A young dancer on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Photo: Hamner Fotos
Notes from Indian Country
We ring our hands while our children die
By Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji – Stands Up For Them) The Lakota call their children “wakanyeja" which means Sacred and special. There are times I wonder if we are deluding ourselves. There are abuses of our “Sacred Children” taking place in some Lakota homes that are almost unspeakable. And yet we have the audacity to call our children “Sacred?” The sanctity of all the Oglala People comes under ridicule and scrutiny whenever these horrendous abuses come to light. The police stop by a home on the Pine Ridge Reservation following up on a complaint. As they enter the home and begin to speak to some of the occupants they see a blanket lying on the floor and something is moving under the blanket. Upon closer inspection they find two emaciated children lying under the blanket. In fact they are in such bad condition that it is hard to tell their ages and they are described by one doctor who examined them as looking like “victims from the Nazi concentration camps.”. Lakota people came in and out of this house every day and yet no one, not a single person, spoke up about the starving children under the blanket. There was food in the house, but it is in another room under lock and key so the children couldn’t get at it. Every adult in the house was either drunk or under the influence of drugs.. The children were taken to a safe home off of the reservation where they could be fed and gradually brought back from near starvation and death. . Not three days later a Lakota man is arrested in the death of a young boy at Pine Ridge. He is accused to shaking the boy so hard that he severely damaged his brain and when he was questioned he said the boy may have fallen on the floor. Nonetheless the helpless boy is dead at the hands of an adult Lakota man.. If you pick up the local daily newspaper and go to the classified and legal pages you will see court case after court case of Lakota children legally taken from their parents for abuse. These announcements can be found in the local paper seven-days-a-week. The abuse almost always stems from the ingestion of drugs or alcohol by the parents.. Years ago, among the traditional Lakota, caring for the “wakanyeja” was indeed a sacred responsibility. I suppose we can blame any number of traumatic factors that figure in to why so many Lakota parents have established a near total disregard for the safety and protection of their children, but what we see happening today is way beyond the pale. It indicates an almost total breakdown of family values that is shocking to every Lakota man and woman and causes the white community to look upon all of us as subhuman. . There is an editorial in this week’s Native Sun News Today that chastises a group of do-gooders that are hoping to raise enough money to buy up all of the liquor stores in the notorious border town of Whiteclay. Nebraska as if that will end the epidemic of alcoholism at Pine Ridge. And while they use this sanctimonious approach the bootleggers operate almost openly all over the reservation. And drugs flow on to the reservation unhindered by law enforcement. Yes, this is happening right here in the heart of the United States of America while the federal government, the same government responsible for so much of the trauma brought to the Indian nations, sits idly by and worries about immigrants and Muslims. . Where in the hell is our Congressional delegation? I have written over and over for the past 40 years that major drug and alcohol treatment centers are vitally needed on the Pine Ridge, Navajo, Rosebud and many other Indian reservations to cure an epidemic that is now bringing serious harm to the wakanyeja, the Sacred Children. . The cost of one guided missile would accomplish this task. Where in the hell is the heart and compassion of this Nation?. (Tim Giago is the founder and first president of the Native American Journalists Association. He was born, raised and educated on the Pine Ridge Reservation)
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