Sometimes as a nation we forget how we acquired the land we live on today and take it for granted. Before the Founding Fathers, the Pilgrims, and even Christopher Columbus, there was already a nation occupying North America. This nation was unique because it wasn't just one sovereign state, it was thousands of unique tribes that coexisted in North America. One of the most important tribes was the Lakota tribe. The Lakota were not only one of the largest tribes, but they were also the ones who suffered the most at the hands of the new Americans who wished to occupy their land, simply because they had more to lose than the other tribes. During futile attempts by natives to cling to their way of life and origins, these Native Americans were forced into small reservations scattered across unattractive parts of the United States, usually far from where they originated. The Pine Ridge Lakota Indian Reservation, also known as Pine Ridge Agency, is an Oglala Sioux Native American reservation located in South Dakota. Originally included in the territory of the Great Sioux Reservation, Pine Ridge was founded in 1889 in the southwestern region of South Dakota, bordering Nebraska. It currently consists of 3,468 square miles of land and is the eighth largest reservation in the United States, Delaware and Rhode Island combined are not even as large as this reservation. Pine Ridge contains all of Shannon County, along with the southern half of Jackson County. and the northwestern part of Bennett County. Of the 3,143 counties in the United States, these three counties are among the poorest of the poor. Approximately 84,000 acres of land are usable for farming and cattle ranching, along with extensive land…completely off paper…completely, regardless of where the sale would take place, it was illegal and prohibited. In 1953 the ban was lifted by Public Law 277, signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The new law allowed individual Native American tribes to decide whether they wanted to allow the sale and consumption of alcohol on their lands or reservations, this was a big step forward in advancing individual rights for the tribes and not just following a policy uniform for everyone. tribe. The Office of Special Administrators for Native Americans and many other tribes have chosen to exclude alcohol from their reservations due to their people's problems and line of dependency. A reservation without alcohol was a substantially better place to stay than one that contained alcohol. Currently, 200 of the 293 reservations in the 48 contiguous states have banned the sale of alcohol in their territory.