![Tashina Iron Horse]()
Young Tashina Iron Horse is a competitive pow wow dancer. (credit: Elissa Stohler/ABC News)Pine Ridge residents live amid poverty that rivals that of the third world. Forty-seven percent of the Pine Ridge population lives below the federal poverty level, 65 percent to 80 percent of the adults are unemployed, and rampant alcoholism and an obesity epidemic combine with underfunded schools to make it a rough place to grow up. Tashina lives in government housing in Manderson, 30 minutes north of downtown Pine Ridge. She lives with her grandmother, parents, siblings and uncles - sometimes up to 19 people live in the three-bedroom house, which has seen better days.
In the decades following President John F. Kennedy's pledge to fund public housing projects on American Indian reservations, a construction boom began in Pine Ridge. Today, most of these units built in the 1970s and 1980s are in varying degrees of disrepair - a result, critics say, of steep cuts to the Housing and Urban Development budget made by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Public housing dollars today are largely spent battling black mold in reservation housing rather than constructing new homes.
Amid the despair, there are youth across the reservation - like Tashina - who are breaking through the hopelessness with huge dreams and powerful stories.
Check out a sneak peek - Tashina teaches Diane Sawyer some of her moves - below. Continue reading