Poverty amongst Native Americans. Is there hope for the future?
Fifty years ago, indigenous activists occupied Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota for weeks. Their protest against the corrupt tribal leadership became a worldwide event. Today, the reservation is still one of the poorest regions in the USA.
The protagonists:
The photo of Regina Brave holding a rifle made headlines in 1973. To many, she represented indigenous women power. To be sure, the Pine Ridge Reservation native knew how to shoot. But she never fired that rifle. Another activist had merely put it in her hand while he was doing some errants.
Sylvia Hollow Horn and Martha American Horse were both teenagers when the American Indian Movement activists rolled down the hills to Wounded Knee in a motorcade. Sylvia Hollow Horn’s father was a police officer on assignment for the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the time, because in 1973 there was no tribal police force of its own. Unexpectedly, he found himself caught between the lines. Martha American Horse learned Lakota as her first language before English and helps pass on the tribal language to the children at the Montessori kindergarten of the Thunder Valley Community Development Cooperation.
Without pic: Kathy Eagle Hawk, was also a teenager at the time.
Dallas Nelson, Lakota language program director at Thundervalley Community Development Cooperation, and Darwin Begay are a new generation. Dallas and the other young project staff members want to revive the traditional nature-based way of life of their ancestors. Begay, a Navajo from Arizona, is married to a Lakota from the Pine Ridge Reservation and is a fireman and part-time househusband.
You can read a summary of my radio posts in English on my Substack blog, Rebecca’s Transatlantic Post.