We shall remain.

Matika Wilbur is one of the the Pacific Northwest’s leading photographers. Matika, a Native American woman of the Swinomish and Tulalip Tribes (Washington), is unique as an artist and social documentarian in Indian Country. The insight, depth, and passion with which she explores the contemporary Native identity and experience are communicated through the impeccable artistry of each of her silver gelating photographs.

She is currently working on Project 562, a national documentary project dedicated to photographing contemporary Native America. Matika is gathering original photographic images and oral narratives from all Tribal communities throughout the United States, organizing and presenting compelling portraits and stories from elders, culture bearers, linguists, teachers, activists, artists, professionals, and other contemporary Indians. As Matika explains, “My goal is to represent Native people from every tribe. By exposing the astonishing variety of the Indian presence and reality at this juncture, we will build cultural bridges, abandon stereotypes, and renew and inspire our national legacy.”

To learn more about Project 562, visit project562.com

Mary Brave Bird was a Sicangu Lakota writer and activist who was a member of the American Indian Movement during the 1970s and participated in some of their most publicized events, including the Wounded Knee Incident when she was 18 years old.

Brave Bird was the author of two memoirs, Lakota Woman (1990) and Ohitika Woman (1993). Lakota Woman was published under the name Mary Crow Dog and won the 1991 American Book Award. It describes her life until 1977. Ohitika Woman continues her life story.Her books describe the conditions of the Lakota Indian and her experience growing up on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, as well as conditions in the neighboring Pine Ridge Indian Reservation under the leadership of tribal chairman Richard Wilson. She also covers aspects of the role of the FBI, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs and the treatment of the Native Americans and their children in the mid-1900s. Her work focuses on themes of gender, identity, and race.

The people who live in the northwest corner of New Mexico consider Darlene Arviso to be a living saint.

"Everybody knows me around here. They'll be waving at me," she says from behind the wheel of the St. Bonaventure Indian Mission water truck. "They call me the water lady."

That's because Arviso hauls water for tribe members of the Navajo Nation, where, on average, residents use 7 gallons a day to drink, cook, bathe and clean. The average person in the U.S. uses about 100 gallons a day.

Arviso drives to 250 homes a month, filling residents' plastic barrels, buckets, jars and any other containers the families have. When people see the giant yellow truck coming down the road, Navajo member Georgianna Johnson says, it's as if they've seen Santa coming down the chimney.

"You know what we do? 'The water truck's coming! Get the buckets ready!' We get all happy. Today's the day I'm going to take a bath," Johnson says.

About 40 percent of the Navajo Nation has to make their water stretch. The water here in Smith Lake comes from the St. Bonaventure Indian Mission well, about 50 miles away.

For more than three decades, the mission has provided water to this Navajo community.

But the once-a-month water truck deliveries are far from the perfect solution. The roads often become impassable in the winter, and barrels run dry. Many resort to melting snow or collecting water from livestock basins.

So the mission has sought help from George McGraw, the founder of a nonprofit called DIGDEEP. It provides water systems to developing countries.

"It really is an incredible injustice. If you're born Navajo, you're 67 times more likely not to have a tap or toilet in your house than if you're born black, white, Asian- or Hispanic-American," McGraw says.

- NPR

DIGDEEP is currently working in this corner of the Navajo Nation to find a solution to provide clean, running water to Navajo families in the area as well as blankets. DIGDEEP is non-profit, so every donation is precious. All proceeds go directly to project costs and donors will receive progress reports via email. You can also donate by buying handmade Navajo blankets, bracelets or artwork through DIGDEEP’s website.

This coincided with a man speaking about the genocide of American Indians at my local college. Afterwards, I talked to the speaker and then to the man standing next to him. The man next to him was named Tom and told me that he was apart of the Confederated Tribes of Grande Ronde. In my ignorance, I asked him about his "spiritual/ native" name and he graciously answered my questions about how he got it, etc. It wasn't until later that I learned this is rightly considered inappropriate and disrespectful. He was very kind to me. I mentioned the paper I was going to write and I briefly said something like, "I wasn't aware of how the oppression from so long ago still affects what happens today," to which he replied, "Yes, that's what people don't understand. The oppression. Write about it, talk about it. People need to know."

Something about the way he said it has stuck with me these past two years. It encourages me that 357 people are reading these posts. 

Thank you.

FARMINGTON, N.M. — Navajo Code Talkers became legendary for using their native tongue during World War II to transmit messages the enemy could not decipher. To this day, they are celebrated at parades and honored at military events nationwide.

They’ve shaken hands with presidents, and their heroics have been portrayed in a major motion picture.

But when they return home to Navajo country, it’s often to something less than Hollywood splendor. Some Code Talkers live without electricity or running water. Others lack central heating. One Code Talker even lives in a house that has been struck by lightning, which is taboo in Navajo tradition. The lightning strike left a mark that is visible above the door. 

Recently, a group of Navajo Code Talkers and their families gathered at a community center and expressed their disappointment in the difficult housing conditions many of them face.

They detailed their concerns and frustrations to a Los Angeles Times reporter.

Two code Talkers, their wives, a widow and daughter laid out their grievances. Alfred Newman Sr. and his wife, Betsy, said they feel a bit used when paraded around at events.

“People talk about Code Talkers. They say how famous they are,” Betsy Newman said.

Every person in the room told similar stories.

Anne Tso, widow of Code Talker Samuel Nakai Tso, spoke about how her husband died recently without seeing the dream of his tribe-sponsored home completed.

Across the room, Samuel F. Sandoval, a 90-year-old Code Talker, said his wife must work several jobs to make improvements to their home.

“They don’t feel like they are famous,” Newman said.

The hard lives — and high suicide rate — of Native American children on reservations

SACATON, ARIZ. The tamarisk tree down the dirt road from Tyler Owens’s house is the one where the teenage girl who lived across the road hanged herself. Don’t climb it, don’t touch it, admonished Owens’s grandmother when Tyler, now 18, was younger.

There are other taboo markers around the Gila River Indian reservation — eight young people committed suicide here over the course of a single year.

“We’re not really open to conversation about suicide,” Owens said. “It’s kind of like a private matter, a sensitive topic. If a suicide happens, you’re there for the family. Then after that, it’s kind of just, like, left alone.”

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.

A toxic collection of pathologies — poverty, unemployment, domestic violence, sexual assault, alcoholism and drug addiction — has seeped into the lives of young people among the nation’s 566 tribes. Reversing their crushing hopelessness, Indian experts say, is one of the biggest challenges for these communities.

“The circumstances are absolutely dire for Indian children,” said Theresa M. Pouley, the chief judge of the Tulalip Tribal Court in Washington state and a member of the Indian Law and Order Commission.

Pouley fluently recites statistics in a weary refrain: “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.”

In one of the broadest studies of its kind, the Justice Department recently created a national task force to examine the violence and its impact on American Indian and Alaska Native children, part of an effort to reduce the number of Native American youth in the criminal justice system. The level of suicide has startled some task force officials, who consider the epidemic another outcome of what they see as pervasive despair.

Last month, the task force held a hearing on the reservation of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community in Scottsdale. During their visit, Associate Attorney General Tony West, the third-highest-ranking Justice Department official, and task force members drove to Sacaton, about 30 miles south of Phoenix, and met with Owens and 14 other teenagers.

“How many of you know a young person who has taken their life?” the task force’s co-chairman asked. All 15 raised their hands.

“That floored me,” West said.