The Weight of the Past: Braving Trauma and Survival on today’s Pine Ridge
- 14 hours ago
- 3 min read
Youth proudly participating in the Horse Spirit Camp, organized by Percy White Plume.
The Lakota youth of Pine Ridge face a mountainous challenge today. The aggressive assimilation policies of yesterday have left deep scars on today’s elders, forcing the current generation into a fierce struggle to reclaim their stolen heritage. There are profound, hard-won victories—the Lakota language, for example, is no longer classified as endangered thanks to the arduous efforts of Lakota linguists fighting to heal what was at risk of extinction. Yet, for many, the generational trauma born from the abuses of their ancestors is still vividly, painfully felt.
To understand the crisis facing the youth, one must look at the environment they are forced to navigate. Pine Ridge is geographically isolated; it is a food desert that offers terribly few economic opportunities. The extreme poverty caused by these systemic conditions has snowballed into shackles that can feel impossible to overcome.
When a community is intentionally stripped of its foundational support and starved of apparent opportunity, despair takes root. It is within this vacuum that drugs, alcohol, and violence plague the reservation. Recognizing the crisis, the Oglala Sioux Tribe declared Pine Ridge a dry reservation. However, border towns quickly capitalized on this vulnerability. In places like Whiteclay, Nebraska, liquor stores multiplied, and their tax revenues skyrocketed from predatory sales to Native Americans. The exploitation didn't stop there. In the early 2000s, a devastating methamphetamine epidemic took hold of Pine Ridge. Drug cartels explicitly targeted the reservation, aggressively developing their network by distributing free meth samples to convert existing alcohol addictions into highly lucrative meth dependencies. These struggles are not inherent moral failings—they are direct symptoms of a wounded ecosystem, actively exploited by outside forces.
This cycle of abuse deeply affects the children, many of whom grow up carrying not only historical wounds but the immediate trauma of their own environment. They carry the weight of things they have witnessed and life-altering events they have lived through far too early.
Oglala Lakota County ranked 59-out-of-60 counties in South Dakota for overall health outcomes in 2017. Statistics produced by the Oglala Sioux Tribe paint a bleak picture about the health of the reservation:
Tuberculosis: 800% higher than America as a whole
Infant mortality: 300% higher than America as a whole
Teen suicide: 150% higher than America as a whole
Approximately 85% of Lakota families are affected by alcoholism
Approximately 58% of grandparents of Lakota families are raising their grandchildren
Approximately 50% of adults over the age of 40 have diabetes
The statistics paint a grim, undeniable outline of this reality. On Pine Ridge, many of these rates drastically outpace the national average. But the most urgent, heartbreaking crisis is the youth suicide epidemic. Teen suicide rates on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations are exponentially higher than the national average—making safe spaces and cultural connection a literal matter of life and death. As of 2015, there were only six mental health professionals on the entire reservation, which has a population of 16,000 to 40,000 tribal members based on different government and tribal estimates. In the face of this, beautiful, life-saving initiatives such as the BEAR project, co-founded by the late Tiny Decory, have bolstered support for those braving unimaginable struggles with suicide and trauma.
Yet, these statistics barely capture the true reality on Pine Ridge. There is no way to quantify the weight of generational trauma on a spreadsheet. To get a true glimpse, you have to speak with the elders and pore over the historical accounts. You have to listen to the historically sidelined Lakota perspective and understand the atrocities endured, realizing how these events are so dark they still shade the edges of today’s picture.
The oral tradition and the accounts of elders ensure this history is not forgotten. The weight of these scars and the uphill battle to right the wrongs still affecting the Lakota is incredibly heavy. But honoring the Lakota identity through pride remains the key to survival. The progress is undeniable. Just as the 20th century was a beacon for Lakota resistance to oppression, in this day and age, more and more allies join the fight each day. Initiatives are launched, they grow, and they prove that the Lakota spirit remains unbroken.
