Editorial: America slow to assist South Dakota tribe

Opinion

Monday, February 22, 2010

"Americans’ response to natural disasters has been valiant. America has given nearly $2 billion to Haiti since their earthquake, which is just one of countless acts of international goodwill. Domestically though we’re not nearly as generous. We don’t pay attention.

Just as Americans were giving to Haiti, a devastating winter storm struck the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation Jan. 22 and 14,000 people lost power. While the storm was hardly as destructive as Haiti’s earthquake, nor were as many people affected, it would seem logical that they would still receive media attention and donations since it was inside the United States. They didn’t.

As of Feb. 9, the reservation only received $8,000 in donations and power was still down. The disaster may have happened right after Haiti, but isn’t South Dakota generous enough to give more than $8,000 to our own neighbors? Yes we are, the problem is that we didn’t even know it was happening.

It wasn’t until the issue was highlighted on “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” that donations started coming in. Within 48 hours, more than $250,000 had been raised. All it took to get help was one minute of airtime, more than two weeks after the disaster.

The fact that it took a national news program to get our attention about such a dire local issue is inexcusable, both for the media and for ourselves. The local media should have covered this story more and we should have paid more attention to our surroundings."

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EDITORIAL: We can’t help our neighbors until we know (The Volante 2/16)