South Dakota Odds & Ends

 

Long-horn sheep by roadside sitting down

Long-horn sheep stands and glares as I got closer

 

 

Badlands southeast of Rapid City. Once was ocean floor thousands of years ago.

 

 

Deer climbing rocks near our hotel in Keystone

 

A view of Mount Rushmore from a cemetery. Quite an ironic reminder of what the USA 'democracy empire' has brought to the world. I never go to Rushmore when I make my periodic visits to the Black Hills. This is close enough for me.

Yesterday Julian and I spent most of the day at the Pine Ridge reservation just south of Rapid City. While making the long drive we listened to KILI Radio (Voice of the Lakota Nation). It just so happened that the Pine Ridge Tribal Council meeting was being aired on the station. Much of it was boring and bureaucratic. But at one point we heard a young woman student's voice bring the meeting alive.

The day before there was a student walkout at the Pine Ridge high school. They were protesting the neglect they are experiencing by the system that rules America and ultimately their home nation.

The young woman told the council that the elder generation was not doing enough to protect the coming generations from the harsh legacy of hundreds of years of genocide. 'Multi-generational trauma' she named it. More support is needed to help kids who come from dysfunctional, broken families. Many  of the students get their only meal each day at the school. More support is urgently needed thus the student walkout - a cry for help.

But America has war$ to fight and lands to conquer. Budgets are being cut at home as the war machine's buried treasure grows each year.

Mount Rushmore - where four presidents faces were caved into a jagged rock mountain - was Washington's declaration of victory over the indigenous peoples and their land. 'Your way of life is now defeated. Your lives are in our hands. Submit or die'. And Americans come in droves each year to worship a long-gone Hollywood notion of 'freedom and democracy'. Many still hang onto the story book version as they see little else to cling to.

The student walkout proclaims they are not submitting. Each generation in Indian Country has to fight like hell just to stay alive. The native elders across Turtle Island have long been warning the people of America. 'You are next to be brought under Washington's control'. Few have listened attentively. 

The 'Great White Father' in Washington is today increasing the size of the reservations. The oligarchs have raped and pillaged North America and are currently attempting to stay in control of the whole world. It's a losing battle for the poor, working and middle classes. They are essentially being brought onto the expanding economic desperation-reservation. Just look at the legions of homeless across the country. Many fear the homeless will soon be rounded up and put in what would turn into extermination camps. We ignore this at our own peril. 

Just look at what the Neo-cons are doing to the people in Ukraine. Why would they not get rid of us as well?

In the age of AI and robotics land and resources are the real agenda. Workers can be robotized. Superfluous populations must be dealt with or they become radicalized and revolutionary. Witness the French oligarchy response to recent protests. Same in Palestine where Israel's apartheid system is all about genocide.

Civil rights are beaten down during this period as social control must be maintained at all costs. America is a police state - the global military arm of corporate capital. 

The native people of Indian Country know all about the big army boot of Washington. They've long reminded us to 'Put your ear to the Railroad Tracks and hear the train coming'.

Bruce