Local News

Cell Phone Dilemmas

If anyone under the age of 40 reads this, they will once again decide that I am a crazy old nut. Perhaps, they are right. At any rate, I think that cell phone technology is one of the worst things that has happened in the past 20 years or so. These gadgets seem to have taken over…

Promises Made, Promises Kept

At this time two years ago, with President Biden and Democrats in charge, our country was dealing with an inflation crisis and a historic immigration crisis. Democrats’ reckless spending contributed to the worst inflation in 40 years, and their open-border policies led to…

Fairness isn’t charity, it’s how you grow the economy

“It’s the economy, stupid.” That was the blunt reminder Democratic strategist James Carville taped to the wall of Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign. The relentless focus on everyday economic reality helped drown out Republican messaging that, for years, had wrapped itself in a cloak…

When the real wolf came

Hyperbole—extravagant exaggeration. It is good to know the word’s precise definition before proceeding. The most famous example of hyperbole is the boy who cried wolf, and the consequence of that hyperbolic persistence was—when the real wolf came—nobody responded to the boy’s…

Flipping the script on Black Hills Claim history

Up until June of 1980, the Lakota had a relatively honest history. No history is perfectly factual, and there are always legitimate disagreements about events and people worth respecting and discussing. But something happened in June of 1980, something so deeply disturbing it…

The way it was

Giago and Mickelson gave South Dakota a day worth honoring

RAPID CITY—Long before Indigenous Peoples Day became a national movement, two South Dakotans sat on opposite sides of a historical divide and decided they could do something meaningful together. One was Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota newspaperman from the Pine Ridge Reservation. The…

Our first line of defense

Men of ethics and strength look at a problem and they see the fix and work tirelessly to achieve it. Sometimes it takes decades to change the system, but once the change is in place, once the mechanism exists to directly address the problem, the work of the strong and ethical is…

How did discourse ever get this intractably polarized?

One of the curious things about an activist is the demand leveled almost immediately if you should disagree with their assertions, however hyperbolic and reality hostile these assertions. You realize such a mind is not opened to reasoned correction so you have learned the hard…

An encroachment on the right to vote

There is little significant debate over elections, executive power, and absolutely no debate about Project 2025 and its election goals. What we do hear is the Save Act and other election changes are about returning “balance:” the presidency against the bureaucracy, election…

The way it was

N. Scott Momaday was perhaps the most gifted Native writer of all time, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for House Made of Dawn in 1968. A member of the Kiowa Nation, Momaday’s plots were often narrow or thin, but his wordsmith ability was lyrical and unmatched in its capacity to…

Grouchy and gratuities

One time Grouchy and his brother and some other Indian guys helped a rich French artist down in Arizona move their art collection, and all the helpers got fifty bucks for helping. But when the French guy was alone with Grouchy and his brother he gave us another $50 gratuity. That…