Clinton To Visit Poverty-Stricken Pine Ridge

By Carey Gillam

PINE RIDGE, S.D. (Reuters) - Seventeen years ago, Belleron Blue Bird put his name on the list of Oglala Sioux waiting to own a home on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

He is still waiting. With his wife Lucille and their five young children, Blue Bird, who works odd jobs on the reservation, makes his home in a one-room, 400-square-foot rented shack.

It is cheap at $50 a month, but lacks plumbing and heat and leaves little room for living after the family packs in two beds, a refrigerator and a gas stove that, if left on, provides warmth in winter.

A recently donated outhouse was a welcome gift. But Lucille, 31, who makes $50 a week selling tacos on the street, is still desperate to escape the cracked, sagging ceiling and the mice that scurry across worn floor boards.

``We need a house,'' she told Reuters. ``Just some space to live.''

This sentiment is common on the reservation, where thousands of members of the Oglala Sioux tribe must make homes with more fortunate friends and relatives or in garages or crumbling shacks.

The Pine Ridge reservation -- which President Clinton plans to visit July 7 on a tour of impoverished areas -- is beset by such dire poverty that Shannon County, which represents most of the reservation's 24,000 people, ranks as the most poverty-stricken county in America.

``Tiospaye'' -- families taking care their own -- is a traditional tenet that translates to a typical household of more than 10 people. Often, even 20 to 30 adults and children share a single small house without a place to bathe or use a toilet. A jobless rate of more than 75 percent leaves many households to subsist on meager government and tribal assistance programs.

Overcrowded and unsanitary conditions breed disease and despair. Babies die at a rate 2.5 times above the national average; diabetes is eight times higher; tuberculosis is 10 times the South Dakota state average and roughly five times the national rate, and alcoholism and suicide are persistent problems, according to official statistics.

``It's like a third-world country,'' said assistance worker Vashti Apostol-Hurst, who runs the National Association for American Indian Children and Elders from Pine Ridge.

To be sure, poverty among the 2.3 million American Indians that make up 557 federally recognized tribes is not limited to Pine Ridge. Since the late 1800s when the battles between whites and Native Americans forced the end of several aspects of Indian life, many tribes have struggled.

On average, 31 percent of the nation's reservation inhabitants live in poverty, and wrestle with a 46 percent unemployment rate, according to the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) in Washington.

But here in the shadow of Wounded Knee, where the U.S. Army massacred hundreds of tribal members in 1890 before forcing the tribe onto the reservation, the poverty is pervasive.

By some tribal estimates, nearly half the population is on assistance. Tribal housing officials estimate more than 4,000 homes are needed to address the housing crunch adequately.

Disputes over reservation land use, fragmented ownership of even small tracts of land, racial conflicts and a deep mistrust of whites and the federal government have limited housing and business development on Pine Ridge.

The result is that while the reservation totals some two million acres, there is no easy access to land for people who want to buy a house or open a business.

Aside from a gas station-cum-restaurant, a taco place and a pizza joint, there are few basic business services, and spending money drains away to neighboring towns. Efforts to open a bank on the reservation have failed.

``We have to find a way to create jobs for our people,'' said tribal vice president Wilbur Between Lodges.

Many residents believe better times lie ahead. Pine Ridge has been designated the nation's first Indian reservation ''empowerment zone,'' which will make tax breaks and other incentives available to businesses that invest there.

A federal-tribal housing program is helping families buy new manufactured three- and four-bedroom homes. The first group of 19 families start moving in this month.

``I'm going to move in the moment I'm closed. I'm already packed,'' said Lucy Vocu, a 33-year-old mother of two and school teacher who has bought a new $64,000 three-bedroom home.

Vocu said she could not buy a house before because of the difficulty in obtaining land. ``If I have to get a second job, I will,'' she said. ``Nobody is taking this away from me.''

Despite the daily struggle, many of the Oglala people say life is good. A clean blue sky, jagged buttes and rolling grasslands encourage camping and hiking, and frequent spiritual gatherings keep communities tightly knit.

Even 21-year-old Mary Standing Bear, who recently gave birth to a daughter while she and her husband lived in a relative's garage, said life on Pine Ridge ``is not so bad.''

The history and cultural heritage of reservation residents makes them rich, Standing Bear and many others said.

Robert Running Bear missed the reservation life so much that he moved back to Pine Ridge from his AT&T job in Denver 20 years ago. This weekend, he plans to don his moccasins and join in an ancient four-day spiritual ceremony, the Sun Dance.

``It's a simple life here,'' he said. ``The sun comes up, the sun goes down. We pass our days.''