"When the shooting in Nickel Mines, Pa., hit the headlines, it seemed even more horrific because it targeted the Amish people of Lancaster County. This was not a community in which murder and shootings happens everyday. These are gentle people who purposefully have left behind the problems of modern America.

The shootings took me back to the day I drove to the Red Lake Indian reservation in Minnesota to cover the shootings there, in which nine people were murdered. The 10th was Jeffrey Wise himself, the killer; he took his own life following his spree.

The Red Lake shootings stunned that Minnesota reservation. It's an isolated place, but you can't compare Red Lake and Nickel Mines.

True, as I watched the aftermath of the Pennsylvania school shootings unfold, I could see a similarity - but only in the fact the Amish are a somewhat closed community, as are some reservations. Unlike the Amish, however, reservations are protected by federal laws. Although reservations don't have armies, they do have the protection of a police force. At Red Lake during the school shootings, police officers from surrounding reservations came into the area, doubling the force.

The Amish school shootings make all of us realize again that no community is exempt from this kind of tragedy - including my own, I might add. I sat with a friend over coffee this past weekend, and he told me the story of a killing that happened not long ago right in our reservation community. A drug dealer killed his nephew, my friend said. "

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Dorreen Yellow Bird: Again we learn that no community is exempt (The Grand Forks Herald 10/4)
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