Post by blackcrowheart on Aug 22, 2006 23:16:13 GMT -5
Indian reservation's shelter gives help to women in need
BY JUDY PERES
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
KYLE, S.D. - If there is hope for a better future on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, it may lie in the ramshackle plywood building that houses the Cangleska women's shelter.
Everyone here acknowledges that it will take economic development to cure the body of the desperately poor reservation on the edge of the Badlands. But Cangleska is healing its spirit.
Cangleska Inc., which runs another shelter in Rapid City, S.D., and a 24-hour hot line, aims to save future generations by breaking the cycle of alcoholism and domestic violence.
"We're a vulnerable population," said Karen Artichoker, co-founder of Cangleska (the Lakota word for medicine wheel). "Many women and their families, from birth to death, their lives are characterized by addiction, violence, lots of pain. Lots of pain."
"Debbie," whose ex-husband beat her in a drunken rage, was at the shelter last month.
"I'm trying to heal here," she said as her 2-year-old daughter played quietly with other mothers and children in the communal living room. "Then they help you get to a safer place."
Debbie, who asked not to use her real name, said she didn't know what would have happened if the shelter hadn't been available. "We'd still be running," she said.
Debbie is missing her four front teeth, a souvenir of the time her ex-husband came at her with a crowbar and kicked her in the face when she fell, she said. She's hoping to get to Minnesota through the network of women's shelters, which acts like a kind of underground railroad.
Between 300 and 600 women a year come through the shelter, along with 600 to 900 children, Artichoker said. The center's outreach advocates serve another 800 to 1,500 women a year on a reservation with a population of about 20,000.
Domestic violence is epidemic in Indian country, often linked to the high rates of alcoholism and drug abuse. According to U.S. Justice Department statistics, Indian women are sexually assaulted at a rate more than three times higher than white women.
The rate of severe alcohol dependency on the reservation is at least double the national average, with some estimates as high as 85 percent.
The counties that comprise the Pine Ridge Reservation, home of the Oglala Lakota, are among the poorest in the nation. More than one-third of the population lives below the poverty line. Median household income hovers around $20,000 a year -- and many households consist of large extended families living in a single trailer.
With an unemployment rate on the reservation of 83 percent, Artichoker said, "You're seen as privileged if you have a job."
Norma Rendon's story is typical. As a child, she said, everyone around her drank.
"My dad drank a lot," Rendon said, "and with the alcohol came violence."
She married a Navy man at 18 and moved to Memphis to escape her home life, but found that she had jumped "from the frying pan into the fire."
"First he belittled me, then he shoved me, then he slapped me," Rendon said. "I thought, 'At least he doesn't punch me with his fist.' Then the fist started."
By the time she acknowledged that she needed to get out of the marriage, she had three small children.
"I was afraid," Rendon said. "How will I make it? But I wanted to come home. I missed the powwows and the ceremonies."
When told she wanted a divorce, "he got real angry. He saw me and my children as his property -- like the truck and the boat."
All that was 30 years ago. With the help of prayer and the support of a young-mothers group, Rendon turned her life around. She worked as a teacher's aide in an American Indian school, then went to college and became a teacher. Now she works at Cangleska as chief advocate for the battered women who seek its services.
Cangleska spokeswoman Kay Humphrey said American Indian women don't do as well in white-run shelters. "Mainstream shelters are not equipped to help people who walk between two societies," she said.
Cangleska "arose not from the tribe or the state but from a small group of volunteers who saw a need," Humphrey said. "There was nowhere (for a battered woman) to go. Distances are prohibitive. In the city, police respond in three minutes. Here it's a hour -- if they show at all."
Cangleska aims not only to provide a safe environment for victims of domestic violence but to restore their self-esteem and improve their lives, partly by returning them to the traditional values of the Lakota, the westernmost part of the Great Sioux Nation. That means helping the men, too.
"Men are our husbands, our fathers, our sons. We love them," Artichoker said. "We want them to have good lives -- to be the kind of men our ancestors would want them to be."
Joblessness is debilitating to a Lakota man, whose forebears were hunters and warriors. "It eats away at his pride," Humphrey said. "It has always been important among the Sioux to be capable and reliable."
www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/nation/15318780.htm?source=rss&channel=duluthsuperior_nation
BY JUDY PERES
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
KYLE, S.D. - If there is hope for a better future on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, it may lie in the ramshackle plywood building that houses the Cangleska women's shelter.
Everyone here acknowledges that it will take economic development to cure the body of the desperately poor reservation on the edge of the Badlands. But Cangleska is healing its spirit.
Cangleska Inc., which runs another shelter in Rapid City, S.D., and a 24-hour hot line, aims to save future generations by breaking the cycle of alcoholism and domestic violence.
"We're a vulnerable population," said Karen Artichoker, co-founder of Cangleska (the Lakota word for medicine wheel). "Many women and their families, from birth to death, their lives are characterized by addiction, violence, lots of pain. Lots of pain."
"Debbie," whose ex-husband beat her in a drunken rage, was at the shelter last month.
"I'm trying to heal here," she said as her 2-year-old daughter played quietly with other mothers and children in the communal living room. "Then they help you get to a safer place."
Debbie, who asked not to use her real name, said she didn't know what would have happened if the shelter hadn't been available. "We'd still be running," she said.
Debbie is missing her four front teeth, a souvenir of the time her ex-husband came at her with a crowbar and kicked her in the face when she fell, she said. She's hoping to get to Minnesota through the network of women's shelters, which acts like a kind of underground railroad.
Between 300 and 600 women a year come through the shelter, along with 600 to 900 children, Artichoker said. The center's outreach advocates serve another 800 to 1,500 women a year on a reservation with a population of about 20,000.
Domestic violence is epidemic in Indian country, often linked to the high rates of alcoholism and drug abuse. According to U.S. Justice Department statistics, Indian women are sexually assaulted at a rate more than three times higher than white women.
The rate of severe alcohol dependency on the reservation is at least double the national average, with some estimates as high as 85 percent.
The counties that comprise the Pine Ridge Reservation, home of the Oglala Lakota, are among the poorest in the nation. More than one-third of the population lives below the poverty line. Median household income hovers around $20,000 a year -- and many households consist of large extended families living in a single trailer.
With an unemployment rate on the reservation of 83 percent, Artichoker said, "You're seen as privileged if you have a job."
Norma Rendon's story is typical. As a child, she said, everyone around her drank.
"My dad drank a lot," Rendon said, "and with the alcohol came violence."
She married a Navy man at 18 and moved to Memphis to escape her home life, but found that she had jumped "from the frying pan into the fire."
"First he belittled me, then he shoved me, then he slapped me," Rendon said. "I thought, 'At least he doesn't punch me with his fist.' Then the fist started."
By the time she acknowledged that she needed to get out of the marriage, she had three small children.
"I was afraid," Rendon said. "How will I make it? But I wanted to come home. I missed the powwows and the ceremonies."
When told she wanted a divorce, "he got real angry. He saw me and my children as his property -- like the truck and the boat."
All that was 30 years ago. With the help of prayer and the support of a young-mothers group, Rendon turned her life around. She worked as a teacher's aide in an American Indian school, then went to college and became a teacher. Now she works at Cangleska as chief advocate for the battered women who seek its services.
Cangleska spokeswoman Kay Humphrey said American Indian women don't do as well in white-run shelters. "Mainstream shelters are not equipped to help people who walk between two societies," she said.
Cangleska "arose not from the tribe or the state but from a small group of volunteers who saw a need," Humphrey said. "There was nowhere (for a battered woman) to go. Distances are prohibitive. In the city, police respond in three minutes. Here it's a hour -- if they show at all."
Cangleska aims not only to provide a safe environment for victims of domestic violence but to restore their self-esteem and improve their lives, partly by returning them to the traditional values of the Lakota, the westernmost part of the Great Sioux Nation. That means helping the men, too.
"Men are our husbands, our fathers, our sons. We love them," Artichoker said. "We want them to have good lives -- to be the kind of men our ancestors would want them to be."
Joblessness is debilitating to a Lakota man, whose forebears were hunters and warriors. "It eats away at his pride," Humphrey said. "It has always been important among the Sioux to be capable and reliable."
www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/nation/15318780.htm?source=rss&channel=duluthsuperior_nation