Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant: "U.S. Veterans:" Two Fronts of Veteran Care among the Oglala, Lakota

The New School, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

Historically, American Indians have had the highest per capita rate of military enlistment of any ethnic group in the United States. Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, is home to thousands of Oglala Lakota veterans and many Oglala view military participation to be a central component of Lakota society. Yet nowhere is veteran care more at risk than within Native communities. In addition to persistent conflicts over Indigenous self-determination and cultural recognition, Oglala veterans often face hardships associated with poverty, illness, substance abuse, and geographic isolation. This project seeks to understand how the highly regulated domain of state authority represented by the United States Department of Veterans Services (the VA) interfaces with the cultural practices and practical realities of Indigenous communities. By comparing veterans of different periods -- World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan -- the research also provides a lens through which to examine the complex and ever-changing relationship between federal governance and Indigenous life. This research will contribute to a science of the complex modes of interface that connect different levels of governance with local life wherever it is lived. Data will be gathered in southwest South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and in nearby border towns. For over a century, Pine Ridge veterans have been served by the VA hospital in a border town to the west. A proposal has been made to consolidate this hospital with a more distant facility. The hearings, documents, and conversations around this proposal provide the researcher a venue in which to document and analyze the multi-faceted practices that Oglala veterans have developed for seeking effective governance, appropriate management of care, and self-determination. The researcher will employ a mixed methods approach, including life histories, semi-structured interviews, surveys, and archival research. Computer-enabled qualitative text analysis software will be used to produce a rich understanding of veteran life in a historically important tribe. This will supplement the statistics of poverty, illness, and violence that so often accompany descriptions of life on Pine Ridge. The research will also provide information for communities and policy makers committed to improving the fit between administrative expectations and a particularly vulnerable but poorly known population.