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.

Wind River received some media attention last year for these latter qualities.

Recently, I was invited to the reservation by a school teacher who wanted to show me what life was really like there.

The following pictures show Wind River, its people, and the surrounding American towns.