Rat a Tat Tat

About the Book

Life on an Indian reservation is not easy. The average American believes that the enrolled Native Americans are lucky because they get a monthly payment for being enrolled, they are tax exempt, and they can’t get their land foreclosed on. While in many cases this is true to some extent, the reality is that these “benefits” keep the enrolled natives imprisoned in poverty with all the problems that follow. This is one Native’s story of growing up in poverty during the Great Depression, traveling the world, and realizing his people’s dilemma of trying to maintain a tribal heritage within a foreign government.

About the Author

Scott Robertson was raised in a small farming community in central Washington State. He had never experienced any non-Caucasian people until he graduated from high school. Their family never traveled. His father worked for a construction company when he was young, building logging roads on Mount Adams for the Yakama Indian Nation, which was 40 miles from his home. This was a "work camp" in which all of the employees lived on site and worked seven days a week. Scott lived in this work camp with his father during the summer school recess. There is a lot of snow in this country, so when the ground was clear, you worked. Eventually Scott worked on an Indy-car team and traveled the world extensively, including working alongside non-Americans in Germany, The United Kingdom, and Australia. He became very open minded to differing views of the world, which was exactly the opposite of how he was raised. Scott became close friends with many enrolled Yakama's, either working directly for them, or with them on various projects, or in sport, mostly playing polo. Scott is married to his true love, and between them they have three grown daughters and two grandchildren. They live on a small farm 30 miles from where he was raised, and have a polo field (10 football fields) for a front yard. They have eight polo ponies.