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Behind_the_Scenes_Still_Wounde.zip (1239 KB)

All photos by Aaron Huey and can be seen at the New York Times interview here.

Aaron Huey arrived on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota at the start of a self-assigned photographic road trip to document poverty in America.

The poverty he found on the reservation stopped him cold.

"Pine Ridge is the scariest place I've ever been - more so than in a Taliban ambush," Mr. Huey said.  "It was emotionally devastating.  I'd call my wife late at night crying."

Overwhelmed by the poverty – and at the same time by scenes of people trying to maintain the Lakota way of life – Mr. Huey abandoned the rest of his nationwide project to focus on Pine Ridge.  Five years later, he's still photographing on the reservation, which includes the Wounded Knee battlefield.

Mr. Huey, 33, is a photgrapher for National Geographic Adventure and National Geographic Traveler.  He also freelances for The New Yorker and Geo.  In 2007, he photographed in Afghanistan for The Times.

Still Wounded is an amazing photo series and great interview on this photographer and what he sees on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.

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American Indian PGA golfer will ‘talk to the land’

Notah Begay III, the only American Indian golfer on the PGA tour, is tapping his roots as he builds an $8.5 million course on a reservation in Kansas: He said the tribal land must be asked “what it wants you to do.”

The 18-hole Firekeeper Golf Course – Begay’s first signature course – will cover 240 acres near the Prairie Band Potawatomi Casino and Resort on a reservation near Mayetta. Named for the Prairie Band, known as the “keepers of the sacred fire,” Begay said the course should be ready to open next summer.

Begay, a member of the Navajo Nation, said the needs of the land come first.

“You say a prayer, talk to the land and ask it what it wants you to do,” he said Monday in announcing the project. “We incorporate into it the natural design of the land. We didn’t want to add things that weren’t naturally there or needed.”

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http://64.38.12.138/News/2009/014978.asp

from Indianz.com:

A city on the Yakama Nation in Washington is cracking down on public drinking.

Offenders up to 90 days in jail and up to a $1,000 fine for drinking in public in Wapato. “It’s something to say, ‘Hey, we’re not playing games — we’re doing something about it,” police chief Richard Sanchez told The Yakima Herald-Republic. The Yakama Nation tried to ban alcohol sales on the reservation a few years ago. But non-Indian businesses in places like Wapato objected. It’s those businesses that cater to a largely Indian client base. “This is an everyday thing we do out here,” Valerie Jolene Sampson, a tribal member, says of her drinking habits.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090517/ap_on_bi_ge/meltdown_navajos;_ylt=AoQFGpQxkQvCxseyiW1eRgys0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFpNWlwOWM4BHBvcwMyNQRzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9uX21vc3RfcG9wdWxhcgRzbGsDbmF2YWpvc2xhcmdl

Talk at the community center in this small Navajo town isn’t as focused on the economy as it is in many places off the reservation.

That’s because the people living on the largest American Indian reservation have been largely unscathed by the recession.

Most Navajos own their own homes, tend not to invest in the stock market and have long had difficulties borrowing money, distinguishing them from millions of other Americans who’ve suffered from rising mortgage payments, sinking 401(k) retirement accounts and stricter terms from lenders.

And with half of the Navajo Nation’s work force unemployed long before this latest recession hit, there’s not much fear the job situation could get much worse on the reservation.

“They’re freaking out out there, but to us, we’ve always had 50 percent unemployment,” said John C. Whiterock, a Navajo youth pastor. “To us, that’s just part of life.”

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http://www.lisacharleyboy.com/2009/04/lacrosse-gets-laugh.html

“Crooked Arrows,” a comedy about lacrosse with a Native American twist is supposed to be shot late this summer. The movie is about a 30-year-old of mixed lineage who must postpone his casino-building dreams to coach the inept local Native American high school lacrosse squad against the prep school league in which he used to star. It is set in an upstate New York reservation and will be directed by Steve Rash.

via (Lisa Charleyboy)

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American Indian Fighters Punch Back Against Despair - NYTimes.com

Last spring, Hawk formed the Native American Warriors Pro-Boxing Network. Although much boxing in the United States takes place in Indian-owned casinos, Hawk said Indian fighters had difficulty finding spots on fight cards. If they banded together, Hawk believed they could form a casino circuit, fight for a fair price and escape often desperate lives on the reservation, where alcoholism, drug abuse, poverty, teenage pregnancy, diabetes and domestic violence are endemic.

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kylebingman:

“Life On An Indian Reservation” - 30 Days

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Rez Bomb trailer (via roaringfirefilms)

Market trailer for the new movie Rez Bomb set on and around Pine Ridge Indian reservation.  Lovers from different backgrounds run afoul of a ruthless money lender and find themselves in a race against the clock to bail themselves out of a dangerous situation. While the location shooting in South Dakota takes advantage of the desolate plains and mountains of the area and the obvious poverty of the Reservation itself, it tells a universal story that would not have been out of place in Rio, Marseilles, Addis Abbaba, Calcutta or any other atmospheric location of decay

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http://www.keloland.com/custompages/kelolandblogs/northernvalleybeacon/index.cfm?c=2208

The much derided member of the main stream media, The Argus Leader, has run a series of articles on the suicide epidemic among young people on the Rosebud Reservation. In the last 3 1/4 years, 28 young people have taken their own lives.

While so much of the electronic media and the parasitic blogs that feed on it distort and quibble about what politicians and political commentators are saying, there are issues being covered by real journalists that do something other than heap insult and abuse on other people. In fact, the mentality that generates the insult and abuse is a menacing presence on the reservations that scourges the mind much as the the buffalo slaughterers of a century ago scourged the land and the culture.

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