>>108581815It really is depressing, not going to lie. In that same week I got that cold, a man a few villages over had ran over his girlfriend who was pregnant dead, another guy had committed suicide off of the bridge that marks the borderline between the US jurisdiction and the Reservation, and someone had gone AWOL and killed three other people in a hit and run. Pine Ridge in perticular is the poorest place in the Western Hemisphere, and no one really cares about it at all.
Personally, these people are the nicest people I met. Big hearts, and don't let everything bad happen to them ruin them. If I had the chance to go back, I would have dropped everything and gone. It is a beautiful place culturally, and geographically. The Badlands are on the Rez and from that side, it looks gorgeous with the plains to the south, and the vignette of the Black hills to the north. If you are up for it, definitely do visit your local reservation. Not all of them will be casino workers and tobacco farmers that people assume they are. These people are culturally rich and is a shame that they are disappearing piece by piece everyday, and no one is doing anything to preserve it.
