The power of skateboarding to inspire kids, to give them a constructive outlet for their energy and keep them, for want of a better phrase, out of trouble, is well documented.
Initiatives like Skateistan in Kabul, or Pushing Myanmar in Burma are helping transform local communities. More recently the Stronghold Society, a charity dedicated to improving the lives of Native Americans in the US, embarked on a similar skatepark project with the aim of doing the same for the young people on the Lakota reservation in South Dakota, in the US.
“Pine Ridge has suffered from a drug and alcohol epidemic with teen suicide rates seven to ten times greater than the national average.”
Having secured funding from Levi’s, they completed one unfinished park on the reservation, and built a new one – a process documented in this new documentary, Skateboarding Pine Ridge.
