I applaud your editorial last week on Indigenous People’s Day. I agree that the change in name for the October holiday takes a step in the right direction toward creating a more truthful narrative of our nation’s past.
I recently returned from a two-week trip to Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, as a volunteer for One Spirit Lakota, a nonprofit that has been serving the people of Pine Ridge for more than 20 years. Our group stayed at a place in Wounded Knee, where, in 1890, at least 300 Lakota Sioux were massacred by the U.S. Army in what has been called “the deadliest mass shooting in American history.” The area still bears the scars of the attempted eradication of its people.
An important part of the trip for me was meeting and talking to people who live on Pine Ridge. I spoke with a 40-year-old man who is, among other things, a spiritual leader for his family and community. He told me that, in his view, “People see us as a sideshow, so that’s how we tend to see ourselves.” He observed that “Boarding school trauma taught it was sinful to be a Native. Traditional ways were taken away from the menfolk. We were taught ‘You can’t be Indian.’” He said he believes that “historical trauma” continues among the Lakota people to this day, carried on in the genes.
Native people still struggle, shackled by constraints imposed on them by the Indian reservation system established in the late 1700s and bound by the prejudice they face from not only white society, but often from among their own people. The U.S. government’s requirement that people living on reservations prove by percentage the amount of Native blood in their family tree in order to obtain promised government benefits has itself created animosity among groups of Natives—“pure bloods” vs. “half-breeds, etc.”
Pine Ridge is plagued by social problems brought on by a convergence of circumstances that include an 80 to 90% unemployment rate, a per capita income of only $8,768, and a territory that is sparsely populated enough to limit the availability of and access to services and resources in ways that are unknown in most of modern society.
Although there is certainly despair on Indian reservations, there is also hope and strength, and leaders seeking to reconnect their people with the important traditions of their past and to shine a light on a culture that deserves to be celebrated for all that it is and was.
Lynda King
Bolton
Editor’s note: Lynda King was the Harvard Press editor from 2007 to 2011.
