Program's demise leaves 'nothing to do'
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BY CRAIG HENRY / Lincoln Journal Star
PINE RIDGE, S.D. — Sweat soaked through the 15-year-old’s grease-stained T-shirt as he guided a 1,500-pound panel into place.
“Too low,” Robert Janis said, his Florida State cap turned backward in the glaring sun.
To make extra cash — and to pass the time — Janis was putting together carnival rides like the Tilt-A-Whirl at the annual Oglala Nation powwow.
Normally, he and hundreds of other Pine Ridge teens and young adults would be working at the Youth Opportunity Movement center — running 3-on-3 basketball or mowing lawns or picking up trash.
But the center closed in May.
And they have little to do, no place to go.
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During its six years, the Oglala Sioux Tribe Youth Opportunity Movement employed more than 600 reservation youth each summer, painting houses, picking up trash, making a difference in the community. The program, YO for short, was financed by a $15.9 million federal grant through the U.S. Department of Labor. Each of the reservation’s nine districts had its own program.
It was designed to serve young people 14 to 21, and to teach them necessary life skills and help them break cycles that lead to poverty and despondency in a place where the unemployment rate can reach double digits.
Since the grant ran out and the program closed in May, the young people it served have too much time to kill, said former Youth Opportunity Director Doni DeCory.
“I see a lot of kids getting into trouble now,” she said. “One was just sentenced to three years for accessory to assault.”
Her staff tried to keep the program going. They even tried to volunteer their time, she said, but the tribe wouldn’t allow it.
Former Tribal President Cecelia Fire Thunder said some people on Pine Ridge have tried to blame the tribe for the program closing, but it’s not at fault.
“They ran out of money, that’s it,” she said. “The tribe is not in a financial situation to support the program.”
Youth Opportunity took a big financial burden off the tribe, DeCory said. It helped kids with school expenses and gave out more than $20,000 in scholarships every year. The program even loaned the tribe money for its payroll.
“We helped them out,” DeCory said. “Why can’t they help us out?”
That’s not the tribe’s responsibility, said Fire Thunder.
“The staff at YO were paid good money to look for additional resources,” she said. “It was their responsibility to sustain it.”
Crystal Eagle Elk, treasurer for the tribe, said there was no way the tribe could have helped.
“It was a really good program,” she said. “But we don’t have extra money lying around. There’s no way we could pick it up.”
DeCory’s staff applied for additional grants but was turned down because of the tribe’s high-risk financial status.
That status could be attributed to multiple loans, including a $38 million loan from the Shakopee tribe of Minnesota, said Paul Cedar Face, an economics instructor at Oglala Lakota College.
Eileen Janis, tribal vice president, said $20 million of the loan was used in part to build a new casino. The other $18 million was used, in part, to pay other debts, she said.
Bottom line: no new grant money.
“They don’t look at what YO did,” DeCory said. “They just look at the dollar.”
And now, said Pine Ridge High School Lakota art and culture instructor Bryan Brewer, there’s nothing for the kids to do.
“It’s always quiet during the day because (the youth) are sleeping — they don’t have jobs,” Brewer said. “You go downtown at 2 or 3 in the morning, and there’s our kids. It’s depressing.”
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Reylin Rowland is trying to stay sober. The 22-year-old went through treatment five months ago for alcohol and marijuana.
He credits his success in large part to Youth Opportunity.
Working for YO made him feel important, and it gave him something to do.
“They never gave up on me,” he said. “They helped me go through the process of checking into treatment.”
Since it closed, he’s had some bumps in the road to sobriety. He uses once in a while, but he has a new job at the Sue Ann Big Crow Boys and Girls Club.
“I passed the drug test, which was like the coolest thing in the world to me,” Reylin said.
Other kids on Pine Ridge aren’t as lucky. Many are still unemployed, and Reylin said they spend their time cruising the streets, hanging out at Big Bat’s convenience store, drinking and doing drugs.
“There’s nothing for us to do here other than drink and drug,” he said. “When I say there’s nothing, I mean there’s nothing.”
When Youth Opportunity was open, there were baseball games, basketball games, cleaning up the park.
“Some of them were doing straight because that was their routine,” Reylin said. “They would go down there and do their job.”
Before the program closed, Stacie Pleasant’s friends were clean. Now some spend their time getting high — and getting into trouble.
“Whenever it closed, everyone didn’t really care to do anything anymore,” Stacie said. “It kind of went downhill I guess.”
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Eileen Janis worries about her son.
She doesn’t know where Robert goes now, and she doesn’t know what he does.
“There’s just so many people who want to give him things,” she said. “Corrupters — within your own family — there’s corrupters.”
Robert’s grandmother used to watch after him, always asking him where he was going and what he was doing. But she died in December.
Still, his mom said, Robert is a good kid. He’s a sophomore at Pine Ridge High, where he’s a guard on the football team.
He spends most of his spare time drumming and singing at sun dances and powwows.
“If you don’t give into peer pressure, it’s easy (to stay sober),” Robert said. “You just don’t go around it.”
But now the carnival is over and Robert is jobless again — nothing to do, no place to go.
Craig Henry was an intern at the Journal Star through the American Indian Journalism Institute this summer. He is a student at the University of Oklahoma. Reach him at william.c.henry@gmail.com.
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