Mexican Hat/Monument Valley

It could be a warning if you plan to eat. I don't know this (the following comment about inspections) for a fact, but I have been on many reservations and visited - and ate in some - Native American (to be PC) restaurants / businesses. They may try hard and have good hearts - again, being PC - but I'm pretty sure they aren't subject to the same inspections and standards the rest of the country's businesses are. Read, NOT Native American. Read between the lines, or go look for yourselves in the kitchens, before you order food. You might just be setting yourself up for a nice dose of e-coli.

Something to know - there are more failed businesses on reservations then there are going concerns. There are a lot of reasons for that - among them, our guilt-ridden government's supporting the indigenous population, if they don't work - providing them with incentive not to better themselves & their lives. Go see how many healthy men are standing around the unemployment office in Kayenta, AZ. (Just down the road from Monument Valley - on the Navajo reservation.) Notice all the failed businesses everywhere on the reservations. Notice the trash around the mobile homes (pride is gone), the abandoned mobile homes with the current one nearby, all the old car hulks, with the one NEW car the gov't just gave them. All the old appliances - every homestead literally looks like a dump. We as a country have been destroying the pride of a people. Their society - much like others - the father passes his knowledge on to his son. But the father doesn't know how to run a business that will succeed, serving our society. And the son is paid to start the business by the gov't - then he loses his stipend as he's supposedly making a living now. IOW, he's paid if it fails. It's really pretty sad. I've felt guilty as a white man, visiting on reservations - feel the glaring, like I own the history that has put them where they are. But on the other hand - I won't eat in their food establishments knowing what I do as I prefer to not get sick, or stay in their hotels. I don't care for cockroaches or mouse turds in my bedding. I do buy their souvenirs and jewelry. I'm guessing I'll get flamed here, but this is what I've seen in many years of visiting on reservations.

A point of interest: Most, or many Native Americans historically , were hunter-gatherers. Nomadic. They would set up camp in an area, and hunt game and gather wild crops, until the supply was depleted, and then pull up camp and move on. They would go "use the facilities" in the weeds nearby. When they left an area, nature would take over, their natural, bio-degradable trash and waste would assimilate into the soil, the game and crops would return, and the area could support them once again, next time they came around, say a year later.

They still embrace the same life paradigms today. However, we have stuck them on reservations. So now their waste just accumulates outside their mobile homes, which we, out of our guilt for screwing them for hundreds of years, gave them. The waste no longer is naturally absorbed into the environment, as it's no longer biodegradable, being plastic and metal from our economy. And we have broken their spirit by paying them not to produce, making them stay put instead of allowing them to be nomadic, proud hunters.
I expect I'd be one P.O.'d Wild Eagle, and bitter to the white man, if I was one of them. But as I'm not, I just feel bad they got the short end of the stick. I wish they could better harmonize with our society, and us with them - but I don't have answers, just observations on what I've seen.