Allen Locke was a resident of Lakota Community Homes in Rapid City South Dakota. Allen attended a #NativeLivesMatter anti-police brutality march on a Friday in December, The next day, Saturday, he was shot five times and murdered in front of bystanders. Did you hear about this? Probably not. Native Americans are killed by police at nearly identical rates of Blacks but we don't hear about it on the news.
There are 45 million Black Americans (as of 2013) and 5.1 million American Indians but indigenous people are killed by law enforcement at rates that far outstrip our share of the population. #Blacklivesmatter has garnered plenty of attention from the main stream media and has become a rallying cry for justice but outside of the twitteverse and the indigenous blogosphere , which have all the horror stories one person can take, #nativelivesmatter has gotten no attention. Last year in November and December there were six Native men and women killed by police and yet we don't hear anything about it.
I can't say what is more frustrating, not hearing about it or hearing about it and not having a damn thing done to bring justice to those in uniform that murder us. The officers just walk after a short time of paid time off. There is not justice there.
We are not sovereign in our territories. There is no true sovereignty on our lands not with the government intruding into our affairs at the rate that they do. The long history of American government meddling into our affairs, the disproportionate rates of suicide substance abuse, disease, poverty, low education, employment and health care resources and the inability of the governmental agencies entrusted with indigenous care, the BIA and such, only make the already dismal circumstances worse. The systematic criminalization of indigenous people when combined with the systematic forces of substance abuse, mental health issues and unemployment paint a picture of utter deconstruction and genocide by design.
Take the story of Mah-hi-vist Goodblanket who at 18 years old was shot several times in Custer County Oklahoma or 34 year old Benjamin Whiteshield who was shot in the mouth in Clinton Oklahoma by police after both were experiencing episodes of mental illness.
Then what about Christina Tahhahwah who was bipolar and arrested during an episode and died after she went into cardiac arrest in Lawton Oklahoma inside of prison cell. Native News Online reports that she was handcuffed to her cell door for "unknown reasons" and the the 37 year olds parents were not notified of her transfer to the hospital where she was pronounced dead until many many hours after the fact. Inmates claim she was "tased repeatedly" for refusing to sing Comanche hymns.
Where is the justice there? We have been asking about justice for Trayvon while his killer walks free and has been arrested 6 times for violent offenses, we have been asking if it was just to murder Michael Brown and leave his body on display for four hours in the sun or kill Eric Garner or the list goes on and on. Brown and Black dying at the hands of police who are out of contril with no accountability.
Poverty, disease, suicide rates that are double that of the nation at large, enviromental racism that effects not only sacred sites but the miserable conditions on the reservations as it is,
The official poverty rate on reservations is 28.4 percent, compared with 15.3 nationally. Thirty-six percent of families with children are below the poverty line on reservations, compared with 9.2 percent of native famalies. Five of the lowest per capita incomes in the country are found on reservations. Allen, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, has the lowest per capita income in the country, at $1,539 per year. Overall, the per capita income of American Indians on Reservations is half that of all Americans. The median income on reservations is $29,097, compared to $41,994 nationally. According to the US census bureau some reservations have a 60 percent rate of poverty.
Where is there justice in THAT? For the Original People of this continent to be living in those conditions? At over 14 percent, the rate of homes without any electricity on reservations is ten times the national average. On the Navajo Reservation, nearly 40 percent of homes are without electricity. Furthermore, reservations are often the last to receive updated electrical infrastructure, and are the last places to which service is restored following an outage.
One fifth of reservation households lack running water, compared with one percent of households nationwide. Nearly one half of Navajo and Hopi Reservation residents lack plumbing. Nearly 20 percent of reservation homes lack basic kitchen facilities, including piped water, a range or cookstove, and a refrigerator. On the Navajo Reservation, nearly half of all households lack these necessities. This is compared to three percent of American Indians nationwide and only one percent of all households in the country.
Modern telecommunications are also extremely lacking. More than half of households on reservations do not have phone service, compared with five percent nationally, and nine percent among nonmetropolitan area. Fewer than 10 percent of reservation residents have internet access. Furthermore, many larger, rural reservations are without cell phone reception. The lack of telecommunications infrastructure severely limits the potential for economic exchange.
This is by design and there needs to be a way to address these grievances. Please continue to check back as I will further go into the creation of reservations and the plight of the Original People today and what we ARE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT on 10-10-15.
