Good interview and great pictures. My bold.
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/behind-22/October 20, 2009, 12:00 am
Behind the Scenes: Still Wounded
By JAMES ESTRIN
Correction Appended | Aaron Huey
arrived on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota at the start of a
self-assigned photographic road trip to document poverty in America.
The poverty he found on the reservation stopped him cold.
“It was emotionally devastating,” Mr. Huey said. “I‘d call my wife late at night crying.”Overwhelmed by the poverty — and at the same time by scenes of
people trying to maintain the Lakota way of life — Mr. Huey abandoned
the rest of his nationwide project to focus on Pine Ridge. Five years
later, he’s still photographing on the reservation, which includes the
Wounded Knee battlefield.
Mr. Huey, 33, is a photographer for Smithsonian, National Geographic
Adventure and National Geographic Traveler. He also freelances for The
New Yorker and Geo. In 2007, he photographed in Afghanistan for The
Times.
I interviewed him by telephone and e-mail.Q.What were you first impressions of Pine Ridge?
A.I stayed with families in the most violent town on the reservation, a place called Manderson; often referred to as “Murdertown” by locals. I could have never imagined the living conditions that I saw. I knew the statistics about poverty, but the living conditions went far beyond poverty to even deeper, more dysfunctional problems. Black mold all over the walls of childrens’ rooms. Kids eating off the floors. Infants watching violent films on TV all night.
One of my other first impressions was people showing me their scars — self inflicted scars from their gang initiations. A knife heated on a burner until it’s red hot is then pressed on the skin, usually in stripes on the upper arm, creating terrible burns.
Q.Why did you end up going back?
A.I went back because the families invited me back, and because I was so floored by what I had seen that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Now, I go back because they are family, and because I haven’t found the end of the story. It seems to get more confusing each time I return. I am not getting closer to a conclusion. It just is what it is. My photos are a witness, not a solution. They are the dark and the light and every struggle between.
Q.What was your approach and working methods there?
A.I started by not shooting many photos. I hung out, and I always asked the young kids who took me in to tell me what they thought the world needed to know about them. In my first interactions, I let them guide the story. They needed to feel like someone cared about them. They needed to be heard. So I listened. I spent a lot of time not working. I watched movies with them, ate meals with them. Sometimes I’d beat myself up about not shooting enough photos. My eyes would get tired and I’d stop “seeing” photos. But I believe that it was all for the best. Over time, it has helped me go much deeper.
Q.Who are the Lakota?
A.Answering the question, “Who are the Lakota,” is very difficult. In many ways, I feel like it is not my question to answer. The Lakota are a people who have been wronged many times over. Coming from the dominant society and attempting to define them is a guaranteed failure for a white journalist. I have no right to define them.
Q.Who were the first people you met? And how did that result in the early gang work?
A.The first people I met were gang kids and a few stand-offish officials in the tribal office. What lead me down the darker, more gang-oriented path initially was that they wanted to talk and others did not. They had a story they wanted to tell me. They didn’t care that I didn’t know much about the Lakota. With others I felt a huge wall — “Another white man come to do a story on us” — and they were right. I wasn’t well armed with a lot of knowledge about the situation. A lot of “wasi’chu” come through to do quick stories on the natives. But in the darkest corners, I was accepted. And they told me much of what I needed to know. In the youth, I found a big part of my story — a new generation desperate to be warriors again.
Q.What are you trying to photograph now?
A.After I spent several trips with these gang kids and did my first major assignments on them, I realized that it was all a bit superficial. Magazines were really into the gang thing. It was an easy story for them to digest and it was a way to make an old story new and relevant. But the bigger picture doesn’t really make a good story. It’s long and murky and loaded with pain. There are no easy outs. Deconstructing hundreds of years of oppression to understand why we now see these statistics just isn’t catchy enough for the mainstream press. But I couldn’t stop just because the magazines couldn’t handle it. I wasn’t sure where it would all lead, but I knew I couldn’t stop.
Q.Tell me a little bit more about the traditional Lakotas.
A.I think finding more “traditionals” is a natural direction after all these years of darkness. In many ways, it’s the harder part of the story. I’m not sure if it all needs to be wrapped up that way, to balance the dark and the light. It isn’t a nice, neat little package. But I have to see what is there. For now that is my reason for returning. I want to find the light in this darkness.
The horse culture, sweat lodges, sun dances and attempts at preserving the language are all incredibly positive influences and steer the youth away from the false warrior model of gangster violence. The youth need heroes like Crazy Horse and Black Elk, not Tupac and Biggie.
Q.How about the children?
A.I have been watching several children in a dozen families grow up over the past five years. This is one of the hardest parts for me. When I see their father or mother coming home drunk every day, I know what the future holds for them and it hurts me.
I remember calling home to my wife crying because I had just held a beautiful 3-year-old girl on my knee. She hugged me and called me uncle, and I love her so much. But I know that it is only a matter of time until she is broken. Soon she will be drinking, and pregnant, and abused, and dying. Right now she is still perfect, but no one can last in an environment like that.
That’s the part I hate. Knowing that there is nothing I can do to change it. And there are so many things I want to change. But it seems the story is already written. Even with a strong traditional family, many of the youth are sinking. Without it, they are totally lost.
I keep looking for the light in the story because I want to believe there is a way out. Maybe if I find it, I can help some of the kids I know move that direction. I know for sure that change has to come from within the reservation. It cannot be imported. I cannot run away with these children. Someone in their own town has to lead them, preferably someone from within their own home.
Q.Is there anything that the rest of the country should know about what you saw?
A.One very important thing to know is that there are a small handful of very positive people and places on Pine Ridge and that they are making a difference. Red Cloud Indian School is a leader among these positive forces, with 13 Gates scholarship recipients graduating from its school in only two years. As one of the most successful schools in the nation, they have completely flipped the paradigm on its head.
As for the problem and what people need to know about it, I’m not sure there is much to do. The Lakota, like most tribes, are self governed. Handouts aren’t the answer. Church groups painting over the gang signs on houses every few summers is not the answer. Pity is not the answer. The Lakota are an incredibly beautiful and proud people. There are pockets of strength in this failed state. They are usually formed around a school or a traditional teacher-medicine man or a strong head of a family who spreads it to his extended family.
I think I honestly want these photos to hurt the viewer. I want people to understand that what they see in these images is a result of a very long and very calculated oppression. It’s convenient that we can now step back and say: “Oh, no! Look. They are doing it to themselves! There is nothing we can do!” Very convenient for us. The story of the Lakota is the story of all indigenous people on every continent — they are steamrolled by the dominant society and pushed to the verge of extinction. Assimilate or die.
When I would return from these trips, people would ask why they don’t just “get over it” — the old pick-themselves-up-by-the-bootstraps argument. But you don’t just “get over” hundreds of years of oppression. Just because the guards went away one day and the prison camp was opened up doesn’t mean there was any place to go. Just because the prison door was opened doesn’t mean that the prisoner mentality doesn’t remain. It does remain, for generations and generations after. And it has left a deep scar on the people.
Correction
An earlier version of this post incorrectly quoted Mr. Huey as saying, “Pine Ridge is the scariest place I’ve ever been — more so than in a Taliban ambush.” Instead, he said, “Pine Ridge is the scariest place I’ve ever seen — not more so than in a Taliban ambush.” Mr. Huey also made the point that although Wounded Knee may be referred to elsewhere as a battlefield, as it was in an earlier version of this post, it is more accurately called a massacre site. “Battle connotes some kind of fair fight,” he wrote in an e-mail message. “It was a massacre with Gatling guns.”
