The tuberculosis rate on the Pine Ridge Reservation is approximately 800% higher than the U.S. national average.

Cervical cancer is 5 times higher than the U.S. national average.

Each winter, Reservation Elders are found dead from hypothermia (freezing).

School drop-out rate is over 70%.

According to a Bureau of Indian Affairs report, the Pine Ridge Reservation schools are in the bottom 10% of school funding by U.S. Department of Education and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Teacher turnover rate is outrageously beyond that of the U.S. national average.  The lack of funding and supplies combined with the other probs on the rez causes even the strong-hearted to give into a sense of futlity and abandon the area.

The small Tribal Housing Authority homes on the Pine Ridge Reservation are so overcrowded and scarce that many homeless families often use tents or cars for shelter.  Many families live in shacks, old trailers, or dilapidated mobile homes

There is a large homeless population on the Reservation, but most families never turn away a relative no matter how distant the blood relation. Consequently, many homes have large numbers of people living in them.

There is an estimated average of 17 people living in each family home (a home which may only have two to three rooms).  Some homes, built for 6 to 8 people, have up to 30 people living in them.

Some Reservation families are forced to sleep on dirt floors.

Many of the wells and much of the water and land on the Reservation is contaminated with pesticides and other poisons from farming, mining, open dumps, and commercial and governmental mining operations outside the Reservation.  A further source of contamination is buried ordnance and hazardous materials from closed U.S. military bombing ranges on the Reservation.

The Pine Ridge Reservation still has no banks, motels, discount stores, or movie theaters.  It has only one grocery store of any moderate size and it is located in the town of Pine Ridge on the Reservation

There are no public libraries except one at the Oglala Lakota College.

There is no public transportation available on the Reservation.

Ownership of operable automobiles by residents of the Reservation is highly limited.

The death rate from alcohol-related problems on the Reservation is 300% higher than the remaining US population

Alcoholism affects eight out of ten families on the Reservation.

The Oglala Lakota Nation has prohibited the sale and possession of alcohol on the Pine Ridge Reservation since the early 1970's.  However, the town of Whiteclay, Nebraska (which sits 400 yards off the Reservation border in a contested "buffer" zone) has approximately 14 residents and four liquor stores which sell over 4.1 million cans of beer each year resulting in a $3million annual trade.  Unlike other Nebraska communities, Whiteclay exists only to sell liquor and make money. It has no schools, no churches, no civic organizations, no parks, no benches, no public bathrooms, no fire service and no law enforcement.  Tribal officials have repeatedly pleaded with the State of Nebraska to close these liquor stores or enforce the State laws regulating liquor stores but have been consistently refused.

Scientific studies show that the High Plains/Oglala Aquifer which begins underneath the Pine Ridge Reservation is predicted to run dry within the next thirty years due to commercial interest use and dryland farming in numerous states south of the Reservation.  This critical North American underground water resource is not renewable at anything near the present consumption rate.  The recent years of drought have simply accelerated the problem.

Several of the banks and lending institutions nearest to the Reservation were recently targeted for investigation of fraudulent or predatory lending practices, with the citizens of the Pine Ridge Reservation as their victims.

There is no industry, technology, or commercial infrastructure on the Reservation to provide employment.

The nearest town of size (which provides some jobs for those few persons able to travel the distance) is Rapid City, South Dakota with approximately 57,000 residents.  It is located approximately 120 miles from the Reservation.  The nearest large city to Pine Ridge is Denver, Colorado located about 350 miles away.

Some figures state that the life expectancy on the Reservation is 48 years old for men and 52 for women. Other reports state that the average life expectancy on the Reservation is 45 years old.  With either set of figures, that's the shortest life expectancy for a community anywhere in the Western Hemisphere outside Haiti, according to The Wall Street Journal.