Indigenous Lakota Women Face Harsh Winter Wrath Under Climate Change
Tuesday 02 November 2010
by: Lys Anzia | Women News Network | Report
Oglala Sioux Lakota grandmother, Alice Four Horns, at home on the Pine
Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, 2007. (Photo: Svetlana
Bachevanova / WNN)
Pine Ridge, South Dakota - U.S. Oglala Sioux Lakota Elder women and
families suffering from severe poverty are bracing themselves to face
a harsh winter season spurred on by climate change this year,
according to NOAA – the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration.
With poverty conditions that rival some global developing regions and
the lowest life expectancy in the Western hemisphere, second only to
Haiti, the average current lifespan for women on the Pine Ridge Indian
Reservation is 52 years, for men it’s 48 years.
Death rates for members of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation suffering
under severe poverty are shockingly 533% higher than their ‘non-
Indian’ U.S. counterparts for tuberculosis, 249% higher for diabetes
and 71% higher for pneumonia and influenza, says the U.S. Department
of Health – Indian Health Services.
With conditions of extreme poverty inside the country, why are U.S.
poverty statistics for Native American Indian reservations so often
left out of global poverty studies made by international agencies? The
answers are complex and tied to the ongoing curse of global indigenous
invisibility.
Numerous Lakota Oglala Sioux women Elders, are now facing extreme
poverty on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. They also face real
danger with threats of hypothermia during the winter season. “An
average of 689 (reported) deaths per year in the United States results
from excessive environmental cold exposure,” says educational resource
group, the (U.S.) College of American Pathologists.
While deaths from cold temperatures are hard to track accurately, each
year hypothermia deaths are reported on the Reservation. “Each winter,
reservation Elders are found dead from hypothermia,” says Brenda
Alpin, founder of Laktoa Aid, in a 2004 report for UNPO –
Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization.
Although many hypothermia deaths are related to alcohol abuse,
conditions leading to hypothermia in Elder Lakota women often occur
due to poor health, poverty and lack of resources.
“Climate change hits poor people hardest – especially poor women,”
says Oxfam’s current 2010, ‘Sisters on the Planet’ initiative campaign.
With little to no winter heat, numerous mobile trailers, homes that
are commonly used by the Lakota, don’t meet current building
standards. Temperatures inside a thin walled trailer, with little to
no heat, can drop to levels below freezing as outside winter
temperatures reach 10 below zero (Fahrenheit) or colder. These cold
winter temperatures can actually cause ice to appear on windows, walls
and surfaces inside a home that has inadequate heat.
“The night of January 2 was a truly dreadful night for the Swift Hawk
family. They had run out of propane to heat their house. They also had
no wood for their wood stove, although they tried desperately to
obtain some wood, but without any success… The house had only thin
plastic sheeting covering two large openings where windows were
supposed to be. As night fell and the temperature plummeted from 16
degrees zero to 45 degrees zero, Sarah’s daughter, and her son-in-law
put two blankets on Sarah in an attempt to keep her warm. The mother
then took the other two blankets they had and placed them on her six
children who were all huddled together on the floor where she and her
husband would also sleep. Since there was only one cot in the house,
that bed was given to Sarah who was the grandmother in the family.
Everyone else in the Swift Hawk family has to sleep on the floor
because the family is too poor to buy any furniture. When the sun came
up on Sunday morning, January 3rd, the daughter got up from the floor
to check on her mother, and she found her mother had died during the
night, frozen to death as a result of exposure to extreme cold.
Fortunately, the body heat from the parents and the children, all
huddled together on the floor, kept them alive that terrible night.”
– U.S. Senator Hon. Byron L. Dorgan from South Dakota,
Chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs, on the floor of the Senate
(Congressional Record, February 25, 1999)
Deaths from hypothermia, “occur equally as frequently indoors as
outdoors,” explains the College of American Pathologists. “A
debilitated Elder may become hypothermic at home (inside) in
temperatures as high as 70 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit (22- 24 degrees
Celsius).”
Hypothermia is characterized by the unintentional drop in a core body
temperature to less than 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius).
“Mild hypothermia is often accompanied by confusion, progressing to
impaired judgment, followed by apathy,” adds the College.
As symptoms arise in precursors to hypothermia, Elder women can face
critical emergencies. Recognizing these symptoms is not always easy.
Elder Lakota women “often struggle to survive the bitter winters,”
says a September 2008 report by the Tribal Lands Renewable Project.
Women and children “are more likely to die than men during disasters,”
outlines the Oxfam, ‘Sisters on the Planet’ 2010 report.
Current climate change with El Niño conditions are now predicted to
cause unusual excursions of Arctic air into the central northern
regions of the U.S. The NOAA – National Weather Service predicts a
cold episodewinter this year. The weather “favors the build-up of
colder than normal air over Alaska and western Canada, which often
penetrates into the northern Great Plains and the western United
States,” states this winter’s report.
With 97% of the population at the Reservation living under conditions
that fall beneath the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
definition of poverty, many Oglala Sioux Lakota households cannot
afford to pay for home maintenance in the structural upkeep of their
homes.
Poverty income levels as low as $5-10 (USD) dollars per day can cause
many safety limitations as fixing housing problems becomes impossible.
Common problems with inadequate insulation, exterior doors and windows
with broken glass or seals, roofs and floors with open gaps to the
exterior contribute greatly to unsafe crisis conditions in winter
months.
Ranging from 30 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit) in the winter to a
sweltering 100 plus degrees in the summer, the Pine Ridge Indian
Reservation suffers most from what ‘compassion in action,’ The Seva
Foundation, calls “the worst conditions of poverty existing in the
United States today.”
“Now I have a three-bedroom home. I don’t have much. I have running
water, but it isn’t very good,” says Lakota Oglala Sioux Grandmother,
Beatrice Long Visitor Holy Dance, an honored member of The
International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers.
“I have mold growing there, and it’s getting pretty bad,” adds
Beatrice. “I’ve been trying to get the housing authority to help me,
but nobody helps me.”
Many of the households on the reservation are so below sub-standard
that electricity and plumbing is not functional. In addition to this,
up to 40% of homes are plagued with Black Mold, stachybotrys
chartarum, known to cause serious life threatening health risks with
prolonged exposure.
Even in times of need, many Lakota Elder women have been taught ‘not
to complain much.’ Learning from their own mothers and grandmothers
that they must accept life ‘as it is,’ without complaining, Elder
women often risk their lives by staying ‘too quiet’ in the face of
many needs.
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“Fortitude is grandmother’s road,” says Sicunga Lakota Sioux author,
Joseph Marshall.
During the winter months, women also face specific problems because of
their gender. “When winter comes, I’ll just get me a fat woman and let
her sleep on the windy side,” said Oglala Sioux, Le War Lance, in the
1999 Atlantic Monthly article, ‘On the Rez,’ by Ian Fraiser. Hard
winter storms often do include high winds that top 60 mph.
Oglala Sioux Lakota grandmother, Alice Four Horns, at home on the Pine
Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota, U.S. - 2007. Image: Svetlana
Bachevanova / WNN
AIHF – American Indian Humanitarian Foundation figures now show that
24,000 households on the Pine Ridge reservation are substandard,
placing their occupants in possible critical danger. Without
electricity, wood or propane gas to cook, conditions of malnutrition
for Lakota Elders does rise in the winter.
“At least 60% of the homes are severely substandard, without water,
electricity, adequate insulation, and sewage systems,” says AIHF.
With the current price of propane on the Reservation rising, monthly
costs now exceed $400+ (USD); a price that is twice as high as the
average monthly cost to heat many standard American homes across the
U.S.
Even though it’s illegal in the State of South Dakota to shut off heat
during the winter months, some small propane companies have been known
to pressure those who cannot pay their bills by shutting off propane
deliveries to their homes, leaving them to face bitter storms without
access to propane heat.
“Bitter winters force many families to spend up to 70% of their total
income to heat their homes,” says the U.S. environmental organization,
‘Land, Water and People,’ that also manages the TWP – Tribal Lands
Renewable Energy Program.
In 2003, the TWP launched an award winning program, created in
partnership with Lakota Solar Enterprises, to help communities use
solar energy as a supplemental, and renewable, form of energy to heat
their homes, but current needs still greatly surpass the program’s
construction outreach.
“Our housing needs on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation are so severe
that I have had some trouble figuring out where to start my
presentation,” said former President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe,
Honorable John Yellow Bird Steele, before the March 2007, U.S. Senate
Oversight Hearing on Indian Housing.
Working in combination with HUD – the Department of Housing and Urban
Development and The Department of Energy, the recent 2009 U.S. federal
economic incentive program, The U.S. Recovery and Reinvestment Act,
has pushed for specific programs to help bring better housing to the
people on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. To date, $173,756,330
(USD) has been slated for contracts in an effort to improve
conditions. Additional monies have been made available also to the
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in form of grant programs.
The hope is that the new federal monies can reach on-the-ground
programs and needs, as tribal members learn how to apply for grants
and follow up correctly for other initiatives.
“I was raised by my grandmother Nellie Two Bulls who was an educator
herself,” says 27 year old Lakota activist and blogger, Autumn
TwoBulls. “She taught me about the values of the Lakota people. And
what it means to be Lakota,” she shares. “We as Lakotas help each
other. That is how we survive.”
“For Lakotas, one of our common mantras is “Mitakuye Oyasin – We are
all related,” says Mary Black Bonnet of the Sincangu Lakota Nation.
“No one is better than anyone else,” she emphasizes.
A group of Lakota women leaders on the Pine Ridge Reservation, made up
of health workers, teachers and social workers, are also working
together to improve conditions for women and children as they gather
books, winter coats, kitchen items, children’s toys, personal hygiene
products, bedding, pens and pencils, sewing supplies, furniture and
shoes for those in their community; all items that are hard to find on
the Reservation.
“We’re the foreign country suffering under (extreme) poverty in your
(U.S.) back yard,” reminds the current Oglala Sioux Tribe President,
Theresa Two Bulls, honestly. “I have never quite understood people who
travel oversees and put forth so much effort to help those in under
developed countries, when we have a place right here in the U.S. that
has third world conditions.”
[permaculture] General Article on Pine Ridge and Climate Change,
Kelly Simmons, 11/10/2010