No siren wailed in the distance as Kellan Harrison doused a fire with a garden hose last month in Cannon Ball.
When fireworks sparked a blaze there June 25, Harrison knew not to wait for the fire department. On the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, there is no fire department. Not for private structures, anyway.
"Young men with garden hoses - that's how we have to fight our fires down here," tribal council member Archie Fool Bear said Friday.
The reservation actually has two groups of firefighters - one that handles blazes on grasslands and another that takes care of Bureau of Indian Affairs property.
But until Friday, there wasn't a crew authorized to fight fires on private property.
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said the BIAchanged its position on Friday and will allow their firefighters to put out fires in private structures.
In response to a demand from Dorgan, the Department of Interior's Deputy Secretary, Jim Cason, will issue a directive that allows emergency personnel to fight fires on private structures from the outside “ but they are still not allowed to enter the buildings.
"This is a step forward, but it's still unbelievable that the BIA would prevent their firefighters from doing whatever is needed to protect lives that may be at risk in private buildings on Indian reservations," Dorgan said.
I find it more than a little astonishing that there is a community of people in this country who are living without protection from a fire department while they wait around for the federal government to swoop in and take care of the problem.
I have to ask, where is all the money from the tribe's casino going? By all appearances that casino is doing a brisk trade, yet the reservation is doing without a fire department?
And why is Senator Dorgan placing game with the federal government? Shouldn't blame be placed with the tribal authorities who have apparently decided to distribute the money from their booming gaming interests elsewhere? If these Indian tribes are sovereign enough to make their own laws concerning things like gambling then certainly I think they're sovereign enough to establish their own fire departments.
Yet they don't. Instead they expect the American taxpayers to pick up the bill for fire fighting on the reservations. But why not? The entitlement mentality is nothing if not cemented into Indian culture thanks to the fact that we've turned the reservations into welfare states. Who can blame the Indians for sitting around and thinking someone else should come and put out their fires? They're told they're owed something from the day their born by the system they live in, and they'll continue to feel that way until some political leader gets the courage to tell them that they've got to start making their own way in the world.
Sadly, that person (who will no doubt be accused of racism, hatred and a lack of compassion) isn't likely to come along any time soon.