Here's What Life Is Like On The Notorious Wind River Indian Reservation

Robert Johnson

The Wind River Indian Reservation is not an easy place to get to, but I had to see it for myself.

Thirty-five-hundred square miles of prairie and mountains in western Wyoming, the reservation is home to bitter ancestral enemies: the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes.

Even among reservations, it's renowned for brutal crime, widespread drug use, and legal dumping of toxic waste.

But no matter how much you hear about Wind River, there always seemed to be something unsaid. I spent over a week there and in the nearby towns. It was perhaps the most dramatic and unbalanced place I've ever been.

In the following slides I document what I saw from my more than week-long stay, in an effort to portray the plight and the perils of these forgotten tribes.