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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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Rez Bomb is a love story/thriller about a Lakota girl, Harmony and a white guy, Scott who are very much in love but get into trouble with a brutal loan shark, Jaws. Jaws threatens Scott as he’s being released from six weeks in jail that if his now hefty debt including interest isn’t paid off by midnight its curtains.

Scott thinks he can pay it courtesy of a stash of pills he has hidden inside his guitar so heads to his home on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, which he shares with Harmony. It is the poorest place in the USA and a world apart from the more affluent upbringing he had in Rapid City, South Dakota.

There he discovers both Harmony and the guitar are missing. So he goes searching for them both. We inter-cut his quest with Harmony’s previous six weeks as she flees Jaws. After taking a beating and discovering she’s pregnant she’s offered a place in protective housing allowing her to disappear from those chasing her. In the process she pawns all their valuables, including the guitar.

As Scott searches for her he is forced to confront his past and their families who oppose their relationship.

Check out the movie trailer here.

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Hey kids!  Let’s play with Custer (better yet, let’s not)

via Buffalo Post:

McDonald’s is including a Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer toy in its Happy Meals.

Um, why?

Well, it’s all part of a promotion coinciding with the recent release of the movie “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.”

Um, did anyone at McDonald’s think that this might not be a good idea?

That would be a big “um, no.”

This story from the Rapid City Journal quotes McDonald’s spokeswoman Danya Proud as saying in an e-mail, “At McDonald’s, we value and respect people of all ethnicities, as well as their cultural history …. As with all Happy Meal promotions, our goal is to provide families a positive experience that can be shared by all.”

Some of the anger over the toy centers on the fact its nationwide distribution means that it inevitably will go to children on Indian reservations. Yeah, that’s pretty offensive – but so is the fact that the toy is going to children of any ethnicity. Poet Joy Harjo posted that “this is akin to giving away KKK figures or Hitler toys to children. Why don’t people get it when it comes to native people? … There’s such a blind spot in American cultural vision, or is it deliberate hatefulness?”

Sometimes, to me at least, it feels as though the sheer unthinking nature of a blind spot is almost worse.

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http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-05-14-voa21.cfm

deltafoxtrot:

On Tuesday evening at the White House, President Obama hosted an event celebrating poetry, music and the spoken word. In the United States, there has been a resurgence of interest in poetry, especially poems that are recited out loud. For the past several years, thousands of high school students have been learning about poetry through memorization and performance in a program called Poetry Out Loud. The top performer from each state competes in a national championship. It took place recently in Washington DC.

Wiyaka wins competition

Wiyaka This is the Poetry Out Loud champion from the western state of South Dakota who recently competed in the 2009 national competition in Washington. Wiyaka is a Native American whose family name is His Horse is Thunder. Her father is an Indian chief and she is related to Sitting Bull, a famous chief in the 19th century who fought to protect his tribe’s land. Native American tribes are known for storytelling, and Wiyaka says she is keeping that tradition alive, in her own way, by reciting poetry to audiences.

“I just want them to feel something when they hear it,” she said.

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Rapid City Tax Day Tea Party - Ira Taken Alive (via DakotaVoice)

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http://www.bemidjipioneer.com/articles/index.cfm?id=21798§ion=news

When Cecil White Hat was 5 years old, he stood in the back of his dad’s car in Mission, S.D.

The streets were jam-packed with cars. It was 1953 and the first day it was legal for American Indians to buy alcohol.

White Hat described the scene he witnessed as a young boy in his presentation, “How Alcohol Came To The People,” Wednesday at the third annual Red Lake Drug and Gang Summit in Red Lake. The two-day summit continues today.

White Hat, a Lakota Sioux who is originally from Rosebud, S.D., recalled that day in 1953.

“That whole town was packed,” he said.

When the liquor store owner opened the store that day, nobody went in for what seemed like a long time, White Hat said. Then, one American Indian man entered the store, bought alcohol and walked outside – with no arrest. After that, White Hat described, there was a stampede on the store.

White Hat said his dad later told him, “Our communities went down very fast after that.”

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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.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=20080923_11_A14_hAsurg765744

Lawlessness on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, which spans South Dakota and North Dakota, recently pushed the Bureau of Indian Affairs to put out a call for law enforcement help. 

It was a call that Cherokee Nation Marshals Chad McCarter and Daniel Mead, along with other tribal law enforcement officers throughout the state and the country, answered. 

Many of the officers who participated in the BIA’s Operation Dakota Peacekeeper, which began June 2, soon learned that squelching the rampant crime rate on the reservation, nearly six times that of the national average, would not be an easy task.

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http://www.madisonet.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1302&dept_id=181990&newsid=19896846&PAG=461&rfi=9

Senators and representatives from South Dakota and other states with American Indian reservations are advancing legislation to fight high crime levels.

The bill would encourage more aggressive federal prosecution of reservation crimes, boost tribal law enforcement, and improve coordination between federal and local authorities. In addition, it would enhance the sentencing authority of tribal courts and boost resources for investigating and prosecuting crimes of sexual violence.

All these steps are desperately needed. Crime levels on reservations are extremely high, with violent crime leading the way.

Federal statistics have shown that American Indians are the victims of violent crime at 2.5 times the national rate, and rates of homicide and domestic abuse are much higher than national averages. An Amnesty International report in 2007 said American Indian women are more than twice as likely to be raped as other U.S. women.

So while these steps to improve law enforcement are correct and important, it still doesn’t address the fundamental problem: The reservation system as a whole is an unqualified failure.

From every human standpoint, the reservation system is broken. There is extreme poverty, rampant alcoholism, high infant mortality rates, terrible joblessness and lawlessness. FBI reports show that rates of all of violent crime doubled between 2005 and 2006, partly fueled by a raging methamphetamine epidemic on reservations and high rates of alcohol use.

So while increased law enforcement is the right thing to do, what’s really needed is to eliminate the reservation system and replace it with a new model. The reservation system cannot be “improved” or “reformed,” because the problems are so vast.

Yes, we recognize that treaties signed in the 1800s were bad. Yes, we realize that federal government officials and tribal officials made many mistakes over the past 150 years. This is not a time for finger-pointing, but developing a new system that allows human beings to live with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Developing a new system and way of life is one of the hardest jobs imaginable for federal and tribal leaders. But they shouldn’t be afraid of the difficulty, because the terrible problems on the reservation must be solved.

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http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19896807&BRD=1817&PAG=461&dept_id=222087&rfi=6

As that agency drafts its operating plan for the South Unit, it’s thinking about returning complete control to the Oglala Sioux, something it has never done with a tribe.

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