Native American, Latino and white adolescents have the highest rates of drug-related disorders.

In culturally diverse California – where recent illicit drug use among teens has climbed to nearly 11 percent – the findings have implications for the state’s prevention and treatment policy.

“This is a national study, but California is the prototypical state where there is a mixture of individuals across racial and ethnic groups," said Dan G. Blazer, a Duke University psychiatry professor and co-author of the study. "In terms of looking at comparisons across races, this study is very relevant to California.”

According to a state tally, there were 23,322 teens in publicly monitored and funded treatment programs in 2009."

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Learned optimism: It's possible

Happiness is a skill that can be learned. The essential factor whether or not you will live a happy life is based less on external factors such as wealth, success and fame, and more on your attitude toward life, toward yourself, toward other people, and toward events and situations. Regardless of your attitudes in the past, you have the ability to change and become a master of happiness.

Today is the best day to improve your skills. Either things will go EXACTLY the way you want -- and then you can focus on the feeling of joy. Or things will NOT go the way you want and you'll have the opportunity to attain greater mastery over your attitude.

Throughout the day, keep asking yourself: "What attitude will enable me to experience joy and empowerment RIGHT NOW?

— Rabbi Zelig Pliskin
(see Preface to 'Gateway to Happiness'

Sitting Bull

Source:

Exposing The Truth

  

Money is inedible

Only after the last tree has been cut

Only after the last river has been poisoned

Only after the last fish has been caught

Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten

~ Cree Indian Prophecy ~

American Indians cannot be ignored in discussions of ethnic health disparities |

This article was so well-written, it was impossible to edit.  Instead I left many links back to the author to be sure he is credited with the writing of the article.

Public health expert: American Indians cannot be ignored in discussions of ethnic health disparities | syracuse.com:


Public health expert: American Indians cannot be ignored in discussions of ethnic health disparities
Published: Wednesday, October 12, 2011, 4:10 PM Updated: Wednesday, October 12, 2011, 4:40 PM
By James T. Mulder / The Post-Standard

"Michael E. Bird has spent much of his career in public health shining a light on health problems that devastated his family and many other American Indians.

Bird, the first Native American to serve as the president of the American Public Health Association, visited Syracuse University today to give a talk about American Indian health disparities. The free lecture, open to the public, is at 6 p.m. in Room 001 of the Life Sciences Building."

Even though alcoholism, diabetes and other diseases kill American Indians at much higher rates than other minority groups, the disparity is often ignored because American Indians account for less than 2 percent of the population, Bird said.

Bird said he’s battled with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other groups to include American Indians along with blacks and Hispanics in discussions of and research into ethnic health disparities.

“Any discussion about populations that have been marginalized has to be about all of us or none of us,” Bird said.

Bird, 59, is a Santo Domingo-San Juan Pueblo Indian from Albuquerque, New Mexico. He has master’s degrees in social work and public health, and worked for many years for the Indian Health Service, an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The American Public Health Association, the world’s oldest organization of public health officials, elected him president in 2001. He’s now working as a consultant to Kewa Pueblo tribal officials in New Mexico, helping them develop a tribally owned and directed health center.

He and other delegates of the American Public Health Association have been invited to the White House later this month.

Bird jokingly said a fitting title to his life story would be: “From the outhouse to the White House.”

Bird grew up in a poor family. His mother had a seventh grade education and was 17 when she gave birth to him. His father was an alcoholic who died of cirrhosis. That family dysfunction steered him to a career in social work, then public health.

“I wouldn’t be who I am today if it were not for that experience,” Bird said. “I understand what it’s like to have that hurt and pain, but I’ve learned not to be overwhelmed by it, to control it and direct it.”

American Indians and Alaska Natives die at higher rates than other American from tuberculosis (500 percent higher), alcoholism (514 percent higher), diabetes (177 percent higher), car accidents and other unintentional injuries (140 percent higher), homicide (92 percent higher) and suicide (82 percent higher), according to the federal government.

Bird said the disparities are the consequences of Native American being removed from their ancestral lands, racism, poverty and other factors.

Despite the statistics, Bird said he sees encouraging signs.

Many tribes like his own are taking control of their health centers to improve services. The Urban Indian Health Institute is doing research to focus more attention on the health needs of American Indians who live in urban communities, he said.

Bird said he was encouraged when the United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People in 2007 which affirmed the equality of the world’s more than 300 million indigenous people.

“It’s not legally binding, but it provides visibility to issues faced by indigenous populations all over the world who share the same socioeconomic deficits of high morbidity, high mortality and high incarceration,” he said.

Even though he considers tobacco use a major health problem, Bird sees cigarette sales as a necessary evil for the Onondaga Nation  and many other Indian reservations.

If the United States had kept its promises to Indian people to provide adequate health services, education and many other benefits in exchange for their lands, reservations would not need to sell cigarettes or operate casinos, he said.

“It’s sort of like being in the middle of a lake and there’s a storm coming,” Bird said. “If those are the only oars you have, you are going to use them.”



Related topics: Syracuse University Michael E. Bird

Submitted photo

Michael E. Bird, a national expert on Native American public health, visited Syracuse University Wednesday.






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Native Americans prepare for annual festival | Dothan Eagle

Native Americans prepare for annual festival | Dothan Eagle:

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Urban Outfitters' hipster panty is a Navajo no-no | StarTribune.com

Urban Outfitters' hipster panty is a Navajo no-no | StarTribune.com: " resize text printbuy reprints

"

But the matter may go far beyond appeasing one consumer. As Brown also noted in her letter, the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 prohibits selling products through marketing that falsely suggests they were made by American Indians. Also, the name "Navajo" is trademarked by the tribe.

'via Blog this'

Imagine

A wise man changes his mind, a fool never”
- Spanish Proverb quotes


The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”
-Carl Sagan


“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
- Albert Einstein


“Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.”
- Dr. Carl Sagan

Ancient Times

                                                                 

“The wind whips through the canyons of the American Southwest, and there is no one to hear it but us - a reminder of the 40,000 generations of thinking men and women who preceded us, about whom we know almost nothing, upon whom our civilization is based.”
- Carl Sagan


“We are the product of 4.5 billion years of fortuitous, slow biological evolution. There is no reason to think that the evolutionary process has stopped. Man is a transitional animal. He is not the climax of creation.”
- Carl Sagan

"Hold on to what is good, even if it is a handful of earth. And hold on to what you believe, even if it is a tree which stands by itself. Hold on to what you must do, even if it is a long way from here. Hold on to life, even when it is easier to let go. Hold on to my hand, even when I have gone away from you."

- Pueblo Verse


"I will be walking in the middle of your soul." - Oklahoma Cherokee love incantation

Why Can't We All Just Get Along?

Why Can't We All Just Get Along?

Funny how this sentiment arises over and over but falls on deaf ears.


We can solve many problems in an appropriate way, without any difficulty, if we cultivate harmony, friendship and respect for one another.
Dalai Lama

"Silence is the Mother of Truth, for the silent man was ever to be trusted, while the man ever ready with speech was never taken seriously." 

- Chief Luther Standing Bear, (Teton Sioux)  

Patience is the beginning of Mindfulness

Patience is the companion of wisdom.
St. Augustine of Hippo (13 November 354 – 20 August 430)

(As quoted in Distilled Wisdom: An Encyclopedia of Wisdom in Condensed Form‎ (1964) by Alfred Armand Montapert, p. 270)

B.C. aboriginal mask sells for $150,000 in Paris

The pictured mask is a Tony Hunt work of art.

B.C. aboriginal mask sells for $150,000 in Paris



An elaborately carved aboriginal mask from Canada, believed to have been used in coming-of-age rituals among the Tsimshian people of the B.C. coast, has been sold at a Paris auction of historic native art for more than $150,000.


The exquisite object was part of a major collection of artifacts amassed by Bernard Bottet, a well-known French enthusiast for indigenous artwork who began acquiring treasures from around the world in the 1920s.



While the specific history of the Canadian mask was not immediately available, native art curators at Christie's auction house called it a "perfect" representation of Tsimshian style: "forehead tilted from eyebrows, sharp orbits, pyramidal cheeks, wide mouth with the fine lips, aquiline nose, round nostrils and finely sculptured ears."



The mask, which drew a top bid of $148,000 at Tuesday's auction in Paris, was expected to sell for about $100,000.



The Tsimshian First Nation is centred in B.C.'s Skeena River region, near the coastal port of Prince Rupert.



The nation's masterful carvings, typically shaped from red cedar, are renowned among collectors of native art and frequently fetch stunning prices at auction.



In 2006, a Tsimshian shaman's mask from a controversial collection of B.C. artifacts acquired by a 19th-century Christian missionary sold at a Sotheby's auction in New York for more than $2 million.



The Dundas Collection had been the focus of a decades-long and occasionally bitter struggle between Canadian cultural officials, native leaders and the great-grandson of Rev. Robert Dundas, a Scottish clergyman who had secured hundreds of objects from the Tsimshian people when he led the establishment of a Christian mission at Metlakatla, B.C., in the 1860s.



B.C. native leaders had argued at the time of the 2006 sale that the objects — which they described as being "as significant to Canadian heritage as the Group of Seven" — were acquired improperly by Dundas and should have been returned to the Tsimshian people.



The mask sold on Tuesday would have been on display "during complex ceremonies where a group of supernatural entities called naxnox was performing," Christie's stated in its sale catalogue.



"This type of mask is carved by dedicated artists called gitsonk, who are not only achieved carvers but also true geniuses of the ritual dramatization in which the powers of the naxnox are transmitted to the young initiates."

Pied Crow Hollers

Crazy Horse Memorial » K-12

Crazy Horse Memorial » K-12

About 250 people, including 154 Native American high school and college students from 10 states attended.

Conference coordinator Jack Marsh,

Freedom Forum’s vice president for diversity programs, said this was the largest total attendance,

and the second-largest student turnout, since the

Freedom Forum, South Dakota Newspaper Association and other organizations

started the program in 2000.
Mentors, several of them Native American, came from across

the country to help the students and to encourage them toward journalism careers.
Of the nation’s 52,600 newspaper journalists, 284 are American Indians, the fewest of any ethnic group.
Officials plan to post the students’ projects at: www.freedomforumdiversity.org.

Child of Water

Relix - Video - Live at Relix - Railroad Earth "Black Elk Speaks"

Relix - Video - Live at Relix - Railroad Earth "Black Elk Speaks"

Description:

Railroad Earth performed this animated version of “Black Elk Speaks,” which appears on the group’s new self-titled release, live at the Relix office.

Tags: Railroad Earth, black elk speaks

Native Americans: 'Our New Overlords' | The Atlantic Wire

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Native-Americans-Our-New-Overlords-6366

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Native-Americans-Our-New-Overlords-6366

at the U.S. would support the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People has ignited fear among some members of the far right. The declaration, which is not legally binding, asserts that "indigenous peoples have the right to own, use, develop and control the lands, territories and resources" that they traditionally owned or occupied, according to Talking Points Memo. Such provisions have caused Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association to declare on his blog that "President Obama wants to give the entire land mass of the United States of America back to the Indians. He wants Indian tribes to be our new overlords." A few days later, World Net Daily blogger Eugene Koprowskiadded fuel to the fire by suggesting that the UN resolution could "accomplish something as radical as relinquishing some U.S. sovereignty and opening up a path for the return of ancient tribal lands to American Indians, including even parts of Manhattan."

Needless to say, some find Fischer's and Koprowski's assumptions that the President intends to return the entirety of the United States, starting with Manhattan, to Native Americans, a bit unrealistic. This week, liberal bloggers react to the overreaction.

• This 'Kooky' Theory Will Gain Traction Joan McCarter at Daily Kos fea