VIEWPOINT | Facts and figures don’t tell the full story of South Dakota's character, appeal
Guest column by state Rep. Kent Roe, R-District 4
Facts do not arrive before us in a neutral pile. They emerge inside stories, desires and fears, illuminated by who we are and what we value most.
As Jonathan Pageau has shown, we do not perceive raw data; we perceive reality through symbolic patterns and hierarchies of meaning. Walk into a longtime South Dakotan’s family home or farmstead and you see generations of stewardship: land worked with calloused hands, community sustained through quiet sacrifice, the slow rhythms of prairie life that shape a people. For many, the sharp rise in property taxes feels like a gradual displacement from the very place their families helped create.
A newcomer, drawn by our stability, no state income tax or open horizons, sees the same soil and structures through different eyes: opportunity, investment, a fresh start. The physical reality has not changed. Only the story through which it is viewed has.
