Woah, sorry for the rant. Didn’t realize how long my post was, haha.
That was a pretty rare price and the house was small, old, and in bad condition. That’s not common.
I don’t live on a reservation. I live in northeastern SD (I’m not too concerned about sharing my location), actually less than two hours from your state. There are 9 reservations in SD, 4 on the east side, 5 on the west side. The western ones are generally more poor. Two of them, Pine Ridge and Rosebud (which I think is where your friend is?) are in southwestern SD, pretty far away from me. Those are the two that have been among the poorest (sometimes reaching #1) counties in the country for a long time, and the ones that have more crime - they are along the drive up from Denver so drugs tend to pass through these towns more frequently on their way to the northern states.
I’ve seen you say this a few times, and honestly gotta say that I’ve never once felt this way. I’m not saying this in a “You’re racist” way or something, haha, but I think this stuff gets overblow a lot. If you’re on a western SD reservation at night (eastern ones are closer to cities and interstates), chances are you’re only the person for 20+ miles around. I’d be more afraid of the weather and wildlife than the people if I broke down at night. Especially being a dude. People aren’t just being murdered left and right. And I didn’t grow up or ever live on a reservation, so it’s not like I feel more comfortable just because I’m “from there.”
These are the kinds of things I’d worry more about. Vandalism, theft, stuff like that. Not so much violent crime. It does exist for sure, and maybe at higher rates than in other places, but I’ve been stranded on the side of a rez highway (with a few white friends in tow) a few times and have either been passed by or given a ride by whoever happened to be out on the road at the same time.
I don’t either. The poorest ones are so rural. No one wants to live there, simply because there’s not anything there. And the population is low and quite spread out, so there’s not much incentive for people to open a business if half of their potential customers live 50 miles away, and maybe don’t even own a car.
A lot of people would like to basically cut ties with the government. The current form of tribal governments was mostly established in the 1920s-40s by certain progressives, and many feel that it made things worse for Indians than if they’d been left to their own devices. In fact, in many cases, it did. When they were put on reservations, they were told they had to farm and ranch, so they did, and some surprised the government at how well they did at it. Once they realized that you could ranch on the land, they opened it back up to buyers and between that and the Great Depression, a lot of Indians lost what they’d managed to build. Then once the government realized that tribal land was some of the richest mineral and oil land in the country (I think Pine Ridge has a ton of uranium), that was extra incentive to get involved with Indian affairs.
So yeah, like I said, a lot of people are wishing the government had just left them alone a century ago to figure things out on their own. Things would probably be better off today if they had.
@BrickHead - nothing to really say in response to your last reply to me, but I liked it and agreed with it. I’m all for starting families at young ages but you’re right, that is getting harder to do. Not impossible - I remember sitting in class and having some classmate argue about how it’s basically impossible to be a college student, work fulltime, and have a kid, not realizing that I, the same age as him, was doing exactly that. I think a lot of people just don’t want to grow up and have responsibilities. But it is harder to get going.
