Statistics:

• Rapid City, South Dakota, is the nearest town of size (population  approximately 57,700) for those who can travel to find work. It is  located 120 miles from the Reservation. The nearest large city to Pine  Ridge is Denver, Colorado, located some 350 miles away.
• 97% of the population lives far  below the U.S. federal poverty line with a median household income  ranging between $2,600 and $3,500 per year.
• There is no industry, technology or commercial infrastructure to  provide employment for its residents, contributing to its 90%  unemployment rate.
• There are no banks, motels, discount stores, and the one grocery  store of moderate size is tasked with providing for the entire  community.
• There is a 70% high school dropout rate.
• The average life expectancy on the Reservation is 47 years for men and 52 years for women.
• Teenage suicide rate is 150% higher than the U.S. national average.
• Infant mortality rate is the highest on this continent, and about 300% higher than the U.S. national average.
• There’s an estimated average of 17 people living in each family  home, a home that may only have two to three rooms. Some Reservation  families are forced to sleep on dirt floors.
• Over 33% of homes have no electricity or basic water and sewage  systems, forcing many to carry (often contaminated) water from local  rivers daily for their personal needs.
• At least 60% of homes on the Reservation need to be demolished and  replaced due to infestation of potentially fatal black mold; however,  there are no insurance or government programs to assist families in  replacing their homes.
• Weather is extreme on the Reservation. Severe winds are always a  factor. Summer temperatures reach well over 110 degrees and winters  bring bitter cold and can reach -50 degrees below zero or worse.

 Please watch video to learn more.

 Aaron Huey’s effort to photograph poverty in America led him to the Pine  Ridge Indian Reservation, where the struggle of the native Lakota  people — appalling, and largely ignored — compelled him to refocus. Five  years of work later, his haunting photos intertwine with a shocking  history lesson. 

• Since 2008, New Mexico has had one of the highest rates of drug overdose death in the United States.
• Between 2008-2012, almost every county in New Mexico had a higher drug overdose death rate than the rate for the entire United States.
• In some New Mexico counties, the overdose death rates were more than five times the national rate.
• According to CDC, New Mexico had the third highest drug overdose death rate in the nation in 2013, the second highest in 2014, and remained in the highest age-adjusted rate category in the nation in 2015.
• The New Mexico Department of Health estimates that in 2007 alone prescription opioid abuse, and misuse cost New Mexico $890 million, taking into account costs such as excess medical and prescription costs, lost earnings from premature deaths, and the costs of correctional facility and police services.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. American Indian tribal leaders from northern New Mexico -- an area of the country devastated by heroin and opioid addiction -- met with the U.S. Justice Department over ways to combat opioid abuse amid high overdose deaths among Native Americans.

And both sides say much more needs to be done.

Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohris spoke with representatives and police chiefs from the eight northern New Mexico Native American pueblos Tuesday as part of a push to combat heroin-related deaths across the state, including Indian Country. They discussed ways for better treatment, the need for more law enforcement resources and the desire for an educational blitz targeting American Indian children as young as 8.

“Here in New Mexico we are facing an epidemic,” U.S. Attorney Damon Martinez said. “One of the (pueblo) governors brought pictures of these hypodermic needles they are picking up on a daily basis.”

New Mexico’s drug overdose death rate was the second highest in the nation in 2014, according to the latest available numbers.

For years, the northern New Mexico city of Espanola and northern Rio Arriba County have had some of the nation’s highest heroin-related death rates. The crisis has overwhelmed cash-strapped law enforcement agencies and emergency workers who often struggle to combat Mexican traffickers who provide users lethal “black tar” heroin via a sophisticated system that resembles pizza delivery.

“It’s a wildfire that’s taking off,” Pueblo of Pojoaque Gov. Joseph Talachy said. “It started off small, but then it took off.”
But now the users have gone underground, and the pueblo struggles to bring non-American Indians to justice because of jurisdiction, Talachy said.
According to the new numbers released Tuesday by the New Mexico Department of Health, Rio Arriba County had the highest drug overdose death rate in the state with 81.4 deaths per 100,000 residents last year.

“The fact is, our state continues to suffer from drug abuse. One overdose death is one too many,” New Mexico Health Secretary Designate Lynn Gallagher said.

But health officials say heroin and opioid addiction​ especially has hit American Indian communities across the country as the number of overdose deaths from prescription painkillers has soared overall, claiming the lives of 165,000 people in the U.S. since 2000.
A National Institute on Drug Abuse survey found that American Indian students’ annual heroin and OxyContin use was about two to three times higher than the national averages from 2009 to 2012.

Heroin and opioid abuse have even stuck in the most remote parts of the country among American Indians.

In Alaska’s Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region, for example, state health officials say the isolated area of Alaska Native villages and 25,000 residents has around 500 people addicted to opioids. Most of these Alaska villages don’t have treatment centers for drug users.
Earlier this month, tribal officials in the southwestern Alaska village of Quinhagak banished six people over illegal drugs and alcohol. The move came after the village of 700 residents saw four apparent heroin overdoses in one day.

Meanwhile, a nonprofit prescription drug abuse prevention program in Maine is helping make available the drug Narcan to the state’s five Native American tribes. Narcan, whose generic name is naloxone, is a prescription drug that reverses the effects of an opioid overdose. The program set up five clinics on tribal land thanks to a federal grant.
The Justice Department meeting in Albuquerque is part of the New Mexico Heroin and Opioid Prevention and Education Initiative.