Local Church Hosts Teens from South Dakota Indian Reservation Sharing Stories of Suicide, Abuse, Violence

WESTHAMPTON-HAMPTON BAYS-The 11 teens file quietly into the room at the Westhampton Presbyterian Church, their eyes dark with horrors yet untold.

The young people, members of the Oglala Lakota Indian tribe, traveled this weekend from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to Westhampton on a trip organized by Wings as Eagles Ministries and meant to open the teens’ eyes to a new world, a world where the staggering number of teen suicides they experience, along with violence, incest, sexual abuse and poverty, are not the norm — where dreams can take flight.

According to Lori Mcafee, founder of WAE Ministries with her husband Gary, the trip was life-altering.

The teens first headed to New York City, then to a church in West Sayville before arriving at Westhampton Presbyterian Church, where they met with their host families and visited the Long Island Aquarium and Exhibition Center — as well as to the beach in Westhampton.

On Sunday night, they headed to the next church in Mineola.

Members of the Shinnecock Indian Nation turned out on Sunday to the Westhampton Beach Presbyterian church service to show solidarity with the teens.

Her eyes filled with tears, Mcafee described seeing the children at the ocean’s edge for the first time. “These are kids who have been to hell and back, and back again,” she said. “We watched the chains come off.”

She added, “They’ve never left the reservation. They were like caged animals, finally set free.”

The teens, she said, were laughing and running, free from the dark memories of their life on the reservation.

The statistics regarding life on the Pine Ridge Reservation are grim: According to the American Indian Humanitarian Foundation, the Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota, or Sioux, Indian Reservation sits in Bennett, Jackson, and Shannon Counties and is located in the southwest corner of South Dakota, 50 miles east of the Wyoming border.

The 11,000-square mile, or over 2 million acre, Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation is the second-largest Native American reservation within the United States, roughly the size of Connecticut.

Recent reports point out widespread poverty: The median income on the Pine Ridge Reservation is approximately $2,600 per year, with an unemployment rate between 85 and 95 percent and no industry, technology, or commercial infrastructure on the reservation to provide employment.

The nearest town, which provides some jobs for those few persons able to travel the distance, is Rapid City, South Dakota, located approximately 120 miles from the reservation — residents of the reservation must travel 100 miles to reach the nearest store.

Mcafee said she has seen women with strollers and even once, a woman in a wheelchair in the winter, trying to walk to the store.

Teen suicide rampant

The teen suicide rate on the Pine Ridge Reservation is 150 percent higher than the U.S. national average for this age group, statistics indicate; between December and March of 2015, more than 200 teenagers either committed suicide or tried to end their lives, the American Indian Humanitarian Foundation said. That’s the highest teen suicide rate in the United States, Mcafee said.

More than half the reservation’s adults battle addiction and disease, the group added.

According to missionary Cynthia Tandy, who traveled to Westhampton Beach with the teens, the high school dropout rate is currently 88 percent on the reservation.

More than 8,000 homeless teens live on the reservation, Mcafee said.

Another issue centers on overcrowded homes, exist, statistics indicate, and the death rate from alcohol-related problems on the reservation is 300 percent higher than the remaining United States population.

Seated around the table, with an open box of Dunkin Donuts, a treat that does not exists on the reservation, the teens opened up about their lives.

Stories of heartbreak

The teens who sat respectfully in the pews at Westhampton Presbyterian Church listened, and even read the gospel to the congregation in their native language, hugged one another, and offered support as the others shared their stories before the church service.

The stories evoked tears.

One young girl, 13, tried to hang herself twice when she was only eight years old, Mcafee said. “She said something caused her to take herself off the rope.”

Describing the young people’s reaction to the trip, Mcafee said, “They can’t believe there’s another world. Most are raped on a regular basis.”

The teens are isolated on their desolate reservation, a sovereign nation, she said.

Her voice quiet, one young woman described how it felt to have her friends commit suicide. “It hurts,” she said. “I wish I was born when Crazy Horse was alive.”

Crazy Horse was a war leader of the Ogala Lakota, who led the group to victory in 1876; life on the reservation has declined after his death, she said.

“Their generation needs help,” Mcafee said. ”Everyone is too afraid to ask for help.”

“We’re used to rejection,” one young woman said quietly.

Her friend nodded. She said when a teen attempts suicide, they are sent to a mental health facility in Rapid City where they are just given antidepressants, which just exacerbate the dark thoughts.

“I tried to kill myself 11 times,” she told Patch.

Another girl said she had a close friend who committed suicide in March. “I’m still trying to get over it,” she said. Before her friend died, she had been six months “clean” without self-harming and cutting herself, she said. “When she died, I did it again. I wished I could go deeper,” she said.

Now, she finds comfort in talking to her friend’s mother, or even, in talking to her friend, in her heart.

Another young man said he lost 10 friends, one every year, as he was growing up. “It was hard for me,” he said. Later, he lost his uncle and his aunt, he said.

“Violence can be pretty bad on the reservation,” he said, adding that gangs exist. ”I saw someone kill another guy with a baseball bat, down the road,” he said. “It was scary.”

Help is not readily available, all the teens agree, due to deeply ingrained racism against Native Americans. ”The racism is horrible,” one young woman said.

While it isn’t easy to share the stories of loss and fear, Tandy said it’s critical. “They do want to talk about it. They want to release these things. It’s important,” she said.

Mcafee’s eye’s filled as she described finding a 12-year-old boy hanging from a rope in 2001.

“That was a turning point for me,” she said.

Circle of Love

That’s when the dream for the Circle of Love Children’s Shelter was born. The Dream Center on Pine Ridge sits on 114 acres on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Currently, Phase 1 is complete, featuring a 6,500 temporary sanctuary for WAEM’s ministries, storehouse, offices, a distribution center, kids’ classroom, and outdoor basketball court. Currently underway are bath and bunk houses, a cafeteria, BMX track and playground.

But still ahead is the Circle of Love children’s home, “desperately needed for our Lakota children that are homeless”, Mcafee said. The facility will sit on 20 acres and house up to 140 children ages 5 to 18. Also included in the plans are a sanctuary and greenhouse.

What’s critical, Mcafee said, is bridging the “missing link” so teens are afforded host families and job opportunities off the reservation. ”These kids want a different way of life,” she said.

The need is urgent, Mcafee said, to help the children whose lives are built on hopelessness and despair. “These kids are our heritage,” she said. “What are we doing, if this country says, ‘We don’t care if you live like dogs?’”

But the first strides have been taken, as the teens, even if they were afraid, fundraised for their New York trip and then, took their first hesitant steps onto a plane.

Describing their trip to the aquarium and the beach, the kids smiled, laughed, and hugged one another freely. And, when asked how the group has helped them to overcome the pain of their lives, one young woman said, ,”This is our circle of love.”

After the church service, one of the girls was overheard crying in the bathroom.

When asked why, the answer was all too familiar: A friend from the reservation had just committed suicide.

For information on the Circle of Love, click here.