I once wrote about the statistics that you see on our reservation.  I pleaded for someone to tell me how to change this.  You can google it on the internet.  You can find it in old media files or articles.

Pine Ridge Reservation...blah, blah, blah etc.

High School drop out rate-blah, blah, blah.

Infant mortality rate-blah blah blah.

Diabetes rate- blah, blah, blah.

Alcoholism rate-blah, blah, blah.

Unemployment rate-blah, blah, blah.

Poverty rate-blah, blah, blah.

Ok, maybe I went too far.  Maybe the unemploymet rate will never change.  Maybe because the government wants us to have a high rating there.

But sometimes I think we focus so much on the bad and negative that we have no room for improvement.  As a tribe we all want to fight among ourselves as if it was the LNI and one family member's kid was on one team and another family member's kid was on the rival team.  We act as if we the Oglala Lakota will always hate on each other and never work together to improve ourslves as a society.  Where is the Lakota way of life in that?  Why fight?  Why put each other down?

Are we so far gone into greed and this need to be better than the neighbor that our Lakota values have demised?

You do remember these values and what they stand for, right?

Somebody prove me wrong.