"Hidden away in the southwest corner of South Dakota lies the second largest Native American Reservation in the U.S., Pine Ridge Indian Reservation home of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe. With no industry, technology or commercial infrastructure to provide employment for its residents, this Native American population lives in conditions equivalent to those found among the poorest, third world countries. Event after centuries of loss, injustice and insurmountable living conditions, many members of the Lakota Sioux Tribe are still fighting to preserve the health, wealth, longevity and legacy of the tribe.
Petroglyphs (rock engravings), discovered in the Black Hills before the early 1700s, provided evidence of over 7,000 years of Native American habitation. These specific mountains are within an hour drive of the Pine Ridge Reservation and are considered sacred by the Lakota Sioux." - https://www.truesiouxhope.org/single-post/2015/01/27/HISTORY-OF-THE-PIN…
"Layli Long Soldier earned a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA with honors from Bard College. She is the author of the chapbook Chromosomory (2010) and the full-length collection Whereas (2017), which won the National Books Critics Circle award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has been a contributing editor to Drunken Boat and poetry editor at Kore Press; in 2012, her participatory installation, Whereas We Respond, was featured on the Pine Ridge Reservation. In 2015, Long Soldier was awarded a National Artist Fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation and a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry. She was awarded a Whiting Writer’s Award in 2016." - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/layli-long-soldier
Poem: 'Whereas', reponse to the Congressional Resolution of Apology to Native Americans