Zach Petersen Post 2

I thought starting out the film The Battle For White Clay with talking about how poor the the pine ridge reservation is and how the two poorest counties in the nation are within the reservation. When they said that ⅔ of the people in the county are below the national poverty line. It just goes to show how people on reservations are not doing well at all and the government that is supposedly helping them out by watching their money and making sure they are making the right decision, but when you go to the reservation they are super poor and should be incharge of their own money.

Right away in the film there is a scene where they are in University of Nebraska talking to the white community about what white clay is doing and what actions need to be taken. One native man talks about how people would react if what was going on in White clay was going on in Lincoln or in Omaha and how those places would be shut down so fast. But out in white clay people just don’t care and people are dying so often and everyone just looks the other way. After thinking about this it makes you realize that this is where stereotypes come from is stuff like this because people see the natives out standing outside a place that can sell alcohol and then later when they come back those same people are passed out on the ground, with people seeing this the first thing they are going to think is that all natives are the same, they drink so much that eventually they pass out so next time they see a native in a bar they are going to assume they are drinking and not going to stop until they are passed out. This is just one of the many stereotypes that are put on the native people.