What’s it like at Pine Ridge?

The Pine Ridge Reservation is an Oglala Lakota Native American reservation located in South Dakota, United States. It is considered to be one of the largest reservations in the United States while also containing the poorest counties in the United States. Pine Ridge is the site of several historical events between the Sioux of the area - groups of Native American tribes - and the U.S. federal government; significant occurrences such as the last of the Ghost Dances and the Wounded Knee Massacre. The reservation has seen little economic or industrial development over the past few decades. Though the residents receive typically $80 million annually in federal monies, such as Social Security and veterans benefits, those funds create little to no benefits for the tribe due to the fact that the area does not consist of many stores, meaning that a majority of the finances are spent in shops located off the reservation in border towns. Another cause of the stagnant nature is a serious lack of formal employment opportunities in Pine Ridge. Most employment on the reservation is provided by the limited number of smaller community institutions, such as schools, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the U.S. Indian Health Services. With these factors combined, it also prevents a large number of children from being able to seek higher education as a byproduct. The Pine Ridge Reservation has a school dropout rate of 70%.

At least half of the population of Pine Ridge live below the federal poverty level, which consists of having no electricity, telephone, running water, stable sources of food, and waste management. The residents of the reservation have one of the shortest life expectancies in the Western Hemisphere (males living an average of 48 years and females with 52 years) due to both severe health and sociological conditions. Unfortunately, it is common in Pine Ridge to suffer from a combination of issues like high mortality rates, depression, domestic violence, alcoholism, drug abuse, malnutrition, etc. The infant mortality rate is five times the U.S. national average, while many of those who do survive are also born with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. Access to healthcare in Pine Ridge is also extremely limited compared to other cities and is completely insufficient to manage, or rehabilitate all those who require medical attention. Pine Ridge also struggles with gang culture among some of the resident teens, who ventured out to more urban areas and brought back the concept of gang culture that they learned once they revisited the reservation. With the high risk lifestyle of gangs and potential for psychological trauma from growing up with a difficult childhood, one can imagine how this type of setting can negatively influence the youth of Pine Ridge, which would also correlate to why the adolescent suicide rate is four times the United States national average. Under the current model of communities in Pine Ridge, specific unhealthy lifestyle choices have become habitual and repeatedly cycled throughout time.