There's a small town called Mission, South Dakota, a town on the Rosebud Sioux Tribe Indian Reservation, which is about thirty miles from my hometown of Valentine, Nebraska. A reservation that gives you some shocking scenes as you drive a long highway 83. Many houses that were just built by the federal government are being wrecked, as the Native Americans have no respect for the houses. But, should they have any respect? It was their land that we took away from them and there isn't much that can be done to replace that.
Valentine is your typical small-town Nebraska with its population close to 3000 and 99 percent of that population being white. But the population grows to closer to 4000 around the first of the month when the Native Americans from the north come to town to do their shopping at the local Alco Discount store with the federal money that they receive. They will go on a spending spree with this money for a few days but then most of them are gone. They head back to the reservation, which starts just nine miles north of Valentine, in a car over loaded and tail pipe dragging on the asphalt. Most won't return for more than two weeks and maybe longer if that car (referred to by many white people as a res bomb) breaks down on the way back. .
Well even though the economy of my small hometown wouldn't survive without these monthly trips by the Native Americans most business people don't really like doing business with the natives. Most would say that they are dirty and they don't want them hanging around the store. The storeowners are afraid of theft or vandalism, which probably occurs. But it probably occurs just as much among the white people. It's just another stereotype that whites make of people with different skin color. .
Most of the Native Americans come to town as a family. They just don't come as an immediate family. There may be aunts and uncles, grandparents or cousins that will make the trip.
