U.N. inspector looking at Pine Ridge Reservation housing

The press is reporting that the United Nations has made an announcement that could be embarrassing to Americans.

A U.N. inspector will be “traveling to a South Dakota Indian reservation to examine dismal housing conditions among the poorest of our poor.”

Raquel Rolnik, the inspector, will visit the Pine Ridge reservation in the Black Hills area and will make a report on what he finds to the international agency.

According to a Minnesota paper “in 2000 the U.N. declared that the right to adequate housing is a human right. Then, in 2007, after 20 years of debate, it approved a Declaration on the Right of Indigenous Peoples.” It stated that treaties between a nation and its indigenous peoples may be considered matters of international concern.

The Pine Ridge reservation is said to be like most hard-core pockets of poverty with shabby, overcrowded, pest-ridden, dilapidated homes, many of which lack plumbing and other modern conveniences. Unemployment is estimated as high as 75 or 80 percent and 60 percent of the housing stock is substandard.

Bill Means, a native of the Pine Ridge reservation who serves on the International Indian Treaty Council, said, “We hope that the inspector’s visit will expose the atrocious conditions on the reservation that the U.S. allows to happen. The reason for asking the U.N. to help is that we can’t get that type of attention in Washington … We are looking for policy change. Real change. Not just more promises.”

The report to the U.N. on housing conditions in the Pine Ridge reservation will be especially embarrassing because the United States has a record of providing millions of dollars of financial aid to impoverished communities all over the world.

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