By Red Ghetto Rebel
Dakota Treaty Territory
March 29, 2017
It was requested of me to write a story from the perspective of a child on the reservation and how meth impacts their lives. I have taken parts of stories from statements made by child advocates and social workers who listened to stories made by abused children who were removed from their mothers due to their meth addiction.
The children are the ultimate victims of the meth addict, not the meth-addict themselves. The children suffer at the hands of those who brought them into this world. They live in a reservation world of violence, rape, abuse, neglect and hopelessness.
There is no family dynamic in todays reservation family, truth be told the majority of families today are single parent and almost every time aren’t a result of a “failed marriage” but are caused by a dependence on welfare money.
Welfare drives the drug industry on the reservations. The more kids a woman has the longer she can fuel addiction.
The reservation has evolved into a pandemic of violent poverty, which normalizes violent acts. Rape, murder, child molestation, child killings, child neglect and abuse all normalized in the environment of meth addiction, drug abuse and alcoholism.
Reservation Indians have desensitized perverted, violent, and criminal acts. The people have replaced simple social behaviors with anti-social and sociopathic behaviors and accepted it as normal.
When a community and a family doesn’t condemn child molesters or child abusers as wrong or remain indifferent about meth induced rapes and murders nothing can save the children being born into this social hell. The child’s only purpose in this addiction culture is to fund addictions such as meth and alcoholism with the welfare and TANF checks meant for the children.
The by-product of this violent cycle is always youth suicide. They are only reflecting what they are raised in. When they choose to kill themselves it is always rooted in their child molestation and parental drug addictions. The cause of a child’s suicide is always the fault of the parent, and their actions.
Victims of a lesser god
Looking out the window, where we are going isn’t really clear. Again our mother is dragging us from one abuser to another abuser. The violence has become part of our routine.
It’s the end of the month and for us kids it means we will get our rations of bologna and bread, candy and chips for the month while she searches for another place to drop us off, paid for with the welfare check she just cashed today.
Last week, yesterday and the day before were a hop, skip, and a jump toward today’s hell. Repeated every first of the month and weekends in between. She dropped off my half siblings and I at this new place this time, so she could go “party” again. She usually stays gone long enough for us to notice. With no goodbyes she rushes out of the house leaving us here to watch TV or play video games until she returns.
This house is dangerous and we know it. The older kids and the adults stare at us as a predator would before killing a rat. The other kids here are in the same boat as we are but were all groomed by the perverts of the house over a long period of time and they remain silent.
Every house has a secret lurking in its darkness. A pervert or a child molester hunts for victims when the lights go out, or when everyone gets drunk. I have to hide.
We all have learned how to hide from the drunks and druggies who stagger back into these housing houses. When the perverts see new kids at their house they salivate waiting for their opportunity to rape. And so it begins again, another night of survival. There is always one predator at these “stop overs”, men and or women. In this reservation the pervert is either or. Our mom, in her search to get her meth high, willingly offers us up to these rapists.
Our mom doesn’t seem to care what happens to us. She left us many times before. Usually it’s a different house and sometimes it’s the house where everyone is drugged and drunk.
She searches for another snag to abuse her. They act like they were “meant to be” just like she did with the last guy last week. This only lasts a few days until the next party and he’s gone with another “Meant to be” victim. Her adolescent “Indian” snags are losers packaged on facebook for the reservation one nighter who doesn’t care if he gets her pregnant.
I asked her once not to get pregnant anymore. It seems to me that she always ends up pregnant and gives birth to another baby that she leaves here and there. She never wants to change them and they smell because of it. But this is how she supports her habit. Having babies is the paycheck that fuels her meth addiction and her drunkenness.
She hits us when we complain or cry. If she is high she will beat us with what ever she can find. I’ve heard of other kids being kicked to death by their moms, so I try to protect myself when she beats me for telling her to stop “Partying”.
She will drive with us to pick up her meth. She leaves us in her car and we do what we can to stay warm. Sometimes there is a blizzard beyond the car window. When she finally returns she isn’t herself. We noticed her smell when she jumps in the car and starts it. She opens her purse and pulls out a light bulb or a tin foil to smoke the crystals that she just spent our food money on. We all choke from the fumes that spew from her mouth before she goes into her seizures. Sometimes she blacks out and sometimes she doesn’t make any sense. We all sit in the car and wait for her to come around which sometimes takes awhile.
My little brothers and sisters huddle in the back seat. The baby, dressed only in a dirty diaper, is crying again because of the cold. Our mom yells out to “Shut that fucken baby up!!” which only makes it worse.
Mom wakes up and starts the filthy SUV that smells like dog shit because when she travels she brings her dog and it shits and pisses in the back of the SUV. We drive to another place so she can smoke what she has left with her friends.
We all enter the house and see many grown-ups sitting around the table drunk and laughing. Meth made them all mad. They drink down their smoke with beer or wine, choking on the chemicals that they pass around the table.
“Throw your kids in the other room!” one yells… as our mom says, “go in there and don’t raise hell or ill beat your ass in front of everyone. “
As the night progresses the madness gets worse. The men start beating the women. Women start beating each other. Cousins snagging cousins, kids getting raped, the adults blowing their meth smoke into the faces of the children as the others laugh about it, women who passed out being dragged into the rooms by the men.
Our mother isn’t even here. She left with another guy and didn’t care to tell us. We have to hide and not get noticed by the adults. If they don’t notice us maybe we wont get abused or molested. Sooner or later they will find out we are there alone. Sooner or later they will know our mother isn’t there.
Another day of survival on the meth trail with our mother, another day in reservation child hell.
My mom won’t stop until one of us dies or she does. No one cares about us because they all have hells of their own to live. Sometimes the only escape is death.
In the end we learn how to accept the abuse to become abusers ourselves. Our violations were the result of the children murderers and their pedophiles who walked us to our suicides. They silence us children for a reason.
Mom… you did this to us, you killed us, you taught us, you are responsible for what happened to all us children. Your addiction to meth was the reason we are tortured before we died. Yet you cry when its time to bury the children. Never once blaming your self or the criminals and pedophiles that you left us with. Finally acting out the role of loving parent at our caskets like you gave a shit.
Maybe you need to stop having more kids? Maybe you should be imprisoned? Maybe you should tie your tubes? Something needs to be done to keep you from dragging another child through your selfishness and drug abuse. You eagerly run to fill out another state welfare application for another suicide to raise in this reservation hell.
Your “woman’s” heart wasn’t lying on the ground defeated you sold it for meth. You cooked your tribal sovereignty in the meth spoon and praised State TANF for another high. You preach tradition from your meth-induced hustle to slip past the eyes of a dysfunctional society already in denial.
Today we drive again to repeat the cycle over. Tomorrow will be the same until one of us overdoses on violence and rape.
If you want to know the truth just look at the children. They reflect the undeniable truth. If you can’t see the abuse in their eyes you are probably blind or high. If you want to save the next generations show no sympathy for meth addicts.
Long Live the Fighters!!