Does anyone remember a TV commercial in which a Native American was paddling his canoe and he came across a polluted river? When he saw that, he shed a single tear.

It was called the “Crying Indian,” a famous 1971 public service announcement from the Keep America Beautiful campaign featuring Iron Eyes Cody witnessing trash in the river and a littered shoreline.

The ad, aimed at raising awareness about littering ends with him looking into the camera and shedding a tear.
It was released on Earth Day, April 22, 1971 and became a cultural milestone that aired for more than a decade. It’s motto, “People start pollution, people can stop it.”

And that’s the message of this article, written on Earth Day, April 22, 2026.

It’s a reminder for a lot of us to take care of our environment. Sometimes, we don’t do such a good job of that and in some cases, we could do better.

For instance, my community recently had an Easter egg hunt in the city park. We live near the park, so we walked to observe little children scrambling all over the lawn picking up multiple colored, plastic eggs.

The only problem was along the entrance of the park. There was garbage all over the ditch, presumably blown there over the winter and covered with snow until now. But that wasn’t the only issue. That ditch, that we call a “canal,” had water in it and getting to some of that trash through the reeds would be near impossible. You can’t walk in it, or you’ll sink. You can’t row a canoe like Iron Eyes Cody because there is too much vegetation.

There’s really only one way to solve it. Wait until the “canal” dries up so people can walk in there and pick up the trash.

The following day, I wanted to take a closer look, so I walked down into the ditch before I hit water. There seemed to be a lot of aluminum cans. Beer cans and pop cans, presumably blown there over the winter since the local tavern is just a block away.

It didn’t take long to realize this wasn’t going to be a quick task. It took almost three hours, but I was able to take enough aluminum out of that ditch, less than the length of a city block to get $26 at the recycle center. My guess is we could all do something very similar.

By the time you read this, Earth Day will have passed, but because April is a “cold” month in North Dakota, most people don’t go out to clean their yards and neighborhoods until May.

Bearing that in mind, it doesn’t stop with trash and aluminum cans in the ditch. I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen some strange things along some of our highways that could have all been recycled.

I was on my way to work one day when I came upon a car engine sitting on the side of the road. No skid marks on the pavement, no apparent damage to the engine and it was just sitting there, upright. Imagine the weight of that getting recycled.

I’ve seen sheet metal panels in ditches, combine parts, 55-gallon barrels, mattresses, tires and one spring when I was helping others clean a ditch in Hazen, I found a $100 bill.

Several years ago an old farmer passed away and didn’t have any heirs. The property was sold and had to get cleaned up. The person who purchased it, hired two Amish men from Wisconsin who came out to North Dakota, cleaned up that farm and essentially made their income for that year from one month of work.

I’m not saying North Dakota is polluted. These examples given are all across the state over a span of about 18 years.

Many of us work hard to keep our lawns clean. Many of us work hard to keep our farms looking like they belong in a Normal Rockwell painting. Others, not so much and that’s where the dilemma lies.

Keep America beautiful, keep North Dakota beautiful!