The valleys give way to the prairies and the prairies give way to the badlands where fields of golden cinquefoils surrender to the might of towering plateaus of striated bedrock.
The rugged openness of South Dakota presents the quintessential image of the American countryside, a pure distillation of the natural environment that captured the pioneers’ hope for a better future all those years ago.
But how long this countryside remains American is now an open question in these parts.
That’s because Chinese-owned entities, some linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), have been purchasing land here in South Dakota and elsewhere in the country at a breathtaking pace for more than a decade….