Legacy of Wounded Knee Our World

Islamophobic. Chris Rogers will be here at 10pm

with a round-up of two-day's news but first is Our World.

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If the reservation was an independent

country, it would be amongst the poorest in the world.

With 80% unemployment, rampant alcoholism and

In the battle of Wounded Knee here 125 years ago,

300 Native Americans were massacred by the US military.

So it's really historical grief that continues to

manifest and then gets re-incubated as the youth are committing suicide.

Amid the poverty and isolation, a growing number of children on the

reservation are taking their own lives.

500, every year, of our kids get sent to hospitals and behaviour

management centres for intervention and hospitalisation because they've

No one is really sure how many people

It covers 9000 square kilometres in South Dakota.

And some estimates point to a population of around

40,000 people, embers of the Oglala Sioux

Born out of America's Indian Wars, it was

originally classified as a prisoner of war camp.

Nowadays, like other reservations in the United States,

it's operated by a tribal council, which runs everything from schools

The task of patrolling this vast reservation lies with just

24 officers of the Oglala Sioux tribal police.

In the far west of his beat is the town of

In 1999, a tornado ripped through here.

But almost two decades on, row after row of dilapidated

emergency trailers remain as homes to hundreds of Lakhota people.

As with elsewhere on the reservation, police are kept busy

with the excess consumption of alcohol.

Watch the tip of my pen, don't move your head.

It's only mid-afternoon but the call-outs

Her mother, father and juvenile brother were all 1029.

We're going to help the other officer that's at an intoxicated

parent, mother, father and juvenile son at a residence.

After locating a young girl hiding in a paddock,

police investigate why her family won't let her inside.

Police officer, your door's coming open.

With the girl's welfare at stake, the police have

Don't kick my stuff and my door, or you're going

The girl's juvenile brother, mother and father

With no children's shelter on the reservation, police

have to find somewhere safe for victims like

You don't want to go nowhere else, huh?

Well, for the time being, you've got to, because

How often do you see something like that?

It's kind of a re-occurring deal, involving the

Probably about nine cases involving the same charges

Want to make sure she won't take off.

At just 11 years old, she's already been in this situation

A lot of them hide it, just like the young man that we took from there.

He, like I said, it's just a constant re-occurring deal for him.

Now it's getting to that point where he's

going to start throwing back the cold ones, drinking with the

But it's the harsh reality of how it's becoming a norm

Two miles from the township of Pine Ridge, across the

state border in Nebraska, is the village of Whiteclay.

The town has a permanent population of only 14 people,

but its four liquor stores sell nearly 4 million cans of high

Almost all of it goes across the border to the

reservation, where the sale of alcohol is banned.

I pray that you just give her the strength to stay sober,

and I just pray that you continue to give peace in Judy's heart.

Abram Newman is a young religious worker who offers support

to the 100 or more street people who get drunk

on high strength beer and wander the streets.

Well, in my experience, usually when people go

to alcohol, it stops the healing process because you can't really

think through things and process things.

Temperatures in Whiteclay can get as low as minus 25 Celsius.

The street people sleep in tents surrounded by rubbish heaps.

The other people don't even belong here but they stay with us.

It just popped up that four liquor licenses were given in stores

that, some of them originally did not even have floors,

And yet they are 200 yards off of a dry reservation.

And yet they claim that they are not there to sell to the reservation.

I'm not sure who they are there to sell to, then, because there's no

Come and eat your peanut butter sandwich.

Nora Bowerson knows the cost of alcoholism to the Lakhota community.

She's the foster mother of seven children with foetal

He is supplemented through two feedings

but he can eat through his mouth, too.

But he takes five seizure meds and a muscle relaxant and

other meds through the day just to kind of keep him going.

And Ariana has to be fed through actually a tube

into her intestines because her stomach doesn't work,

So she takes seizure meds and then is fed through her intestine.

So that's some of the kids that I have to feed and medicate every

It's estimated that one in four children born on the

reservation is damaged by foetal alcohol syndrome.

Nora has fostered over 100 affected children from the

reservation, including one who took his own life.

There is a really high rate of alcoholism.

There's a high rate of family breakdown right now.

People don't want to talk about this one

but there's a really high rate of sexual abuse.

You know, when you're talking to children who tell you that the

reason they want to commit suicide is they are just tired of living,

Because I think of myself at that age, and I

was playing Barbies and living in a wonderful world

And I can't imagine them thinking about being tired of living.

These are the faces of the young suicide at Pine Ridge in

In 2015 alone, at least in 19 children took their own lives.

Hundreds more children were hospitalised after attempting

suicide, prompting the tribal council to declare

500, every year, of our kids get sent to hospitals or

behaviour management centres for intervention

and hospitalisation, because they tried

It was the death of 12-year-old Santana Janis just

over a year ago that focused national attention on youth suicides

You couldn't ask for a better child to

Keith Janis was Santana's grandfather, and in

February last year he got a phone call that broke his heart.

I got a call from my cousin, Earl, early in

It's hard to imagine what would prompt any 12-year-old to take

their own life, but Keith believes that Santana was severely depressed

Alarmingly, the largest spike in suicides on the reservation has been

Her death has impacted the whole reservation.

Because Santana's death was at the end of a

She was the ninth suicide victim in a month.

Keith Janis has a turbulent history as an activist for the

14 years ago he camped out here in the Badlands

National Park and defied the authorities to remove him.

He wanted to reclaim this land for his tribe,

so that young Lakhota could reconnect with their heritage.

They are stuck in the same rut that the federal

government put the tribe in many, many, many generations ago, reliving

the same kind of hurt and isolation that their grandfathers and mothers

These young people, they are making the reservations, not just in Pine

Ridge, but in Indian country, in native country, stronger.

Yvonne DeCory is a suicide prevention worker

at Pine Ridge who runs a theatre programme where teens perform skits

and dances about suicide and show an alternative outcome

We've got to take better care of our leaders,

because they are our doctors, our lawyers, our next

tribal chairman, our state legislators, our professional rodeo

But when we bury them, those are our dreams

# Lean on me, when you're not strong...#

It's called The Bear Project and their skits portraying

For 16-year-old Sky, this performance is particularly

The skit, Lean On Me, is the one where I hold a gun to my head.

That really gets to me, because on three separate occasions

I've tried to kill myself with a gun.

holding it to my head, wanting to pull the trigger.

I love her with all my heart and growing up around

the time where I wanted to kill myself it wasn't a very good time to

We were going to be alone, so I had to stay here for her.

All of the young participants have struggled with life on the

reservation and are now reaching out to other kids

I grew up not being able to eat most of the time.

I grew up without a father, and I grew up with many of

So that's kind of why I'm in The Bear Project,

to tell people that it doesn't need to lead to anything that harms your

Looking back, perhaps today's problems at

Pine Ridge can be traced to the deliberate attempt to destroy

the Lakhota people's culture and customs.

In the late 1800s, Indian children were rounded up and sent

to boarding schools, where they were forbidden to speak their language

and banned from performing traditional ceremonies.

Many Lakhota firmly believe that the legacy of Wounded Knee continues to

So it's really historical grief that continues to

manifest, and then gets re-incubated as the youth are

So it becomes a constant grieving process.

You know, there are so many funerals in all of

the nine districts of Pine Ridge in particular.

There are funerals going on every single day.

And I believe that's what's really at the root of

a lot of our youth suicides, that intense amount of grief.

At this seminar for social workers, police officers and

teachers, Doctor Ruby Gibson is dealing with the pain inflicted on

the Lakota people by policies aimed at destroying their culture.

I mean it was designed to kill the Indian and the child and it worked

It was a genocidal act and we are recovering from genocide.

And most of us can't even go there and think about it because it's so

Lakhota people have such a beautiful heart,

And it's wounded because we've been forced to forget.

Allow your mind to relax, as it focuses easily...

At the Little Wound High School, Lakota students are encouraged to

understand the problems facing their community.

Think, what do you want the reservation to be like?

What do you want it to look like out here?

What kind of things would you like to see?

We to help the community with houses, clothes,

We need more community things to help people.

What do you think the tribe is worried about?

Just getting themselves money? Money for themselves?

We are at a stage where the government has never

really known what to do with the Indian people.

By them prescribing solutions to our community has

Although historical trauma weighs heavily on the tribe,

one group of young Indians are offering real solutions

and not getting bogged down in the past.

It doesn't help us to keep telling the story of poverty over and over.

And make people around the country feel sad, guilty or whatever.

The reality is that the problem that exists in Indian

So this house is really more than just

a structure sitting out on the prairie.

It's also allowed us to have conversations

that otherwise would not have happened.

Thunder Valley is a community development

organisation which is teaching young Lakhota how to build environmentally

We bring them here and we show them that it really is made out of straw.

As well as agricultural skills to provide food sovereignty for the

Tribal culture and customs are at the heart of the

which has caught the attention of the White House.

All of Thunder Valley's students are taught how to speak in

Lakhota, to ensure the language survives.

Our whole organisation's purpose is that we want to end poverty

examples of what that could look like.

It could create mechanisms in which investment, donations,

programmes, different types of things that create hope,

that meet the present needs of people, and

inspire other communities to do the same thing.

Although the challenges the tribe are facing are daunting,

most of them agree that the solution will only be found from within.

In recent times, attendances at community events, like this

traditional powwow, are up, as children are introduced to the

A clear message that the tribe lives on,

determined to overcome the hand that history has dealt them.