Next time you think you’re having a bad day, consider the case of Christina Martinez and Carl Boneshirt, whose trailer home on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation was destroyed by a violent storm as Martinez was going into premature labor.

It gets worse – that was last month, and the family, which now includes little Tawrence, still doesn’t have a place to live. That’s because housing is the rarest of commodities on Pine Ridge, where there are already too many shortages of too many things.

Jomay Steen of the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal, writes here that:

Carl Bone Shirt, Jr. works on the transmission of his broken-down van parked at his home in Kyle. The house has been condemned. (Kristina Barker/Rapid City Journal)

Although the couple has received help from the American Red Cross, the Oglala Sioux Tribe and South Dakota Department of Social Services, the destitute couple is at the mercy of family and friends because housing remains in short supply on the reservation.

None of their relatives or friends has enough room to take in all of the family, so the homeless couple has had to divide their household between Potato Creek and Kyle because there are no emergency shelters or housing for them to live in.

“There’s no shelters or emergency housing here. They have people lined up for housing for years,” Martinez said.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” she said.

For now, Martinez and the baby are staying with her mom, whose home already has 15 people living in it. Boneshirt is bunking with friends in Kyle.

Jomay’s very fine story about the family’s plight makes us wonder if there’s a way to help out. It doesn’t list specific contact information. Our best bet would be to contact the Oglala Sioux Tribe, PO Box 2070, Pine Ridge, S.D. 57770; (605) 867-8000.

Suggestions?

Gwen Florio

Tags: American Red Cross, buffalo post, Gwen Florio, Native American news, Oglala Sioux Tribe, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota Department of Social Services