At the march to end First Nations Poverty in Montreal Quebec 07, I was honored to be asked to carry the Mohawk flag! MITUYE OYASIN, for all my relatives!
In the face of the colonial apartheid conditions imposed on Lakotah people, the withdrawal from the U.S. Treaties is necessary. These conditions have been devastating!
MORTALITY
- Lakotah men have a life expectancy of less than 44 years, lowest of any country in the World (excluding AIDS) including Haiti.
- Lakotah death rate is the highest in the United States.
- The Lakotah infant mortality rate is 300% more than the U.S. Average.
- Teenage suicide rate is 150% higher than the U.S
national average for this group.
- DRUGS AND ALCOHOL
- More than half the Reservation's adults battle addiction and disease.
- Alcoholism affects 8 in 10 families.
INCARCERATION - Indian children incarceration rate 40% higher than whites.
- In South Dakota, 21 percent of state prisoners were Native.
- Indians have the second largest state prison incarceration rate in the nation.
- DISEASE
- The Tuberculosis rate on Lakotah reservations is approx 800% higher than the U.S national average.
- Cervical cancer is 500% higher than the U.S national average.
- The rate of diabetes is 800% higher than the U.S national average.
- Federal Commodity Food Program provides high sugar
foods that kill Native people through diabetes and heart disease.
POVERTY - Median income is approximately $2,600 to $3,500 per year.
- 97% of our Lakotah people live below the poverty line.
- Many families cannot afford heating oil, wood or propane and many residents use ovens to heat their homes.
- HOUSING
- Elderly die each winter from hypothermia (freezing).
- 1/3 of the homes lack basic clean water and sewage while 40% lack electricty.
- 60% of Reservation families have no telephone.
- 60% of housing is infected with potentially fatal black molds.
- There is an estimated average of 17 people living in
each family home (may only have two to three rooms). Some homes, built
for 6 to 8 people, have up to 30 people living in them.
UNEMPLOYMENT - Unemployment rates on our reservations is 85% or
higher.
THREATENED CULTURE - Only 14% of the Lakotah population can speak Lakotah
language. - The language is not being shared inter-generationally, today, the average Lakotah speaker is 65 years old.
- Our lakotah language is an Endangered Language, on the verge of extinction.
After 150 years of colonial enforcement, when you back people into a corner there is only one alternative. That alternative is to bring freedom back into existence by taking it back - back to the love of freedom, to our lifeway. Canupa Gluha Mani
Links
