Lakota often die without dignity and often far too young

Notes from Indian Country By Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji, Stands Up For Them) © Native Sun News Today I saw a news film many years ago about one of the concentration camps in Poland after World War II had ended. The bulldozers shoving the bodies of the skeletal, naked dead of the Jewish inmates into open pits haunted me for a very long time. Such an undignified way to die: Such an undignified way to be remembered. My thoughts turned to the surviving family members. Those lifeless corpses tossed into the shallow pits were human beings at one time who had laughed, cried, danced, enjoyed good music and good food, and who loved and had been loved. And now they were reduced to skeletal cadavers with haunting eyes that still stared at a sky they once found to be beautiful in life. Surely there were surviving family members who viewed these shocking movies and could identify the emaciated corpses as a father, mother, brother, sister, aunt, uncle or as a cousin. To most of us as casual observers of this holocaust, these were just the bodies of people who had suffered horribly and were now experiencing the final act of all the indignities that had been heaped upon them by their Nazi oppressors. To members of their families, this final indignity must have been something few of us can ever imagine. I am horrified by the way human beings suffer a loss of dignity at the end of their lives by a medical profession that is seemingly more intent upon making money than in providing...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news