After their old school burned down, the Lakota community raised money to build a modern K-12th grade school. Pride in who they are as Lakota people is important for Wakpala’s youth. Living on a poor reservation in a place where non-Native neighbors often don’t understand or respect them, Lakota children and teens suffer. A 12-year-old living in the non-Native border town just across the Missouri River from Wakpala killed herself in 2016 because of racist bullying by her non-Native classmates. Teen and middle-schooler suicides are all too common due to poverty and racism.

Talon age 6 (left) and older brother Landon, age 10, work on their homework with their mother’s help at their home on the Flathead Reservation in Montana. They’re studying Salish, their native language. Their grandfather Craig is instilling in them a way of viewing the world that was common to their ancestors. This large book is a textbook for learning Salish, which has its own special alphabet. Once when Landon went to the County Fair, he was called a “cute girl” by non-Native people because at that time, he wore his hair long. He cut his hair. For Native boys and men, wearing traditional long hair often causes problems. If they leave it long, they face non-Native prejudice and if they cut it, they may be told, “You’re not Indian enough” by other Native Americans. Unfortunately, their father, who was a law student at University of Montana, Missoula, faced a different kind of prejudice. Due to lighter skin from his non-Native mother, he felt he didn’t fit in either world and took his own life.

Leo is eight years old. He spent most of this day with his grandmother, riding his horse around his grandparents’ ranch to protect their cattle from wolves and grizzly bears. Ranchers on the Blackfeet Reservation have to be on the lookout for these predators, which follow the herd and kill calves. Leo’s grandfather got a special cannon that makes loud, booming sounds to keep predators away. It also keeps the family awake because it goes 24/7. One time Leo’s little sister was in their house crying and a grizzly bear came within 50 feet.

Fawn Free shares after school snacks with the family pets in their backyard overlooking the Missouri River. Now called Lake Oahe, it was created by the Army Corps of Engineers damming up this huge river near her Standing Rock Reservation, South Dakota community. The story of this lake-river covers a deeper, sadder story: the Federal government’s taking away a good life from Lakota and other tribes who used to live along the fertile river bottoms of the Upper Missouri River. Until the 1950’s, many tribes in North and South Dakota and the region had an abundant life on the river. Protected from harsh weather and poor hunting up on the prairie, they found plentiful fish, deer, small game and lush berries to sustain them. Elders today tell stories of growing up in old Wakpala, now flooded beneath Lake Oahe, where there was lush grass for their cattle and horses. Then, Wakpala was a prosperous town. It had hotels, banks, stores and a rail head for shipping local cattle out to market. After the flood, the government moved Lakota people up to the prairie, where life is much harder today.

Tiyapo Campbell, age 16, holds a net he uses for river fishing on the Nez Perce Reservation in Idaho, where he lives in a rural community. With his parents, he gathers traditional tribal foods including fish, deer, elk, roots and berries to combat diseases caused in part by the less healthy foods introduced to his community after the U.S. Government confined his ancestors to this reservation. Tiyapo attends a K-12 school on the reservation and enjoys competing with the cross-country team there. In a few years, he hopes to attend college where he plans to study engineering.

Standing in a wood shed also used to dress meat at his home on the Nez Perce Reservation in Idaho, Tiyapo Campbell, age 16, shows a visitor how he butchers an elk. He and his father hunt most of the meat their family eats on reservation lands. A nearby smoker is used to preserve the fish and game they take.

Tiyapo Campbell, age 16, holds a net he uses for river fishing on the Nez Perce Reservation in Idaho, while his father looks on. With his parents, he gathers traditional tribal foods including fish, deer, elk, roots and berries to combat diseases caused in part by the less healthy foods introduced to his community after the U.S. Government confined his ancestors to this reservation. Tiyapo attends a K-12 school on the reservation and enjoys competing with the cross-country team there. In a few years, he hopes to attend college where he wants to study engineering.

Playing music together is a favorite pastime when Ivory’s uncle Leland comes to visit Ivory and his family on the Flathead Reservation in Montana. Leland taught his nephew some of the basics of playing the ukulele and gave Ivory his instrument. Having lived on the Crow reservation and around the U.S., Uncle Leland says music saved him during hard times. Leland tells a visitor that his and Ivory’s great-grandfather went to the Busby boarding school on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in southeast Montana. He says it was one of the worst of the Indian residential boarding schools, where punishment for practicing their Native customs was especially severe on students.

Meth is a big problem on reservations, where unemployment is high and teens often have little to do. Mexican drug cartels actively recruit young Native people as dealers. Meth addiction affects newborns and has led to a rise in violent crimes in many Native communities. The Indian Health Service clinics on reservations don’t receive enough resources to provide adequate treatment, so tribes must find other options or let members go untreated. With tribal police forces stretched thin and because on many reservations everyone is related, police officers may ignore meth-related crimes. On the Blackfeet Reservation, a retired school teacher estimated that in 2015, seven in 10 newborns had to be airlifted to Seattle for expensive meth addiction treatment. Many children grow up with addicted parents, never having what they need unless a grandmother or other relative takes them in.

Years ago, the town hall where celebrations and meetings were held in this rural Lakota community was burned, leaving these remains. Due to the actions of someone living in the area, this and other local institutions have been vandalized and destroyed. This makes community gatherings more difficult in such a remote area with long winters.

Standing in front of the decommissioned Catholic Church in his community on the Standing Rock Reservation, Devin Free explains that his mother is fighting to keep the Catholic Diocese from burning down this local institution. She's a former parishioner who left because the local priest wouldn't allow her to bury her 15-year-old son who killed himself in the church cemetery. Devin's mom and other residents want to turn this former church into a much-needed a homeless shelter.

Standing at this “No DAPL” sign at the edge of the Missouri River, Fawn and Devin Free face an uncertain future. The DAPL is the Dakota Access Pipeline project, intended to carry oil from North Dakota to connecting pipelines Illinois. Originally, the pipeline was to be constructed near Bismarck, North Dakota’s capital. Bismarck’s residents didn’t want it near their city because a pipeline break would harm their drinking water, which comes from the Missouri River. So the pipeline’s path was moved close to the part of Standing Rock Reservation that’s in North Dakota. Members of the Standing Rock tribe protested, saying the U.S. Federal government was not protecting their right to clean drinking water, their sovereignty and the preservation of their sacred sites and burials. The tribe was quickly joined in their protest by many other U.S. tribes and indigenous peoples worldwide, along with other groups and individuals. Their chairman appealed to the United Nations, asking for support for their human rights. With the new U.S. president immediately reversing President Obama’s postponement for environmental review, oil is flowing and the tribe continues lawsuits to stop it.

Devin Free, 16, and sister Fawn, 13, hug their niece and nephew during a visit at their relatives’ home across the Missouri River from Standing Rock Reservation. On and off the reservation, their extended family has experienced many losses. Devin is thinking about learning forestry and then working in a state with more trees. Sister Fawn has her sights set on becoming a doctor because she wants to help people, including her family. She knows a medical degree will demand many years of school and she plans to get a college scholarship.

Quinton lives in the small community of Heart Butte on the Blackfeet Reservation in Western Montana. Blackfeet people love their horses. On this day after school, he’s attending cattle rancher Tom Crawford’s new youth program, where a group of boys are learning how to break colts. Over a few months, they’ll get a colt used to saddle blanket, then wearing a saddle and finally have a boy ride and direct the animal. A former competitor on the Professional Indian Rodeo circuit, their teacher Tom knows how to train colts for rodeo events and ranch work. As on many reservations, Blackfeet people experience very high rates of drug use and alcoholism. To protect local youth in this remote area where there’s little to do after school, Tom created this colt training program.

Joseph Jimenez is chased by a colt as he attends cattle rancher Tom Crawford’s new youth program, where a group of boys are learning how to break colts. Over a few months, they’ll get a colt used to saddle blanket, then wearing a saddle and finally have a boy ride and direct the animal. A former competitor on the Professional Indian Rodeo circuit, their teacher Tom knows how to train colts for rodeo events and ranch work. As on many reservations, Blackfeet people experience very high rates of drug use and alcoholism. To protect local youth in this remote area where there’s little to do after school, Tom created this colt training program.

Gigi’s dance fan is made of many eagle feathers. Under Federal law, only Native American people can own them. The waiting list to get a whole eagle from the National Eagle Repository in Denver, Colorado, is about three years. For most Indians, eagle feathers are sacred, because the eagle flies highest and carries prayers to the Creator.

At the entrance to his family’s sweat lodge, 16-year-old Tiyapo Campbell prepares sacred herbs that will fill this healing space. Living on the Nez Perce Reservation, he lives in two worlds. Though his school is on the reservation, he is one of just a few Native youth enrolled there, due to Federal legislation that transferred parts of reservation lands to white settlers beginning in 1887. Tiyapo’s parents make sure he knows his Nez Perce Indian heritage too, encouraging him to dance in regional powwows, hunt and gather traditional foods, and practice tribal ceremonies.

Native people say the powwow drum is the heartbeat of Mother Earth. This drum, like many, is ringed by men rather than women, who sing traditional tribal songs. The drum is regarded as a living entity, and is revered.

The Fancy Dance is one of the powwow’s most colorful, exciting dances, attracting young men whose stamina allows them to execute fancy footwork at high speed. This Fancy Dancer, for me, is the spirit of joy and transformation at the heart of contemporary powwows.

Chacee Boy Hale, a descendant of people who helped the Lewis & Clark Expedition survive their first winter on the Northern Plains, already knows his Mandan traditions at age 10. Now his elders at the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Ft. Berthold Reservation continue their fight with the federal and state governments for the return of promised lands taken in 1948 to construct an Upper Missouri River dam. Many such dams built along this life-sustaining river destroyed the food sources and villages of countless Native peoples.

I first met Joe at the Arlee Celebration on the Flathead Reservation in 2006. He stood out among the junior Traditional Dancers for his intense concentration, beautiful outfit and straightforward manner. Two years later at Arlee again, he remained intently focused on his dancing as his grandmother helped him get ready.

This beautiful dance arbor at a Nez Perce powwow in Wallowa, Oregon shelters descendants of Chief Joseph. Joseph's band made their summer home in this lush mountain valley before the U.S. Army chased them nearly 1,200 miles across Idaho and Montana to force them onto a reservation. As punishment for their refusal to sign a treaty giving up their original territory, the U.S. Government moved the band to Oklahoma. Though Chief Joseph repeatedly asked the government to allow his people to return to their home, his request was denied. He and some followers eventually moved to the Colville Reservation in Washington State, where he died. A Friendship Feast during this powwow brings Indians and non-Natives together over Native caught salmon and deer. A white rancher provides savory buffalo meat from his herd.

Emmett Martin is one of just a few fluent Lakota speakers in his Lakota community. He and others who know the language, and the unique world view it carries, are active in teaching it to local youth. The traditional Lakota way of looking at the land holds that everything in it has a spirit. The rock Emmett is holding has a story he tells a visitor, about foretelling their arrival at his home near the Standing Rock Reservation.

This prairie in north-central Montana is where Chief Joseph and members of his Nez Perce band who could not make it to the safety of Canada surrendered to the U.S. Army. The homeland of their ancestors was the lush Wallowa Valley in northeastern Oregon and nearby deep canyons of the Snake River. In 1877, the U.S. Army pursued Chief Joseph’s band of 700 people for 1,200 miles after trying unsuccessfully to force them to live on a reservation in Idaho that offered unsuitable land. Today, descendants of Chief Joseph’s band are scattered. Some live on the Nez Perce reservation in Idaho, some are in Canada, others are on the Colville Reservation in Washington where Chief Joseph is buried and some live in Oklahoma, where Chief Joseph and some of his followers were exiled.

Walking the ridge above the Little Big Horn River, one feels the history of General Custer’s 7th Cavalry meeting Chief Sitting Bull’s combined forces of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors. Custer was guided by Crow Indians, who warned him not to engage Sitting Bull’s army in combat. The river and surrounding plains host significant events for Crow people, other American Indians and non-Natives alike. Crow Fair – that tribe’s annual celebration and one of the largest powwows in the U.S. – takes place in August a few miles from the battlefield. Another time to remember is the Battle of the Little Big Horn Reenactment, which draws many to participate and watch history unfold again.

Bear Butte is a place of mystery and religion, sacred to many tribes. Called Mato Paha – Bear Mountain – by the Lakota, it rises nearly 1,300 feet above the surrounding prairie. Each time I hike this mountain, Native American prayer offerings of tobacco ties line the public route to the summit. In the place set aside for tribal use, sweat lodges bear witness to the resilience of Native ceremonies once forbidden, now openly thriving again.