Throughout the history of mankind, in all countries around the globe, and in almost every era, the young generation clashes with the old. Sometimes the clash is cultural or philosophical, at other times physical.
A famous example from the last century is the hippie revolution which pitted young idealist Americans against a corrupt government and money-driven corporate establishment. More recently, the murder of George Floyd in America sparked violent protests throughout the country which led to the cultural upheaval which is still shaking the country. Notably, most of today's rebelling “soldiers” are young Blacks backed by young white liberals who believe that what they view as the exploitation of Black People and all minorities must end.
Perhaps it was this fervor for equality and freedom which led a group of young Native American Indians in Nevada to establish a make-shift settlement on the outskirts of Las Vegas. The settlement, which was built almost overnight and set up to look like an Indian village of old with Teepee-like tents and Totem poles, immediately attracted a frenzy of media attention.
And almost immediately, the Nevada law enforcement agencies arrived on the scene with a small army of police and bulldozers and destroyed the encampment, claiming that the young Indians lacked official building permits and that the settlement posed a security hazard to the adjacent highway leading to the city of Las Vegas. In response, the settler group which calls itself “The Youth of the Plains” and whose members dress like young Indian warriors, claimed that the area was rightfully Indian territory, formally inhabited by the Washoe, Paiute, and Shoshone tribes before the State of Nevada existed.
Undaunted by the destruction of their would-be village, the young Indians regathered and erected another overnight settlement, this time even closer to the city of Las Vegas, the gambling capital of the world, which sits on land, the group maintains, that was also stolen from their ancestors by the United States Government. Needless to say, not wanting to risk a potentially problematic court involvement over who legally owns the multi-billion dollar city, one of the richest cities in the world, the Nevada police once again arrived at the settlement and razed it to the ground, arresting more than a dozen of the young Indians on the scene.
News of the seeming injustice spread quickly in what looked to be the kind of David and Goliath story that the media loves. People behind the George Floyd “Black Lives Matter” movement immediately contacted the young Indians to offer their support and several civil rights law firms stepped forward to represent the “Youth of the Plains” group on the grounds of racial injustice, threatening to take the controversy to the United States Supreme Court.
The tragedy occurred when two Nevada policemen who were cruising the highway leading to Las Vegas spotted a vehicle traveling along a dirt road that branched off from the main road. The police car set off in pursuit. Sure enough, several young Indians were riding in the small pick-up truck. When the driver sounded the patrol car’s siren and called out over the car’s loud speaker for the suspicious vehicle to stop, the young driver of the pick-up pressed down hard on the gas pedal in flight. The more modern and high-powered police car soon closed the gap. The desert road turned into a cloud of dust during the high-speed car chase.
“Let’s teach these guys a lesson,” the driver of the police car said to his partner. Pulling the police car parallel to the small pick-up truck, he swerved the steering wheel and smashed into the tail end of the adjacent vehicle. The pick-up veered out of control, skidded off the dirt road, hit an embankment and flipped over, rolling over and over until it crashed to a stop. Shaken from the collision, two young Indians staggered out from the overturned vehicle. The third passenger was dead.
“Oh damn,” the driver of the police car said when he discovered the dead youth in the car. He turned to his speechless partner. “We can get thrown off the police force and worse for this,” the driver said. “We’ve got to destroy the camera on the dashboard of the police car and say it was smashed in the collision.”
To date the Nevada police have refused to investigate the sorrowful incident which the “Youth of the Plains” group terms murder. Its lawyers demand that the police officers involved be brought to trial. In ongoing protests, young Indians have been blocking the highways leading into Las Vegas.
Probably because the Native American Indian population in the country is so small, the “Youth of the Plains” cause hasn’t yet gained the massive following that arose after the killing of the Black American George Floyd. But the situation remains potentially explosive.
Tzvi Fishman was awarded the Israel Ministry of Education Prize for Jewish Culture and Creativity. Before making Aliyah to Israel in 1984, he was a successful Hollywood screenwriter. He has co-authored 4 books with Rabbi David Samson, based on the teachings of Rabbis A. Y. Kook and T. Y. Kook. His other books include: "The Kuzari For Young Readers" and "Tuvia in the Promised Land". His books are available on Amazon. Recently, he directed the movie, "Stories of Rebbe Nachman."
