Cheyenne River Statistics
Children living in Cheyenne River, South Dakota, the 4th largest Indian reservation in the U.S. are challenged by having…
- the highest child poverty rate in the nation,
- 50% of the people living below the poverty line,
- an unemployment rate of 75-85%,
- approximately 10% of those employed working part-time
- and teen suicide rate that is 3.5 times the national average.
South Dakota Statistics
- In South Dakota, Native American children make up only 15 percent of the child population, yet they make up more than half the children in foster care. An NPR News investigation has found that the state is removing 700 native children every year, sometimes in questionable circumstances. According to a review of state records, it is also largely failing to place native children with their relatives or tribes. According to state records, almost 90 percent of the kids in family foster care are in non-native homes or group care. See NPR story »
- Although American Indian children comprise only 14% of the children in South Dakota, American Indian children accounted for 60% of children in foster care in South Dakota in 2012.
- On June 4, 2013, a draft complaint was delivered to United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights officials Giorgia Passarelli and Rekia Soumana in New York City regarding the removal of thousands of Native American children from their families and tribes in South Dakota. See Aljazeera article »
Native American Children
“One-quarter of Indian children live in poverty, versus 13 percent in the United States. They graduate high school at a rate 17 percent lower than the national average. Their substance-abuse rates are higher. They’re twice as likely as any other race to die before the age of 24. They have a 2.3 percent higher rate of exposure to trauma. They have two times the rate of abuse and neglect. Their experience with post-traumatic stress disorder rivals the rates of returning veterans from Afghanistan.” See Washington Post article »
Suicide Rates of Young Native Americans
- A youth-suicide epidemic is sweeping Indian country, with Native American teens and young adults killing themselves at more than triple the rate of other young Americans, according to federal government figures. In pockets of the United States, suicide among Native American youth is 9 to 19 times as frequent as among other youths, and rising. NBC News story »
- What is happening at Rosebud is all too common throughout Indian Country. American Indian and Alaska Native youth 15 to 24 years old are committing suicide at a rate more than three times the national average for their age group of 13 per 100,000 people, according to the surgeon general. Often, one suicide leads to another. For these youths, suicide has become the second-leading cause of death (after accidents). In the Great Plains, the suicide rate among Indian youth is the worst: 10 times the national average. See The New York Times article »
- Teenage suicide rate on the Pine Ridge Reservation is 150% higher than the U.S. national average for this age group. http://www.backpacksforpineridge.com/Stats_About_Pine_Ridge.html
http://www.4aihf.org/id40.html - The children are the most vulnerable victims of the historic inequalities and disadvantage: the youth attempted suicide rate is estimated at 7-10 times the national average. In 2009 and 2015, the Oglala Lakota declared a Suicide State of Emergency on the Reservation, particularly among the youth. On the first 110 days of 2013, Pine Ridge saw 100 attempted suicides by youth as young as 6 years old. From the end of December 2014 through early February, 2015 five young people took their own lives, and many more attempted suicide. http://lakotachildren.org/pine-ridge-reservation
- In 2007 alone, the reservation’s suicide rate soared to 141 per 100,000 people – and a staggering 201 per 100,000 for males ages 15 to 24, what some experts call among the highest incidence in the world. Read NDN News Article »
- But the silence that has shrouded suicide in Indian country is being pierced by growing alarm at the sheer number of young Native Americans taking their own lives — more than three times the national average, and up to 10 times on some reservations. See Washington Post article »
- Among American Indians/Alaska Natives aged 15- to 34-years, suicide is the second leading cause of death. The suicide rate among American Indian/Alaska Native adolescents and young adults ages 15 to 34 (31 per 100,000) is 2.5 times higher than the national average for that age group (12.2 per 100,000). CDC statistics »