Lakota Aid
Friday, 1 December 2006 11:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rosiedoesAs it gets to the winter season, where here, it's a bit cold - in Vancouver it's snowing...
We get to go home. For the people of Pine Ridge - the Native Americans whose ancestors were massacred at Wounded Knee - it means coming deaths from cold, as their elders sleep in cars to give the young people 'space' to sleep in. And by space I mean room in a six-berth mobile home, with up to thirty people in.
Recently, a group of film makers and a friend of mine, Brenda Aplin - founder of Lakota Aid, who I plan to do a parachute jump in aid of - went out to the reservation to make a documentary highlighting the way people are forced to live.
Since the settlers came and forced them to the reservations - destroying their way of life and their ability to live from the land they way they always had - Pine Ridge and the people of the Black Hills have spiralled into poverty. Unemployment is at 85-95% of the population. There is no technology or industry at all.
Infant mortality here, is the highest in the continent.
Please, if you can, go to Lakota Voices and make a donation of $20.00 (that's about £12.00 including postage) and in return you will receive a copy of the documentary on DVD.
Brenda tries to raise the money to heat and feed as many families as possible on the reservation, and to do that she needs to fill propane tanks. Each tank costs up to £300.00. Donations have been so poor in the past year, that Brenda has removed the option from the website - but I'll find out how you can donate, if you want to, just let me know.
This is something that really means the world to me. The people of Pine Ridge share my ancestors.
If you need convincing, watch the trailer here. Thirteen still-born babies in two months, because of radiation in the water is too much by anyone's standards. One is too many.
As, one person quoted correctly says, "If we were four-leggeds, everybody would help us. But we happen to be two-leggeds, so people don't care if we go extinct... and that's where we're headed."
We get to go home. For the people of Pine Ridge - the Native Americans whose ancestors were massacred at Wounded Knee - it means coming deaths from cold, as their elders sleep in cars to give the young people 'space' to sleep in. And by space I mean room in a six-berth mobile home, with up to thirty people in.
Recently, a group of film makers and a friend of mine, Brenda Aplin - founder of Lakota Aid, who I plan to do a parachute jump in aid of - went out to the reservation to make a documentary highlighting the way people are forced to live.
Since the settlers came and forced them to the reservations - destroying their way of life and their ability to live from the land they way they always had - Pine Ridge and the people of the Black Hills have spiralled into poverty. Unemployment is at 85-95% of the population. There is no technology or industry at all.
Infant mortality here, is the highest in the continent.
Please, if you can, go to Lakota Voices and make a donation of $20.00 (that's about £12.00 including postage) and in return you will receive a copy of the documentary on DVD.
Brenda tries to raise the money to heat and feed as many families as possible on the reservation, and to do that she needs to fill propane tanks. Each tank costs up to £300.00. Donations have been so poor in the past year, that Brenda has removed the option from the website - but I'll find out how you can donate, if you want to, just let me know.
This is something that really means the world to me. The people of Pine Ridge share my ancestors.
If you need convincing, watch the trailer here. Thirteen still-born babies in two months, because of radiation in the water is too much by anyone's standards. One is too many.
As, one person quoted correctly says, "If we were four-leggeds, everybody would help us. But we happen to be two-leggeds, so people don't care if we go extinct... and that's where we're headed."