Assignment: Please Read the Following Article Here Or in Eidos Under Class Documents

Assignment: Please read the following article here or in Eidos under "Class Documents".

Once you have thought about it a little, I would like you to write your reaction to the conditions in that area. Please also reflect on how you might answer the related Quiz question now!

College of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of Nebraska Poverty, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation

Fall 2007 Photojournalism Depth Report

Shannon County, South Dakota, is the home of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation - the ancestral home of the Oglala Lakota, the native tribe that wiped out George Custer at the Little Bighorn and had their hearts buried at Wounded Knee. It is also home to the poorest people in the United States, a people who have a life expectancy about one-half the national average, a fetal alcohol rate about four times the national average and a suicide rate about five times the national average. Pine Ridge is a community of 20,000 spread across the second-largest reservation in the nation - a tragic collision of grinding, generational poverty and hopelessness played out across a landscape of haunting grandeur and beauty. Professors Bruce Thorson and Joe Starita.

Pine Ridge Reservation, located in South Dakota, is home to the Oglala Sioux Tribe and is 2,000,000 acres large with an estimated population of close to 40,000. The reservation is large, and its needs immense, commensurate with grinding poverty. Unemployment is over 80%, the weather is extreme, and families struggle mightily with crushing financial, housing, health, educational and social issues.

Since it is impossible to provide assistance to individual families on the reservation from a distance and do it equitably, the Friends of Pine Ridge Reservation website focuses on specific needs of the many schools and social service organizations such as shelters, children's organizations, and clinics physically located on the reservation. These organizations, always understaffed and under funded, struggle in turn to serve thousands of children, women, and men in dire need. Please do not underestimate the importance of a small donation. Your contribution, sent directly to a reservation organization--even if only a single pair of socks for a child who has none--makes a huge impact when combined with many others.

The reservation organizations' needs are many and change constantly so your donations can take many forms, from school, sewing, crafts, sporting, baby, and office supplies, to toiletries, clothing, Christmas gifts, holiday items, bed, bath and kitchen linens, cold weather gear, crayons and more.  The Average life expectancy on the Reservation is 46  Pine Ridge Teen suicide rate is 150 times higher than the National Average  65% of the residents of the Reservation live in sub-standard conditions such as no electricity, running water, and often, without heat  Many of the elderly (some of whom still live in sod houses) die of Hypothermia each year  Average income is $2600 to $3500  Due to lack of sustainable jobs on the Reservation, unemployment is approximately 85-95%  Infant Mortality rate is 300% above National Average  There are NO commercial, industry or technology infrastructures on the Reservation to provide employment  Diabetes is 800 times higher than the National Average

http://www.itvs.org/homeland/