Life of Lakotah men ...

From http://www.republicoflakotah.com/

In the face of the colonial apartheid conditions imposed on Lakotah people, the withdrawal from the U.S. Treaties is necessary. These conditions have been devastating:

MORTALITY
• Lakotah men have a life expectancy of less than 44 years, lowest of any country in the World (excluding AIDS) including Haiti.
• Lakotah death rate is the highest in the United States.
• The Lakotah infant mortality rate is 300% more than the U.S. Average.
• Teenage suicide rate is 150% higher than the U.S national average for this group.
  
  DRUGS AND ALCOHOL
• More than half the Reservation's adults battle addiction and disease.
• Alcoholism affects 8 in 10 families.
  
  INCARCERATION
• Indian children incarceration rate 40% higher than whites.
• In South Dakota, 21 percent of state prisoners were Native.
• Indians have the second largest state prison incarceration rate in the nation.
  
  DISEASE
• The Tuberculosis rate on Lakotah reservations is approx 800% higher than the U.S national average.
• Cervical cancer is 500% higher than the U.S national average.
• The rate of diabetes is 800% higher than the U.S national average.
• Federal Commodity Food Program provides high sugar foods that kill Native people through diabetes and heart disease.
  
  POVERTY
• Median income is approximately $2,600 to $3,500 per year.
• 97% of our Lakotah people live below the poverty line.
• Many families cannot afford heating oil, wood or propane and many residents use ovens to heat their homes.
  
  HOUSING
• Elderly die each winter from hypothermia (freezing).
• 1/3 of the homes lack basic clean water and sewage while 40% lack electricty.
• 60% of Reservation families have no telephone.
• 60% of housing is infected with potentially fatal black molds.
• There is an estimated average of 17 people living in each family home (may only have two to three rooms). Some homes, built for 6 to 8 people, have up to 30 people living in them.
  
  UNEMPLOYMENT
• Unemployment rates on our reservations is 85% or higher.
  
  THREATENED CULTURE
• Only 14% of the Lakotah population can speak Lakotah
  language.
• The language is not being shared inter-generationally, today, the average Lakotah speaker is 65 years old.
• Our lakotah language is an Endangered Language, on the verge of extinction.

After 150 years of colonial enforcement, when you back people into a corner there is only one alternative. That alternative is to bring freedom back into existence by taking it back - back to the love of freedom, to our lifeway. Canupa Gluha Mani