It has been a while since we gave money to an organization rather than giving time. It has also been a while since we gave either money or time to a new organization. This week, our busy schedules and a great opportunity to make a difference met in a happy coincidence.
In the way of an explanation, we must begin with the sharing of data. Jen and I have spent our year giving time and money to many organizations. Sometimes we do this by way of the internet. Apparently, when a person give to charities over the internet, there is a group of non-profit fairies who make sure that your address is given to every other charity in the world. All of those charities have now begun sending us mail. Some of the mail is from serious organizations doing widespread good. Other mail is from small focused charities aiming at one particular problem in one particular place. Some organizations are clearly above board while others are pretty shady. The sheer volume of mail is staggering, but we try to look at all of it because we do like to look for new opportunities to give.
Enter a small envelope from the Red Cloud Indian School. On the day we got it, there was not a lot of mail for a change. Jen took a look first, and told me I had to read it too. The school is located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. It was founded in 1888, just after the reservation was established, by the historic Chief Red Cloud as a tool to fight the poverty and hopelessness that was attacking the Lakota (Sioux) people then and which is still attacking them now. In order to understand the challenges this school faces, you have to first understand the Reservation.
Pine Ridge is the second largest reservation in the US, covering 2.8 million acres. It houses somewhere between 28,000 and 40,000 Lakota tribesmen and women. The number is hard to pin down because of intense poverty and a reluctance to cooperate with the US government. Eighty percent of the reservation's resident are unemployed. Forty-nine percent of them live below the federal poverty line. Shannon County, where the reservation is located, is the second poorest county in the US, with an average per capita income of $6,286. While the poverty numbers are shocking, the more disturbing numbers have to do with young people on the reservation.
Each year, most states conduct a survey relating to youth risk behaviors. These are things like smoking, alcohol use, suicide, and sexual activity. The Red Cloud Indian School gives those statistics for the reservation, but I was curious, so I looked up the stats for all of South Dakota so I could compare them. The data is kind of horrifying.
In 2011, 47% of the high school students in South Dakota said they had engaged in sexual intercourse at least once in their lives. On the reservation, that number is 67%. In South Dakota, 69% of high school students have tried alcohol. At Pine Ridge, the number is 88%. The numbers for cigarette and marijuana use in South Dakota as a whole were 48% and 33% respectively. On the reservation, those numbers are 90% and 80%. The most frightening numbers are these: 18% of South Dakota high school students have considered suicide and 8% have tried. For those kids living on Pine Ridge, the numbers are 31% and 15% - nearly double. These are not numbers for the population as a whole - they are for kids, aged 13 to 19. If that does not speak of the despair that exists on the reservation, I don't know what would. Also, just to give a local perspective, I looked up these numbers for Chicago. In all areas, they are slightly higher than the South Dakota numbers, and still drastically lower than the Pine Ridge numbers.
So these numbers combined with the poverty stats tell us a few things. Pine Ridge has a lot of people, young and old, who are very poor. It has a lot of people who use alcohol and drugs, and it has a lot of young people who have a lot of things distracting them from getting the education that might let them leave the reservation or stay and help improve the conditions. This is where the Red Cloud Indian School comes in.
For over 100 years, they have been educating students (currently about 600 per year) from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. They provide them with the services they need to stay focused on school, from food to counseling to transportation. Their goal is to create proud, powerful Lakota citizens, and by all appearances, they pursue that goal relentlessly, even in the face of the hardship that is all around them. It is a lofty goal and a moving story, and we were moved to help them.
Certainly there are children in Chicago who could use our help, and we would like to help them too, but thankfully we live in a city where there are many people of means, and many organizations doing very good work to help children find a better life. While I am sure that this school is not the only group on the reservation trying to find a brighter future, I also know that there are not nearly as many groups as we have here. Help is harder to find on the reservation because nobody has anything. Sometime, people say that the casinos give the Indians all the money they need, but it that is not even close to true. The Lakota do have a casino, and if the revenue from that casino was distributed evenly among the people living on the reservation, it would amount to about 15 cents per person per month. Hardly a windfall... Life is hard on the reservation - harder than almost anywhere else in the country. This school is trying to make it better, and Jen and I were proud to help them.
If you are interested in more information about the school, they have a very good website at Red Cloud Indian School.
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