Land allotment and dam flooding drive current Lakota social pathology

Evidence

Brave Heart-Jordan, who is from Pine Ridge, argues that the Lakota’s unresolved grief, what she describes as “a repercussion of the loss of lives, land, and aspects of culture rendered by the European conquest of the Americas,” is a “significant factor contributing to current Lakota social pathology.” In addition to obvious factors such as massacres, forced attendance at boarding schools, and starvation policies, Brave Heart-Jordan notes specifically that the allotment process (the removal of Indians from their land); the flooding of the Cheyenne River, Standing Rock, Crow Creek, and Lower Brule reservations; and the subsequent leasing of those lands to non-Indian ranchers have all contributed significantly to the loss of self-sufficiency and self-esteem in these communities. — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations, 747

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to Johnson v. M’Intosh/doctrine-of-discovery land-loss legal terrain and to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich-style land/place reading; the allotment and forced-cession mechanism recurs through the polyad. — connects to: The 1887 General Allotment Act cut reservation lands by two-thirds — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 724; Buffalo decimation caused the Lakota’s spiritual and ethnic death — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 748; Lakota alcoholism and suicide rates vastly exceed national averages — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 745 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Buffalo decimation caused the Lakota’s spiritual and ethnic death #expands (0.85) — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations, 748
• The near-extermination of the buffalo devastated Plains nations partly as deliberate strategy #corroborates (0.85) — , A Year of World Stories, 10112
• Lakota alcoholism and suicide rates vastly exceed national averages #exemplifies (0.80) — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations, 745
• Animal species loss inflicts spiritual and psychological harm on Indigenous peoples #expands (0.80) — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 1649
• Forced individualism damages society the way dams damage watersheds #corroborates (0.80) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 510
• Buffalo restoration is tied to restoring Native social and political structure #expands (0.80) — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations, 804
• Settler violence and dispossession are ecological harms when measured by relational resilience #corroborates (0.80) — Kyle Whyte, Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and…, 97
• Indigenous communities frame environmental harms as threats to cultural survival, not ecology #responds-to (0.75) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 233