INTO THE WILD: Brad Little Moon sets up a shot of the Badlands, 40 miles north of Pine Ridge, South Dakota

On a cool evening in early September, thunder rumbles across the wide-open badlands and prairies of southwestern South Dakota. On the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, 15 teenagers gather around a bonfire, clowning and giggling under the stars. They check their cell phones and toss their bangs, snapping pictures of one another through the sparks and smoke. Marie Fox Belly, grandmother to one of the group, sits calmly near the fire in a canvas chair, hilarity spinning around her. Finally the laughter subsides, and Fox Belly begins to speak.

Just a few miles from this campfire, on December 29, 1890, U.S. soldiers killed scores of Lakota men, women, and children in the Wounded Knee massacre. At least 146 Native Americans died, and likely many more. Fox Belly's great-grandfather, Iron Hail, was one of the survivors, and she heard his stories as a small child. He remembered the creak of the soldiers' wagon wheels on the frozen ground and the sound of sabers slapping against thighs. "He said that when the soldiers' horses ran, it sounded like thunder," she recalls.

The Lakota spiritual leader Black Elk believed that the sacred hoop-the continuity of the Lakota people-was broken at Wounded Knee. He prophesied that the seventh generation born after the massacre would repair the hoop. The teenagers gathered here tonight are part of that generation, and according to the prophecy, they bear a unique responsibility to their people and their land.

Many things have changed since the time of the massacre, Fox Belly says, and young people need to understand the modern world. "You need to learn, you need to be our eyes and ears," she says. "But you also need to remember who you are."

Some of the teenagers, bored, have already wandered off into the darkness. Those remaining are quiet. The story of the massacre and the prophecy is familiar to a few, but others are hearing it for the first time. The silence thickens. Chaz Thompson, Fox Belly's grandson, finally breaks the mood. "Hey, I'm hungry," he says, laughing uncomfortably. "Intense moment, huh?"

To the world outside Pine Ridge, the members of the seventh generation are known mostly by grim statistics. They live in two of the poorest counties in the United States. Most of the adults they know are unemployed. Their communities are permeated with alcoholism, drug abuse, and gang violence. Their rate of suicide is more than four times the national average. Such appalling suffering attracts fits of national media attention, leaving these teenagers at once ogled and forgotten.

This week some are telling their own stories. As part of a photography camp organized by the nonprofit group VisionWorkshops and sponsored by National Geographic and others, the teenagers gathered around the campfire with Marie Fox Belly are spending several days learning the skills of photojournalism. VisionWorkshops has run similar camps in underserved communities in Botswana, Appalachia, Uganda, Mexico, Maine, and elsewhere, with the aim of giving teenagers a new view of themselves and the places they call home. "Our goal for this camp is not to make photographers," says program director Lindsay McCullough. "Our goal is to help kids think positively about themselves and their community, and to have a sense of pride in where they're from."

With their instructors-professional and accomplished amateur photographers as well as educators and mentors-the Pine Ridge teenagers visit familiar spots: the old tribal hospital, a middle-school volleyball match, a seemingly endless field of sunflowers. They are told about good light and interesting angles, about discerning the unique moments that make great images. Most of the teenagers act as if they couldn't care less. They whine, they chatter, they ignore their assignments. They talk back and dig in their heels. The instructors say the teenagers at Pine Ridge are by far their toughest audience.

But they keep showing up, attitudes and all. The camp's lead instructor, the photojournalist Lynn Johnson, pushes her students to take one more frame, one more risk. "Sense of place!" she reminds them as they spill from the vans at Red Cloud Indian School, camera straps looped around their necks. "Look for the intensity!" One evening, the diminutive Johnson and Jason Two Bulls approach a tall, muscular young man on a neighborhood basketball court. As Two Bulls peers upward, intimidated, Johnson sticks out a friendly hand and explains their mission. The young man nods, and Two Bulls, surprised and delighted, lifts his lens to zoom in on a tattooed biceps.

Each day, when a selection of the teenagers' work is projected on the classroom screen, it's clear that they listen more closely than they let on. They catch the afternoon light reflecting off an empty two-lane road and glowing in the pale coat of a too-skinny horse. They zoom in on a baby's foot held gently in a man's weathered hand and on a piece of sky seen through the top of a tipi. They take pictures of little sisters and nieces, grandmothers and volleyball teammates.

For one photo shoot, the group heads out onto the prairie, and teenagers and instructors laugh together in the back of a bouncing pickup truck, everyone relaxing into the adventure. Kiana Walking Eagle, a tough-talking 14-year-old, snaps pictures in the afternoon light. "I've never seen it like this," she says quietly.

To an outsider, the rolling hills and dramatic cliffs of Pine Ridge can look postcard-pretty -- or barren and forbidding. These teenagers have a more intimate view of the place, for they know the human stories behind the statistics, the tragedies that layer every landscape at Pine Ridge. Even those who know little of tribal history live with the legacy of broken treaties and stolen land, with the grinding cycles of poverty and violence. Some take self-portraits in gang colors; others talk about imprisoned fathers and addicted siblings. "I can not wait to get off this rez," one student writes in a class assignment.

When the group stops at an overlook with a stunning 180-degree view of the Dakota badlands, most of the teenagers take only a passing interest in the scenery. Instead, they tell stories about wild parties in the ravines and drivers who careened off the highway to their deaths below. Walking Eagle points to the rim of the tablelands, which curves far into the distance. "If I could," she says dreamily to her friends, "I'd run from there ... to there ... to there."

Last summer, a 14-year-old named John Richard, alone behind the wheel, drove off the road and died just a few hundred yards from this overlook. Walking Eagle, a friend of Richard's, wears a bright blue T-shirt printed with his face and name. "He wouldn't talk to anyone," she says flatly. "He chose to end his life." She walks down the road to find the tire tracks, the still-busted barbed-wire fence, and a white cross decorated with plastic flowers and an unopened can of Budweiser.

For members of the seventh generation to ease the suffering of the tribe, they need to pursue their own view of their world. Somehow they need to distance themselves from the tragedy around them but remain connected to their family, their friends, and their land. Chaz Thompson already knows how difficult that balance can be.

Thompson's birth name is Wasu Maza, after his great-great-great-grandfather Iron Hail, and he grew up hearing and speaking the Lakota language at home. He wears a short-brimmed cap and a hipster's black-rimmed glasses, hosts a heavy-metal show on KILI-FM, the reservation radio station, and until recently played guitar in a band. A high school senior, he plans to go to college and study psychology because he often finds himself counseling people. He says he talked two relatives out of committing suicide.

Thompson has chosen not to drink, not to do drugs, and not to join a gang, but he says his is a lonely path. On the reservation, kids with any measure of success are often accused of trying to be white and are often ostracized. The members of the seventh generation, like those before them, are under intense pressure to conform to the bitter norm. "I've been enduring hate and jealousy all my life," he says.

Thompson finds strength in the Mormon church; he and his family are longtime members. But the Pine Ridge church, whose membership had dwindled for years, recently closed its doors. Thompson's self-portrait for the photography camp shows him standing outside the church, guitar in hand and weeds at his feet. When he shows the portrait to the rest of the group, he speaks of broken dreams and a broken heart.

Yet Thompson expects to return to Pine Ridge to live, for nowhere else feels like home, he says. The sweeping prairie makes everywhere else seem closed in, built over. He's reluctant to talk about the story of the seventh generation-"the elders understand it better," he says-but to him, it means continuing to be who he is. "It means living pure," he says. "Living pure, and persevering."