Child's Play, The Citizen, August 2008

Invisible Nation

Gregory K. Moffatt, Ph.D.

"Does your daddy hit you?" the four-year-old girl asked me matter-of-factly as she sat next to me. Dede* went on to tell me that her "daddy drinks" and she lives with her "other brothers." She had nine brothers and sisters from a number of permutations of adults in her life. Three of her top front teeth were completely rotted off at the root and the fourth was just about gone. But despite her terrible dental hygiene, lice, and her heart-breaking family situation, she was a beautiful child.

Each year I invest some of my summer months working with Native American children from various reservations in Arizona and every time I'm there I meet children like Dede. For example, I met a 16-year-old girl who asked me why it wasn't OK for her to run away from home.

"My parents don't care if I'm gone and they always let me come home. Why can't I do what I want?" she asked me. That was a tough question for me to answer, especially when I knew that her parents seriously neglected her. In reality, running away probably improved her situation in many ways, but I couldn't tell her that.

I talked with another teen who had never been off of the Apache reservation and when I asked her about her dreams she said she wanted to be a welder. There is nothing wrong with being a welder, but in her world, her choices were limited and the highest goal she could think of achieving was being a welder. On the reservation, once children reach adolescence, there is little for them to do. Family dysfunction is punctuated by mind-numbing boredom. Gangs, vandalism, drugs, and alcohol are the easiest anesthetics. At least this young lady picked an option that could provide an income for her and her family.

Just a few days before I arrived in July, a young man had been beaten and hanged from a cliff in one of the most destitute villages on the Apache reservation. This little village has the highest suicide rate of any Native-American tribe anywhere in the U.S. That is a staggering statistic when you find out that Native-American youth in general commit suicide 2.5 times more often than the general population.

Statistics for other social ills are just as chilling. Alcoholism among Native-American teens has been counted as high as 80%. One study on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota showed teen gang involvement at 3,500 - that in a community of only 15,000 people. The divorce rate among Native-Americans is 57% compared to about 48% among the U.S. population in general. Unemployment on some reservations is as LOW as 50% and as high as 80% on others compared to 4.5% among the rest of the U.S. population. Almost half of all Native-American women are physically assaulted at home, 27% report having been raped, and 75% report having been sexually abused sometime in their lives.

It is easy to believe that these bad things happen to "those people" in "that far away place" and to simply forget about them. But the frightening truth is that these social ills are happening right here in the United States of America. I've traveled nearly every continent in the world and I've seen poor, starving people. Yet to know that within our own U.S. borders we have situations like those I've described above is overwhelming. What makes it worse is the fact that nobody seems to know it. The last U.S. Census listed 562 Native American tribes, but I doubt the average American could name ten, excluding the ones that are sports team mascots.

Just a week after I returned home, I received a note from a friend in Arizona. She is working with a teen whose parents like it when she is gone. With twenty people in the house, her absence is welcomed. What hope does she have? The struggles go on even when we can't see it.

The more I learn about this population the more I'm resolved to do two things. First, I'm determined not to forget. I don't want to forget Dede or any of the other families I have met these past few years. I don't want to forget their struggles and I don't want to forget their many needs. I will do my best to make their struggle visible to a world that doesn't seem to know they exist.

Second, I'm determined to put my own family problems in perspective. I am eternally grateful that my children have the luxury of growing up where they do. In the context of what I see on the reservation, the troubles my children face are usually trivial. I'm thankful for their little problems.

*Not her real name.

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