Understanding the Destruction: Native American Life Today

UNDERSTANDING THE PAIN AND DIFFICULTY IS THE FIRST STEP TO OVERCOMING AND FINDING HOPE.

Part of the challenge is that Native Americans are a diverse and scattered race of peoples. There are currently 6.7 million Native Americans living in the United States. However, only 22% of Native Americans live on reservations. The rest are scattered across the country. For people of Native American descent who live off reservations, the challenge is to see what their Native American identity and ancestry means for their lives. In many cases, people of Native American descent are full of a longing to know more about their ancestors and to reconnect with a tribe or culture they have lost.

Read Brian’s story about rediscovering his ancestral identity after many years of living away from his culture in our blog post: Two Worlds, One Journey.

EDUCATING A NON-NATIVE AUDIENCE

For Native Americans, these challenges are ever present and self-evident. But many non-Natives are completely ignorant about the real lives and struggles that Native Americans face in the present era. This ignorance is part of a larger forgetfulness. It seems as if the rest of the country and the Western world has chosen to forget that this race of peoples is still here and still struggling to understand how to carry their tribes and their cultures forward in the modern world.

How much do public school students know about Native Americans in the United States? We went to a classroom to find out. Here’s what we found.

Terry Woster, retired and renowned South Dakota journalist and SD Hall of Fame recipient, attended a powwow and shares his thoughts. Check out our blog post to read his story and find out what he learned from the experience.

The voices of Native Americans are largely unheard. In this resource, we will highlight the serious challenges that Native Americans face in order to better understand how we can support Native voices that are rising strong to share their stories of hope.

For more historical background on the life and culture of Native Americans before the arrival of European settlers, see our resource: Reflecting on Our Foundations: The History of Native American Life and Culture.

Telling stories of Native struggle and Native
strength is a powerful catalyst for unity,
generational healing, and personal growth.
Each of us has an evolving story which no one
else can write.

The indigenous peoples of this continent
have faced 500 years of genocide, dislocation,
and variations of physical, mental,
emotional, and spiritual violence.

The indigenous peoples of this continent have faced 500 years of genocide, dislocation, and variations of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual violence. From the biological warfare through the introduction of Western diseases, the dislocation and violence of European expansion across the continent, the cruel and discriminatory policies of the 19th century that banned cultural and spiritual expressions of Native life and that forcibly removed Native children from their tribal homes to send them to faraway boarding schools, to the discrimination and ignorance that persists to this day, Native Americans are dealing with generations of collective group trauma.

How Trauma Gets Passed Down
This massive trauma expresses itself today in the form of high rates of addiction, violence, alcoholism, and sexual abuse within Native families and communities. Many accounts suggest that the boarding school generations in particular were permanently scarred by their experiences of physical, mental, and sexual abuse in the school system. When these Native children returned to their homes and families, having lost their culture and identity, and began to have families of their own, they were unable to form healthy bonds and passed on these patterns of abuse to their own children, creating cycles of broken families.

There is scientific evidence to support the idea that this kind of trauma gets passed down on the cellular level. Recent studies in the field of epigenetics suggest that unresolved trauma in the life of the mother gets passed along to offspring during gestation and affects the child’s likelihood of developing mental and physical diseases and the child’s ability to regulate and manage stress.

Native Americans today do not need to see themselves as permanent victims of history, but understanding the roots of historical trauma and seeing the way ancestral wounds have impacted today’s communities is an important first step to healing and growth.

For more on historical trauma and its impact on Native communities, check out our recent blog post on the topic.

THE MAJOR HEALTH CHALLENGES FACING NATIVE AMERICANS

Native communities are impacted by some of the worst health outcomes of any race in the United States. Poor health amongst Native Americans is caused by many contributing factors including high rates of poverty, isolated geography, poor education and nutrition, inadequate sewage disposal, and unhealthy living conditions.

The serious issues with mental health among Native Americans are closely linked to other risk factors like high rates of violence, assault, and abuse.

THE INFANT DEATH RATE FOR NATIVE AMERICAN CHILDREN IS
60% HIGHER THAN THE RATE FOR CAUCASIANS.

NATIVE AMERICAN ADULTS ARE TWICE AS LIKELY
AS WHITE ADULTS TO BE DIAGNOSED WITH DIABETES

NATIVE AMERICAN WOMEN ARE 2.5 TIMES
MORE LIKELY TO BE SEXUALLY ASSAULTED THAN ANY OTHER GROUP.

THE LIFE EXPECTANCY FOR NATIVE AMERICANS IS
5.5 YEARS LESS THAN IT IS FOR THE POPULATION
OF ALL OTHER RACES.

A FULL 20.7% OF NATIVE AMERICANS ARE UNINSURED,
COMPARED TO A NATIONAL AVERAGE OF 9.4%.

THE RATE OF CHILD ABUSE AMONG NATIVE AMERICANS IS
TWICE AS HIGH AS THE NATIONAL AVERAGE.

NATIVE AMERICANS EXPERIENCE PTSD MORE THAN
TWICE AS OFTEN AS THE GENERAL POPULATION

AND SERIOUS PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS 1.5 TIMES
AS OFTEN AS THE GENERAL POPULATION.

THE STATE OF NATIVE AMERICAN EDUCATION 2018

Giving children access to an adequate education is the first step to breaking cycles of poverty. Education opens the door to new possibilities and opportunities and gives young people access to employment and independence. The importance of a good education is universally accepted, yet few people understand the tragic state of education for Native Americans in the United States today.

The lack of educational opportunity for Native Americans is a serious challenge, one that impacts the success and health of Native communities for the long term.

WHILE MORE THAN 60% OF AMERICAN YOUTH GO ON TO
RECEIVE SOME EDUCATION AT THE COLLEGE LEVEL

ONLY 17% OF NATIVE AMERICAN YOUTH
CONTINUE THEIR EDUCATION AFTER HIGH SCHOOL.

ONLY 13% OF NATIVE AMERICANS HAVE A BACHELOR'S
DEGREE COMPARED TO THE NATIONAL AVERAGE OF 28% FOR
OTHER ETHNIC GROUPS.

THE NATIONAL AVERAGE HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION RATE IS
82%, BUT THE NATIONAL AVERAGE FOR NATIVE YOUTH IS
JUST 69%.

FOR CHILDREN WHO ARE ATTENDING SCHOOLS RUN BY THE
BUREAU OF INDIAN EDUCATION, THE HIGH SCHOOL
GRADUATION RATE IS AN ABYSMAL 53%.

TRAPPED AND HOPELESS: NATIVE AMERICAN YOUTH ON RESERVATIONS

The lack of educational opportunity is just one of the challenges that Native American youth on reservations face today. If you talk to any community member or elder, the deep concern is always the hopelessness of today’s young people on and off reservations.

How do we measure the degree of hopelessness amongst Native American youth? Simply consider the tragic rates of suicide for this age group.

The second leading cause of death for Native Americans between the ages of 10 and 34 is suicide. For Native girls, it’s even worse: suicide is the leading cause of death for Native girls between the ages of 10 and 14.

Much of this hopelessness is related to the poverty and lack of economic opportunity offered to Native American kids on reservations. Native Americans have the lowest unemployment rates of any ethnic group, and the highest poverty rate at 27%. On some reservations, up to 85% of people are unemployed. Many young kids dedicate themselves to athletics, since sports can sometimes offer a path forward to college and beyond if they show enough talent.

Check out our blog post about how sports can kindle a spark of hope and an interest in education for Native American youth.

Today’s youth are trapped. The outside Western world does not understand their culture and values, but life on the reservation offers little to no chance of opportunity, education, or employment. Many youth are also dealing with complex family histories of abuse and addiction which makes it even more challenging to break free and grow into healthy, independent adults with dreams and plans for the future.

Check out these stories of young Native Americans who are working through stories of pain and struggle and finding hope and inspiration.

The federal trust relationship is driven by the idea that tribal nations are not capable of administering or managing their own lands. Without the right to own or manage their own lands, tribes are handicapped from economic activity and development and left out of important conversations like the recent controversy surrounding the Dakota Access Pipeline.

As one Atlantic article explaining this situation puts it, “Indians have long suffered from what the Nobel Prize–winning economist Hernando de Soto has called “dead capital.” They may possess a certain amount of land on paper, but they can’t put it to use by selling it, buying more to take advantage of economies of scale, or borrowing against it.”

Many tribes have close ties to the land on which they live, even if the current footprint of land is much smaller than their original region. And many tribes might not choose to develop their tribal lands or leverage their rich natural resources because of a desire to preserve and maintain the integrity of sacred spaces. However, they are unable to make free choices about how to conduct their economic affairs and are not given a full voice in the decisions surrounding sacred lands due to their severely restricted property rights.

Native American tribes desperately need access to the wealth and resources that rightfully belong to them.

THE LOSS OF NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURE AND IDENTITY

All of these current challenges--lack of educational opportunity, physical and mental health disparities, the intense impact of historical trauma, lack of economic independence--are part of the great tragedy facing Native Americans: the loss of Native American culture and identity.

The traditional ways of life, the tribal languages, the songs and dances, the wisdom of elders, and the strong values that once animated Native cultures have in many cases been threatened or extinguished. Even for tribes who have managed to recover or maintain a strong sense of their cultural heritage, there is still the present difficulty of understanding how tribal identity can coexist with modern, Western culture which opposes it in so many ways.

Many Native Americans, especially young people, are ashamed of whom they are and wish they could be different. They look at themselves and their families, and they do not see goodness or resilience, only pain and suffering.

The pain and the suffering of the Native American people cannot be ignored any longer. We have to acknowledge the huge barriers that exist that work to keep young Natives stuck in the same cycles of abuse and poverty as have existed for generations. In order to move forward into a new era of revitalization and hope, we must confront and understand the enormous destruction and suffering that has been caused by centuries of discrimination and hardship.