Winter Counts

by David Heska Wanbli Weiden

Five grand. More money than I made in a year.

But it’s not the white powder dope—it’s black tar, looks and feels like a Tootsie Roll. Easier to make and smuggle. Here’s the kicker: it’s ten times more potent than powder. We’re seeing black tar that’s seventy-five percent pure. China White heroin back in the day was maybe five percent.”

In the old days, you had to go to the drug dealers, now they come to you. What’s more, they run specials, like every tenth balloon free, and they hand out samples like crazy, trying to create new customers.”

Few of these people knew they were traveling on sacred ground, lands that had been promised by treaty to the Lakota people forever but were stolen after gold was discovered in the 1860s. Adding insult to injury, Mount Rushmore had been carved out of the holy mountain previously known as Six Grandfathers as a giant screw-you to the Lakotas. Kind of like Indians building a casino in the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem.