Opinion of Shannon County, South Dakota

[opebo]

I drove through just to check it out when I was in the neighborhood, touring the Badlands. It was quite desolate and depressing, like most rural areas. What was notably different was that many Natives were out walking around along the Highway, something no non-Native rural would be caught dead doing in their neck of the woods. FWIW, the tour guide at Rushmore said the gov't has given the tribe a bazillion dollars (precisely) in compensation for screwing them over back in the day regarding the Black Hills. But the Injuns won't take the money, so it just sits in an account somewhere getting bigger day after day. And yet they all live in squalor. Go figure out a Native.

Yes, they're hard to understand - having honor and pride and so forth..

[opebo]

Go figure out a Native.

Yes, they're hard to understand - having honor and pride and so forth..

I didn't see a lot of honor or pride. I saw a lot of drunk Indians living in squalor with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Dignity wasn't on the menu.

Such is the fate of all the victims of america, memphis - the Natives, the blacks, the hispanics, the poor whites.  They're all to be chewed up and consumed.

However you have to admit the fact that these incredibly abused and victimized people are showing an impressive level of pride in refraining - despite their great need - from accepting the absurd pittance offered them by the American government.

A proper solution to the Indian question in the Dakotas - one which would show proper respect and a realistic recognition of what was done to them - would be seizure and return of the Black Hills and whatever other territories they deemed indispensable to their culture, in addition to a massive financial reparation.

[opebo]

I'm not at all familiar with the workings of their tribal gov't, but I bet many of those people would like some of that money but are being denied by their own tribal leaders. Maybe we just have different perceptions of dignity. I don't see the shame in taking the government's money and making life better for a communty. They're not getting the Black Hills back either way. They may as well take the white man to the cleaners.

I think they recognize modern life under the white man's capitalism for what it is, memphis - an absolute ignoble shame.