Aaron Huey: America's native prisoners of war

[Magda Hassan]

Aaron Huey's effort to photograph poverty in America led him to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where the struggle of the native Lakota people -- appalling, and largely ignored -- compelled him to refocus. Five years of work later, his haunting photos intertwine with a shocking history lesson in this bold, courageous talk from TEDxDU.

Photographer, adventurer and storyteller Aaron Huey captures all of his subjects -- from war victims to rock climbers to Sufi dervishes -- with elegance and fearless sensitivity
Why you should listen to him:

Aaron Huey is a masthead photographer for National Geographic Adventure and National Geographic Traveler magazines. His stories from Afghanistan, Haiti, Mali, Siberia, Yemen and French Polynesia (to name just a few) on subjects as diverse as the Afghan drug war and the underwater photography of sharks, can be found in The New Yorker, National Geographic and The New York Times.

Huey serves on the board of directors for the nonprofit Blue Earth Alliance. In 2002, he walked 3,349 miles across America with his dog Cosmo (the journey lasted 154 days), and was recently awarded a National Geographic Expedition Council Grant to hitchhike across Siberia.

"My success is not measured in money. I have no financial security, I have no savings account. I measure my success by asking myself if I'm telling a story that the world needs to hear, if I am educating people."

Quotes by Aaron Huey

• "[The U.S. government] was tired of treaties. They were tired of sacred hills. They were tired of ghost dances. And they were tired of all the inconveniences of the Sioux. So they brought out their cannons. You want to be an Indian now?' they said, finger on the trigger."Watch this talk »
  
• "Wasichu' is a Lakota word that means non-Indian,' but another version of this word means the one who takes the best meat for himself.'"Watch this talk »
  
  
• "More Medals of Honor were given for the indiscriminate slaughter of women and children than for any battle in World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan." on the Wounded Knee massacreWatch this talk »
  
  
• "The last chapter in any successful genocide is the one in which the oppressor can remove their hands and say, My God, what are these people doing to themselves? They're killing each other. They're killing themselves while we watch them die.' This is how we came to own these United States. This is the legacy of manifest destiny.
  

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/aaron_huey.html

A must see 15 minute video about the prisoners of war in the US. A story that needs to be told. And heard. And understood.