In the face of the colonial apartheid conditions imposed on Lakota people, the withdrawal from the U.S. Treaties is necessary.
These conditions have been devastating:
MORTALITY
- Lakota men have a life expectancy of less than 44 years, lowest of any country in the World (excluding AIDS) including Haiti.
- Lakota death rate is the highest in the United States.
- The Lakota infant mortality rate is 300% more than the U.S. Average.
- Teenage suicide rate is 150% higher than the U.S national average for this group.
DRUGS AND ALCOHOL
- More than half the Reservation's adults battle addiction and disease.
- Alcoholism affects 8 in 10 families.
INCARCERATION
- Indian children incarceration rate 40% higher than whites.
- In South Dakota, 21 percent of state prisoners were Native.
- Indians have the second largest state prison incarceration rate in the nation.
DISEASE
- The Tuberculosis rate on Lakota reservations is approx 800% higher than the U.S national average.
- Cervical cancer is 500% higher than the U.S national average.
- The rate of diabetes is 800% higher than the U.S national average.
- Federal Commodity Food Program provides high sugar foods that kill Native people through diabetes and heart disease.
POVERTY
- Median income is approximately $2,600 to $3,500 per year.
- 97% of our Lakota people live below the poverty line.
- Many families cannot afford heating oil, wood or propane and many residents use ovens to heat their homes.
HOUSING
- Elderly die each winter from hypothermia (freezing).
- 1/3 of the homes lack basic clean water and sewage while 40% lack electricty.
- 60% of Reservation families have no telephone.
- 60% of housing is infected with potentially fatal black molds.
- There is an estimated average of 17 people living in each family home (may only have two to three rooms). Some homes, built for 6 to 8 people, have up to 30 people living in them.
UNEMPLOYMENT
- Unemployment rates on our reservations is 85% or higher.
THREATENED CULTURE
- Only 14% of the Lakota population can speak Lakota language.
- The language is not being shared inter-generationally, today, the average Lakota speaker is 65 years old.
- Our Lakota language is an Endangered Language, on the verge of extinction.
After 150 years of colonial enforcement, when you back people into a corner there is only one alternative. That alternative is
to bring freedom back into existence by taking it back - back to the love of freedom, to our lifeway. Canupa Gluha Mani
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