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My daughter and I just took a huge trip through the west. For days we passed clean friendly little prairie towns, endless farms, etc. Then we pulled into Pine Ridge. It looked like we had arrived 5 minutes after a shootout. As we pulled in from the south there were no less than 25 bodies, laying motionless on sidewalks, and even in the street.
Not dead, but drunk. We went out to Wounded Knee and were treated to nothing but more drunks who appeared like zombies, trying to sell trinkets and give grossly incorrect versions of history. It was as though you drove into a bad neighborhood of Atlanta and had people trying to beg money for telling you incorrect stories of the civil war.

We passed back through pine ridge to head to the Black Hills. Stopped for fuel. Walking into the gas station, avoided vomit on the ground. Saw more cops in Pine ridge than in the past 5 days combined. Trash everywhere, abandoned cars and buildings, etc. US Government buildings and propaganda signs were everywhere. The place was a hell hole.

My college age daughter and i discussed how the only difference from the rest of the midwest was that we had crossed into a city that has forsaken the concept of private ownership of property, and was now a socialist enclave. The US government plans and funds this “community”. James Watt was right, “If you want to see the failure of socialism, dont go to the USSR. Go to an indian reservation.”

Don't judge the Indians like we would judge each other and by that I mean White People in general. They ain't like us, you'll only hate them if you do. You have to be the hated no good, dirty White Boy in Native land for a year; then you'll start understanding it all; and you won't hate them either, no joke.

Everybody knows the alcohol & govt aid has caused most of it, no more than modern day genocide; govt wants them all to die off and go away. Who do you think will then get the land?

The Indians think it's just how the system works, White Man's govt takes care of us forever. Yet I have Indian friends who vote Republican all the time, just wish I could get the entire village to see reality. Many Indians get out of the village & reservation & welfare and do quite well; entire families are successful.

Canada does it better. Thirty years back they did the carrot & stick with some of their Indians. Got them, forced them into rehab, training, jobs, helped them buy a house outside the village or reservation away from th alcohol. Many failed 2-3 times but Canadian Govt kept recycling them and most eventually became productive upstanding citizens. We live on the border and Indians in Alaska & Canada are first cousins. Night and day difference. Canadian Indians are mostly high class, doing well, 30 years after the program started. Needless to say villages in Alaska are sad places, dying villages, going extinct; just what our govt wants; dramatic difference.

Just remember, you can't even understand their culture, perspective, problems, and solutions until you've lived around them in their world and seen it with your own eyes. Just don't hate them all, look down on them all, for their situation. Us Whites move in, surround their villages with lodges & package stores; and then wonder why they have problems? Indians keep wondering why we are so successful at displacing them when we are the way we are too.