I grew up in a rural farmhouse in South Dakota. For those of you who do not know South Dakota, it is a state in the midwestern part of the United States with a population of about 900,000 people. (It’s size is about 56% of Germany.) It is characterized by breathtaking nature of a vastness of space and sky.

I went to school there and grew up like most of the other kids in the area. In school we had learned relatively little about the history of the Native Americans, and what we did learn was quite one-sided. We learned that there were “Indian Wars” in which the Americans defeated the Native Americans. Since then, they have lived in reservations where they can manage themselves, but where they have been otherwise isolated from the rest of society. They used to live in tipis, were closely in tune with nature, and they hunted the buffaloes, but those days are pretty much over. The reservations were taboo for the “White Man” and since there were no points of contact for me due to the fact that I did not live close to any reservation, I did not think about these things any further.

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