Time's report is long overdue. I have no answers but as a former AUSA in South Dakota, I spent many days in Oglala. The reservation was and is very poor. It is located way away from any urban center so that $2 million income is a blessing for this impoverished nation. In my days, the main highway and the road to the Bureau buildings were paved; the roads to the Sioux mambers homes were graded mud; in the winter sometimes no one could get his car (and it would be an old old one) up from their home to the black top. Even the Chief of Police could could not drive to his home on some days. But the Bureau folk had paved roads. One year the Pine Ridge High School team won the State A basket ball tournament. The following fall, I was there for depositions and as I drove past the post office saw a group of older teen agers lounging on the steps. I asked my bureau person if he knew them. He said, "Yeah, most of them are from last year's BB team." I said "Aren't they in college?" He said, "You got to be kidding."

The Oglala Sioux are wonderful people but poverty plagues them and the 21st Century doesn't seem to offer much hope. Casinos won't help. Same with most of the other South Dakota Native American Tribes.

There should be some way to share the profits among the tribes...but that wouldn't be the American way would it?