WUNRN
Women News Network - November 2,
2010
Website Link Includes 2 Videos.
Pine Ridge, South Dakota: U.S. Oglala Sioux
Lakota Elder women and families suffering from severe poverty are bracing
themselves to face a harsh winter season spurred on by climate change this
year, according to NOAA – the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration.
With poverty conditions that rival some
global developing regions and the lowest life expectancy in the Western
hemisphere, second only to
Death rates for members of the Pine Ridge
Indian Reservation suffering under severe poverty are shockingly 533% higher
than their ‘non-Indian’
With conditions of extreme poverty inside
the country, why are
Numerous Lakota Oglala Sioux women Elders,
are now facing extreme poverty on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. They also
face real danger with threats of hypothermia during the winter season. “An
average of 689 (reported) deaths per year in the
While deaths from cold temperatures are
hard to track accurately, each year hypothermia deaths are reported on the
Reservation. “Each winter, reservation Elders are found dead from hypothermia,”
says Brenda Alpin, founder of Laktoa Aid, in a 2004 report for UNPO – Unrepresented
Nations and Peoples Organization.
Although many hypothermia deaths are
related to alcohol abuse, conditions leading to hypothermia in Elder Lakota
women often occur due to poor health, poverty and lack of resources.
“Climate change hits poor people hardest – especially poor women,” says
Oxfam’s current 2010, ‘Sisters on the Planet’ initiative campaign.
With little to no winter heat, numerous
mobile trailers, homes that are commonly used by the Lakota, don’t meet current
building standards. Temperatures inside a thin walled trailer, with little to
no heat, can drop to levels below freezing as outside winter temperatures reach
10 below zero (Fahrenheit) or colder. These cold winter temperatures can
actually cause ice to appear on windows, walls and surfaces inside a home that
has inadequate heat.
“The night of January 2 was a truly dreadful night for
the Swift Hawk family. They had run out of propane to heat their house. They
also had no wood for their wood stove, although they tried desperately to obtain
some wood, but without any success… The house had only thin plastic sheeting
covering two large openings where windows were supposed to be. As night fell
and the temperature plummeted from 16 degrees zero to 45 degrees zero, Sarah’s
daughter, and her son-in-law put two blankets on Sarah in an attempt to keep
her warm. The mother then took the other two blankets they had and placed them
on her six children who were all huddled together on the floor where she and
her husband would also sleep. Since there was only one cot in the house, that
bed was given to Sarah who was the grandmother in the family. Everyone else in
the Swift Hawk family has to sleep on the floor because the family is too poor
to buy any furniture. When the sun came up on Sunday morning, January 3rd,
the daughter got up from the floor to check on her mother, and she found her
mother had died during the night, frozen to death as a result of exposure to
extreme cold. Fortunately, the body heat from the parents and the children, all
huddled together on the floor, kept them alive that terrible night.”
–
Chairman of the Committee on
Indian Affairs, on the floor of the Senate
(Congressional Record, February
25, 1999)
Deaths from hypothermia, “occur equally as
frequently indoors as outdoors,” explains the
Hypothermia is characterized by the
unintentional drop in a core body temperature to less than 95 degrees
Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius). “Mild hypothermia is often accompanied by
confusion, progressing to impaired judgment, followed by apathy,” adds the
College.
As symptoms arise in precursors to
hypothermia, Elder women can face critical emergencies. Recognizing these
symptoms is not always easy. Elder Lakota women “often struggle to survive the
bitter winters,” says a September 2008 report by the Tribal Lands Renewable
Project.
Women and children “are more likely to die
than men during disasters,” outlines the Oxfam, ‘Sisters on the Planet’ 2010
report.
Current climate change with El Niño conditions are now
predicted to cause unusual excursions of Arctic air into the central northern
regions of the
With 97% of the population at the
Reservation living under conditions that fall beneath the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services definition of poverty, many Oglala Sioux Lakota
households cannot afford to pay for home maintenance in the structural upkeep
of their homes.
Poverty income levels as low as $5-10 (USD)
dollars per day can cause many safety limitations as fixing housing problems
becomes impossible. Common problems with inadequate insulation, exterior doors
and windows with broken glass or seals, roofs and floors with open gaps to the
exterior contribute greatly to unsafe crisis conditions in winter months.
Ranging from 30 degrees below zero
(Fahrenheit) in the winter to a sweltering 100 plus degrees in the summer, the
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation suffers most from what ‘compassion in action,’ The
Seva Foundation, calls “the worst conditions of poverty existing in the United
States today.”
“Now I have a three-bedroom home. I don’t
have much. I have running water, but it isn’t very good,” says Lakota Oglala
Sioux Grandmother, Beatrice Long Visitor Holy Dance, an honored member of The
International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers.
“I have mold growing there, and it’s
getting pretty bad,” adds Beatrice. “I’ve been trying to get the housing
authority to help me, but nobody helps me.”
Many of the households on the reservation
are so below sub-standard that electricity and plumbing is not functional. In
addition to this, up to 40% of homes are plagued with Black Mold, stachybotrys
chartarum, known to cause serious life threatening health risks with prolonged
exposure.
Even in times of need, many Lakota Elder
women have been taught ‘not to complain much.’ Learning from their own mothers
and grandmothers that they must accept life ‘as it is,’ without complaining,
Elder women often risk their lives by staying ‘too quiet’ in the face of many
needs.
“Fortitude is grandmother’s road,” says
Sicunga Lakota Sioux author, Joseph Marshall.
During the winter months, women also face
specific problems because of their gender. “When winter comes, I’ll just get me
a fat woman and let her sleep on the windy side,” said Oglala Sioux, Le War
Lance, in the 1999 Atlantic Monthly article, ‘On the Rez,’ by Ian Fraiser.
Hard winter storms often do include high winds that top 60 mph.
AIHF – American Indian Humanitarian
Foundation figures now show that 24,000 households on the Pine Ridge
reservation are substandard, placing their occupants in possible critical
danger. Without electricity, wood or propane gas to cook, conditions of malnutrition
for Lakota Elders does rise in the winter.
“At least 60% of the homes are severely
substandard, without water, electricity, adequate insulation, and sewage
systems,” says AIHF.
With the current price of propane on the
Reservation rising, monthly costs now exceed $400+ (USD); a price that is twice
as high as the average monthly cost to heat many standard American homes across
the U.S.
Even though it’s illegal in the State of
South Dakota to shut off heat during the winter months, some small propane companies
have been known to pressure those who cannot pay their bills by shutting off
propane deliveries to their homes, leaving them to face bitter storms without
access to propane heat.
“Bitter winters force many families to
spend up to 70% of their total income to heat their homes,” says the U.S.
environmental organization, ‘Land, Water and People,’ that also manages the TWP
– Tribal Lands Renewable Energy Program.
In 2003, the TWP launched an award winning
program, created in partnership with Lakota Solar Enterprises, to help
communities use solar energy as a supplemental, and renewable, form of energy
to heat their homes, but current needs still greatly surpass the program’s
construction outreach.
“Our housing needs on the Pine Ridge Indian
Reservation are so severe that I have had some trouble figuring out where to
start my presentation,” said former President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe,
Honorable John Yellow Bird Steele, before the March 2007, U.S. Senate Oversight
Hearing on Indian Housing.
Working in combination with HUD – the
Department of Housing and Urban Development and The Department of Energy, the
recent 2009 U.S. federal economic incentive program, The U.S. Recovery and
Reinvestment Act, has pushed for specific programs to help bring better housing
to the people on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. To date, $173,756,330 (USD)
has been slated for contracts in an effort to improve conditions. Additional
monies have been made available also to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in
form of grant programs.
The hope is that the new federal monies can
reach on-the-ground programs and needs, as tribal members learn how to apply
for grants and follow up correctly for other initiatives.
“I was raised by my grandmother Nellie Two
Bulls who was an educator herself,” says 27 year old Lakota activist and
blogger, Autumn TwoBulls. “She taught me about the values of the Lakota people.
And what it means to be Lakota,” she shares. “We as Lakotas help each other.
That is how we survive.”
“For Lakotas, one of our common mantras is
“Mitakuye Oyasin – We are all related,” says Mary Black Bonnet of the Sincangu
Lakota Nation. “No one is better than anyone else,” she emphasizes.
A group of Lakota women leaders on the Pine
Ridge Reservation, made up of health workers, teachers and social workers, are
also working together to improve conditions for women and children as they
gather books, winter coats, kitchen items, children’s toys, personal hygiene
products, bedding, pens and pencils, sewing supplies, furniture and shoes for
those in their community; all items that are hard to find on the Reservation.
“We’re the foreign country suffering under
(extreme) poverty in your (
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Scroll Down Website to First Video: http://womennewsnetwork.net/2010/11/02/lakotaelderwomen-1008/
The
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Scroll Down Website to Second Video: http://womennewsnetwork.net/2010/11/02/lakotaelderwomen-1008/
Naomi Sitting Bear, 29, lives in a 30 year old mobile trailer home that is falling apart from severe sub-standard conditions. As a single mom with kids, who also works as an emergency dispatcher, Sitting Bear has an income that is too low to enable her to adequately pay for the cost of home repairs. Like many other women, Naomi and her family want desperately to see safe adequate housing, as well as other services, improve and expand on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. This 5:33 min, May 2009, video has been produced by Marisol Bello and René Alston/USA TODAY.
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