Bear Butte: new southern Dakota biker bar

Excerpt: STURGIS, S.D. - Another biker bar will live in the shadow of the sacred Bear Butte in the Northern Black Hills.

With a vote of 5 to 0, the Meade County commissioners approved a malt beverage license April 4 for Jay Allen, owner of the soon-to-be Sturgis County Line campground and biker bar, which is located two and one-half miles north of Bear Butte.

In this is argued this: When Bear Butte is destroyed, it is the end of our culture, Camp said.

Without using a value system as to whether or not Bear Butte should or should not have another biker bar, this statement is loaded with just too much nostalgia. There are a whole different varieties of Native Americans, and to suggest that they — and their myriad of cultures — aren't resilient enough to carry on in the face of some shitty biker bar is too much to swallow. The Amerindian has occupied the Dakotas for the past 12,000 years, facing much more adversity (via nature's wrath) than any kind of thunder a liquor license could bring.

Last week, some jackass told me that if the "Fighting Sioux" nickname was changed, "then their culture would die." I said, "Um, excuse me? Could you repeat what you just said?" Yes. He repeated, and I called bullshit. The Fighting Sioux logo could go, and the Lakota that I know would still carry on, would still get up in the morning, would still remember their past, would still paint their winter counts, and would still know their past.

Furthermore, in the vein of conservatism and traditionalism, I told the previously mentioned jackass that UND should return their logo to the Flickertails, like it used to be.

Shepard Krech III (Brown University anthropologist), "The Ecological Indian: Myth and History," (W.W. Norton press,
1999) is more comprehensive in his polemic against nostalgia.