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DEATH OF OUR YOUTH - NATIVE GANGS - Spirit Hawk ^i^ Traditionally an urban problem, gang involvement is growing on our reservations. Poverty, family stress, and school dropout characterize the lives of gang members. More than 70 % of incarcerated delinquents also have learning disabilities which factor into the chronic truancy, school failure, and alienation that accompany gang involvement.
Drug use, violence, and criminal activity are the norm. Underlying these negative attributes is a detachment from hope--gang members believe they have nothing to lose. Gang members seldom finish school, have few prospects for employment, and find conventional opportunities out of their reach.
Most reservations lack basic infrastructure, including phone service, adequate housing, and reliable health care. Few jobs are available and life expectancies are as low as 48 years.
The high rates of adolescent suicide, depression, alcoholism, and school dropout rates indicate the toll that chronic poverty takes on our reservation youth.
Tribal children were traditionally shielded from gang activity by two conditions: the presence of tribal culture providing participation and identity, and rural isolation that made it difficult for teenagers to find drugs, cars, and weapons.
The recent surge in gang activity reflects both a growing loss of culture and community and a growing exposure to urban environments.
Consider this; the only on-site assessment of reservation gang activity, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) study " Finding and Knowing the Gang 'Nayee' on the Navajo Nation " reported that the Navajo gang members were likely to be non-speakers of their native tongue; report severe problems in school; come from urbanized, poor, and generally dysfunctional families; and lack contact with clan members and tribal ceremonies. In other words they were adrift, marginalized equivalents of their non-Indian peers.
OK folks, that is what the government has to say about the issue. Now what does it mean to us?
We were once a very proud people. (That pride has been stripped from us) We once spoke a diversity of our own languages. ( We were taught it was wrong to speak them.)
We once roamed free from coast to coast and border to border. (We were forced to live on land no one else wanted. That is until they found it contained things of great value to the government and those greedy for money. Now, they don't want the land we are left with, they just want what they can get from it.)
We were once self sufficient, rich in the blessings of our Creator. (Now we are poor and rely on hand outs, for not only are there no ways to make an honest living...there is no hope of there ever being any.)
We once had traditions and a connection with the Creator that had seen us through hundreds of years. ( We were taught that those things were foolish and of no value. That our religions were wrong and that the only right religion was that of our conquerors. A religion that even they themselves can not agree on. )
We once were a healthy and strong people. ( Now we are devastated by disease, drug and substance abuse. )
So, I ask you, is it any wonder that our youth has a higher suicide rate of all other Races combined? That they join gangs?
They look to their parents and see the hopelessness, they see the alcohol and substance abuse in them.
Our youth have no hope of bettering themselves " UNLESS", unless they follow what the White Man forced on us many years ago. That is to throw away all that makes them who they are, throw away their customs, their language, their homes. To survive you must follow the White Mans ways.
Our youth look for a sense of belonging, a sense of hope...even if it only extends a very short time into a very shaky future.
They've learned that money is everything and you can not survive with out it.... so they get it any way they can.
They've learned that spirituality means nothing...it is for old fools.
They've learned that alcohol and drugs kill the pain.
That drugs even bring the money they need to buy the things they want, things that others get so easily, but that comes so hard for them.
So why do our youth join gangs?
Why do they kill themselves?
It's because they have no pride in who they are nor where they come from.
They have no hope of any kind of a decent future.
They are backed into a wall and forced to fight the only way they know how.
That includes the youth that grow up in cities as well as on the reservations.
In short, when every thing is stripped from you, and there is nothing left but an empty shell, then life ceases to have value.
For all the stats the government quotes and all their studies, it's really as simple as that.
They have been taught that LIFE HAS NO VALUE!
What can we do to save our youth? The answer is not simple.
First we must teach them that no matter how bleak things look, life does have a value.
We must strive to give them hope and show them that we believe what we are telling them ourselves. That it is not just empty words.
We must reconnect with our Creator and see to that our children do too.
We must demand better schools and mental and physical health facilities and qualified people to run them. Substance abuse programs run by people who care.
We must demand job programs so our youth have hopes of an honest future where they can support themselves and raise a family.
We must know who their friends are and what they are doing, not just ignore and assume all is ok.....or worse yet just not care.
We must teach them that we were once a proud and strong people....and that WE SHALL BE AGAIN.
So says, Spirit Hawk ^i^
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