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Americans share the top 13 things foreigners should avoid when visiting the U.S.

Sorry, but you can't drive from New York to LA.

via RDNE Stock project/Pexels, Neal Wellons/Flickr and Karolina Wv/Pexels

An ambulance, a Waffle House and an angry bison.

While the United States is undeniably one of the most culturally dominant countries in the world, its depth and complexity go far beyond what most people understand before seeing it for themselves.

The U.S. is a melting pot of diverse cultures, histories and landscapes, creating a rich and complex national tapestry that takes time and travel to truly comprehend. Heck, even Americans ourselves have a hard time understanding each other from time to time.

It's a place where every state can feel like its own little world, each with its own traditions, accents and cuisines. So, it’s understandable that when many people from around the world visit for the first time, there are some things they probably wished they had known ahead of time.

To help people better understand America’s unique quirks, a Reddit user named AlainasBoyfriend asked the online forum, “What should a foreigner avoid while visiting the United States?” While it’s reasonable to assume the comments would be about avoiding dangerous neighborhoods or tourist traps, the conversation was a lot more positive. It was centered around the vastness of the U.S. geography and the regional differences that people from another country may not expect.

The big takeaway is that America is a huge place where our states can be as different as most countries. Any place with regions as diverse as Hawaii, Oklahoma, Alaska and New York will be hard for most people to grasp on the first visit.

Here are the 13 things foreigners should “avoid” when visiting the U.S.

1. Watch for wildlife

"If you go to the national parks, don’t attempt to take selfies with the wildlife. A full grown bison will throw you through the air like a crumpled piece of paper." — Juergen2993

"I want to really emphasize this. There are US Park Rangers who are full-time employees of the National Park Service. Their job is to protect the park, the wildlife, and visitors. Take the posted signs seriously and listen and do what rangers advise. Yearly, a dozen or so people die in the Grand Canyon National Park, often tourists who go hiking without enough water or food and are not aware of how treacherous the terrain and weather can be. Same for Big Bend NP in Texas." — aaby-rose

2. Don't underestimate the 'rural-ness'

"If you are visiting a more rural area, like Montana where I live, don't underestimate the rural-ness. You might not be able to get a hotel in a small town and there are plenty of places where there aren't any hotels or accommodations. You can take the highway and run out of gas because there aren't any gas stations for 70 miles. Also, if it is a dirt road, and there are a lot of them in the rural U.S., don't ever assume that you will have cell/GPS reception or that the dirt road goes anywhere besides 50 miles into the mountains where you can get stuck or break down." — Violet624

3. America is huge

"The flight from London to New York is only about an hour longer than the flight from New York to Seattle." — UnspecificGravity

"And we don’t have any kind of sensible train infrastructure connecting cities." — NobodyCool1234

4. You can't drive from NY to LA

"We had an exchange student from France staying with us (NY). One day, we saw her with a map of the US, said she was going to take a bus to California because she had heard so much about it on television. We had to sit down and explain it was going to take a week, each way." — MedicinalTequila

"Lol I have some German friends who flew into Texas and wanted to make a day trip to Los Angeles during the week they were in the US. After that first trip, they planned much better and now visit the country by regions and give themselves more time." — MarbleousMel

5. Give us space

"I find a lot of foreigners have about 2 1/2 inches of a personal space bubble, while us Americans value our space. Keep at least a 2-3 feet distance when conversing with strangers. I've had an Italian guy come so close I thought he was going to kiss me. Very uncomfortable for someone who isn't used to a lack of personal space." — MasterPip

6. Forget the stereotypes

"Leave all your stereotypes about America home, it's a hugely diverse country and your experience in one part of the US will be very different to your experience in another. Keep an open mind and have fun." — Zerbey

"But.. Murica!!! Seriously I try to get this across to people. The United States is not one place. Or even 50 places. It’s huge and a cultural melting pot like no other. There is absolutely no way to stereotype 'America.' Remember guys, Hawaii, Florida, New York, Alaska and Oklahoma, etc, are vastly different places. And they’re all their own unique thing, different from the next state over." — BlueIsBlackbird

7. Don't travel with pot

"Taking weed across state lines. It’s not legal everywhere." — Gromit801

8. Avoid the chains

"Don't go to the big chain-type places. Go to the mom-and-pop little restaurants and coffee shops and specialty shops. You will usually find new cool things you enjoy." — Election Proper8172

"To add to this: FOOD TRUCKS!!!" — OpeusPopeus

9. Avoid sensitive topics

"When visiting the U.S., it's best to avoid discussing sensitive topics like politics and religion with strangers, even if they bring it up." — Vexina1997

"I'm a huge fan of Bill Burr's catch-all non-committal response: 'Hey, fair enough!' You just say, 'Hey, fair enough' to any baiting comment." — Heretic Jones

10. Be sure to tip

"Generally, you should tip at sit-down restaurants with full service (ie waiter comes and takes your order, brings food, refills drinks and clears your dishes). At these places, traditionally the minimum is 15%, but most people I know tip closer to 20% standard." — Heliawe

11. Don't get the large

"Ordering a large at a restaurant, or especially a movie theater. I don't care how hungry you think you are, you will not eat/drink it all in one sitting." — Amazing_Excuse_3860

12. Buy travel insurance

"Medical travel insurance that goes into the 7 digits. Someone from my country had the misfortune of having a stroke in the USA. 150k+ in expenses. When I went there it was my number 1 concern: getting insurance." — N0t_N1k3L

"Underrated comment. You can run, but hospital debt might find you unable to return. Use a fake name. Get a fake name and a story ready now. You do not speak English nor any modern language. When discharged, run. This also applies if you have health insurance." — univ06

"Avoid a hospital visit. Whatever you think it costs, it’s more." — pug_fugly_moe

13. Be careful around police

"Don't interact with the police unless you absolutely need to." — Snackdoc189

"If you didn't call them, don't talk to them, at all." — Shastadakota

"Yeah they're honestly not there to help you, and some will be annoyed if you ask for so much as directions." — Honestnt

From Your Site Articles

america

Culture

The 'Sioux Chef' works to return indigenous food to the forefront of the American diet

via The Sioux Chef / Facebook

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One of the greatest examples of how culture in the United States is shaped by colonization is the fact that Native American foods feel "ironically foreign" to most people who live on what was originally indigenous land.

This observation was made by Sean Sherman, aka "The Sioux Chef," an Oglala Lakota chef who was raised on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Sherman grew up in one of America's poorest communities and when he was 13, got a job washing dishes at a local steakhouse.

This experience in restaurants created a lifelong affinity for cooking that he moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota to pursue.

After mastering French and Japanese cuisines he had an epiphany: "Just all of a sudden, I realized that there was no Native foods. I just realized the other absence of indigenous perspective anywhere in the culinary world, nothing that represented the land we were actually standing on," he told PBS Newshour.

Even though he was born on a reservation, traditional Native American foods weren't an important part of his diet growing up. He was raised on processed foods and government supplemental fare which he attributes as one of the leading causes of health issues such as obesity, heart disease and type 2 diabetes that many Native Americans face.

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Sherman set out to better understand indigenous cooking by researching food systems and learning from elders, historians, and ethnobotanists.

"What were my Lakota ancestors eating and storing away? How were they getting oils and salts and fats and sugars and things like that?" he asked himself. "So it took me quite a few years of just researching, but it really became a passion."

He eventually compiled his research into a book, "The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen" which won the coveted 2018 James Beard Award for best American cookbook.

Sherman along with his partner in life and business, Dana Thompson, continued their mission to reclaim Native American food by offering catering through The Sioux Chef and the Tatanka Truck.

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They also created the Indigenous Food Lab, a nonprofit that works to increase access to Native American foods.

"For Indigenous people who went through intense assimilation, we lost a lot of our food culture," Sherman told Food and Wine. "But we're at a point now where we can reclaim it and evolve it for the next generation. To be able to share culture through food will be really healing."

This summer, Sherman opened his first brick-and-mortar restaurant, Owamni, situated in downtown Minneapolis in an area that Native Americans have known as Spirit Island. The restaurant features indigenous dishes that are free from colonial ingredients such as wheat flour, sugar, pork and chicken.

Instead, diners feast on a decolonized menu featuring wild rice, nixtamalized corn from Mexico, bison, lake fish, dandelion, blueberries and corn ash.

Sherman is making his mark on Minnesota, but his work is spreading across the globe through Facebook and Instagram which he uses for activism and to share Native American history.

Sherman used Facebook to fight back against an incorrect Fox News report that called for a massive bison cull at Grand Canyon National Park.

He started a fundraiser that earned over $10,000 to help distribute Indigenous Home Meal Kits directly to families in need around the Minneapolis/St Paul area.

On Instagram, he stood with Standing Rock.

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He also shared a powerful picture of his great grandfather who fought at Little Big Horn.

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The Sioux Chef's work online and in the kitchen are all part of the same goal, to return Native American food and culture to the forefront of American society.

"The bigger goal is to eventually grow the Indigenous Food Lab so we can help train, educate, and support Indigenous kitchens all over the United States," Sherman said.

"We believe that there should be Indigenous restaurants everywhere because no matter where, we're on Indigenous land," Sherman says. Owamni will "help showcase further how Indigenous food fits into the American scene," he says. "You can't tell the story of American food while dismissing the Indigenous history of it all."

Why not celebrate Indigenous People's Day by cooking one of The Sioux Chef's delicious recipes? Here's how to make braised bison and root vegetables.

How To Make Cedar Braised Bison | Chef Sean Sherman | The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchenwww.youtube.com

From Your Site Articles

Heroes

Denver donates bison to Cheyenne and Arapaho nations, citing conservation and reparation

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Prior to European colonization of North America, millions of bison roamed the Great Plains. By the turn of the 20th century, those numbers had dropped to less than 1,000. The deliberate decimation of buffalo herds was a direct attack on the Native American people, who colonizers saw as an obstacle to their "Manifest Destiny," and who the U.S. government engaged in a systematic attempt to eliminate or force into docile submission.

For thousands of years, bison were a sacred, inseparable part of life for Indigenous tribes of the Great Plains, used for food, shelter, utensils, and clothing, in addition to spiritual and emotional well-being. Wiping out the bison population nearly wiped out the Native tribes they were connected to.

Though bison numbers have increased significantly thanks to conservation efforts, governments are still grappling with the ugly legacy, and some municipalities are taking steps to try to repair some of the damage done. As one example, the city of Denver, Colorado has taken the step of giving some of the city's bison population managed by Denver Parks and Recreation to Native American tribes engaged in bison conservation efforts.

In a unanimous 13-0 vote, Denver City Council gave the final approval Monday to donate 13 buffalo—around half of which are pregnant—to the Cheyenne and Arapaho nations in Oklahoma and one buffalo to Tall Bull Memorial Council in Colorado. In addition, Denver Parks and Recreation will no longer hold its annual auction to keep its bison herds at a healthy population size and ensure genetic diversity, but rather will work with tribal partners through the year 2030 to give surplus bison to Native tribes across the country to enhance conservation herds on tribal lands.

"This donation is the result and culmination of a very long, storied history and relationship with the State of Colorado," Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes Governor Reggie Wassana told 9 News. "The Tribes plan to use the donated bison as a cultural, conservation and educational resource, with the goal of locating the bison on our own tribal natural plains habitat."

"We appreciate this gift and hope to grow our relationship with the great state of Colorado," said Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes Lt. Governor Gilbert Miles.

Denver Councilwoman Pro Tem Jamie Torres told 9 News she was "proud and honored" to carry the ordinance forward.

"This is a unique opportunity to not only return the bison to tribes across the country and support their conservation efforts but to honor those who have cared for these ancestral lands before us," she said. "The land acknowledgment we adopted in 2020 asks us to work to dismantle legacies of oppression and inequity, and today we are doing that."

The land acknowledgment, which is read at each city council meeting following the Pledge of Allegiance, reads:

"The Denver City Council honors and acknowledges that the land on which we reside is the traditional territory of the Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Peoples. We also recognize the 48 contemporary tribal nations that are historically tied to the lands that make up the state of Colorado.

"We honor Elders past, present, and future, and those who have stewarded this land throughout generations. We also recognize that government, academic and cultural institutions were founded upon and continue to enact exclusions and erasures of Indigenous Peoples.

"May this acknowledgment demonstrate a commitment to working to dismantle ongoing legacies of oppression and inequities and recognize the current and future contributions of Indigenous communities in Denver."

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock also acknowledged the significance of the ordinance, according to NPR, seeing the annual donations as one form of reparation.

"I don't think it's ever too late to acknowledge the challenges and the wrongs of the past," he said. "We got a chance to simply apologize, acknowledge the challenges of the past and to forge a relationship going forward that allows us to exercise our common objectives around the conservation of the tribal lands and of these animals."

Nathan Hart, executive director of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes' business department who oversees the tribe's herd of 530 buffalo, told NPR that the city's donation will help the tribes toward their goal of sustaining a herd of 800.

"Everybody's really excited to grow the herd with this addition," Hart says. "The bison was very significant to our well-being in the past — we have still have a lot of respect for the animal."

He also credits the bison for the tribes' relationship-building with Denver's city officials.

"We're developing these relationships because of the bison," he says. "That's what brought us together ... it all came from the bison themselves."

Beautiful. Here's to seeing more of these restoration and conservation efforts in the future.

From Your Site Articles

Photos: Wild bison return to Canadian home after more than 100 years.

For the first time in more than 100 years, Banff National Park in Canada is going to be home to wild bison.

A wild bison at Elk Island National Park. Photo from Johane Janelle/Parks Canada.

The Great Plains and eastern slopes of the Rockies were once home to as many as 60 million bison, but by the late 1800s, settlers and disease had almost wiped them out. In 1889, a prominent conservationist estimated only about 1,000 animals remained.

Soon, though, people realized something needed to be done and started taking steps to protect these animals. In the early 1900s, the Canadian government actually tracked down some of the last wild animals and shipped them by train to wildlife refuges. Today, thanks to more than 100 years of conservation efforts, bison numbers have partially recovered. About a half million are managed as livestock, with about 30,000 wild individuals.

On Feb. 6, 2017, as part of ongoing efforts to reintroduce wild bison to the North American wilds, Parks Canada relocated 16 bison from Elk Island National Park to Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada.

Though this is something to be celebrated, moving North America's biggest land animal is anything but simple or easy.

Photo from Johane Janelle/Parks Canada.

An adult bison can weigh up to 2,000 pounds.

These particular bison started their journey at Elk Island National Park near Edmonton, Alberta.

Wild bison at a handling facility in Elk Island National Park near Edmonton. Photo from Cameron Johnson/Parks Canada.

Elk Island has a herd of about 390 animals.

To start, park rangers wrangled up the bison and picked out 16 prospective individuals.

A team member watches one of the bison move through the handling facility. Chutes help channel the animals between holding areas while also keeping them calm. Photo from Cameron Johnson/Parks Canada.

The bison, mostly pregnant young females, were quarantined and given a health checkup before the move then loaded into specially created shipping containers.

The containers had air holes cut out of the top, special doors, and bedding to make the bison comfortable during what was going to be a very long ride.

The bison (and humans) set off on a nearly 250-mile road trip.

Trucks carried the bison from Elk Island National Park to just outside Banff National Park. Photo from Johane Janelle/Parks Canada.

It turns out, Canada's kind of big. Alberta is just Canada's sixth largest territory, but it's nearly the size of Texas.

After seven hours, everyone arrived at the Ya Ha Tinda Ranch outside Banff National Park after midnight.

But that wasn't the end of their journey. Heck, it wasn't even the most incredible part of it. Because then there was the part where they brought in the helicopter.

Parks Canada staff celebrate as the helicopter picks up the last of the bison. Photo from Johane Janelle/Parks Canada.

Banff National Park is huge. It's bigger than the state of Delaware. And there are no roads where these guys were headed.

Photo from Dan Rafla/Parks Canada.

Ya Ha Tinda Ranch is the closest you can get by road. From there on, Banff is horse, boot, or cross-country ski territory. So instead of walking the whole distance, the bison, along with all the personnel and equipment, needed to be flown in.

After a 15-mile helicopter ride, the bison finally touched down in their new home: Banff's Panther Valley.

Parks Canada stand ready in Banff's Panther Valley. Photo from Dan Rafla/Parks Canada.

Panther Valley was chosen for a couple of reasons. It has plenty of bison-friendly open areas, good vegetation, and insulation in the form of warm chinook winds. It's also far enough from people to give the bison a bit of breathing room as they get used to their new space.

Despite the long trip, the bison made themselves at home pretty darn quick.

Photo from Dan Rafla/Parks Canada.

Though the road may have been bumpy, the bison seemed no worse for the wear. They found food and water pretty quick. "They're incredibly robust," said project manager Karsten Heuer. Within a few hours they were rubbing horns and bucking playfully. "I've got a tremendous respect for these animals."

These bison will hopefully be the start of a new wild herd in Banff.

Photo from Dan Rafla/Parks Canada.

The road trip was just the start of a five-year reintroduction plan.

For the next 16 months, they'll stay in an enclosure in Panther Valley to let them give birth and get attached the land. In the summer of 2018, they'll be released to the park as a whole.

Reintroducing the bison has a number of benefits. Visitors to Banff can learn more about them, for instance, and they're also part of the region's culture and history. They even help the plants grow.

But more than that, the mere presence of wild bison has an effect on people.

"Bison are an incredibly iconic animal," Heuer says. They're all at once rugged, adaptable, and strong. They symbolize wildness.

But they're also living in an often human-centric world. Even Banff National Park is only about 100 miles away from Calgary, a million-person city. Just by existing, the bison will continue to ask us things we'll have to grapple with, Heuer says.

Things like where we should draw the line between wilderness and civilization. Or whether all this effort could have been avoided by simply taking more care not to nearly wipe them out a hundred years ago. Or what we want the future to look like.

"It's good to have an animal as big and burly as a bison to help us keep things in perspective," Heuer says.

Note: There was a small display herd of plains bison in Banff National Park until 1997, but the herd was not wild and did not have full access to the ecosystem.

Here are 5 times when humans helped Earth's creatures survive.

Sometimes in the course of human events, we screw things up. Sometimes we also realize what we've done and try to fix it.

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Sometimes in the course of human events, we really really screw things up. Some of those screwups have small consequences. Others almost wipe out entire species.

Fortunately, sometimes we also realize what we've done and try to fix it. And even succeed.

Here are five times when good conservation saved animals we couldn't imagine our world without and and what we could do to help out right now.

1. That time hand puppets helped save the California condor

The California condor has an image problem. It's a giant roadkill-eating vulture with a bald head and a face only another condor could love. So, in grand human tradition, we did our best to get rid of them.

Photo by George Kathy Klinich/Flickr.

After decades of being hunted and losing its habitat, the California condor was at the brink of extinction. By 1982, there were only 22 California condors living in the world.

Conservationists sprung into action. They captured the 22 remaining condors and placed them into two captive breeding programs. To ensure that new baby condors bonded only to other birds, human handlers raised them with little puppets that looked like condor heads.

Yes, really.

By all accounts, their recovery has been remarkable. By 1990, enough new condors had been born for some to be released back into the wild. By 2014, there were 421 California condors, 228 of which lived in the wild. The species is still considered endangered.

2. How whaling bans saved the humpback

By 1986, it was so much of a given that humans would render humpback whales extinct, that Hollywood even made a blockbuster Star Trek movie about us doing it. After all, we came pretty close.

GIF via "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home."

Throughout the last two centuries, baleen whales like the humpback were a popular target for ocean-going hunters. While exact numbers are unknown, historians estimate that 90% of the global humpback population — about 200,000 whales — were killed by whaling between 1904 and 1966. When the ban was instated, only 5,000 whales remained worldwide.

Photo by Christopher Michel/Flickr.

Once the threat of whaling was removed, humpback populations bounced back rapidly. There are now an estimated 80,000 humpbacks worldwide, with large populations in the Northern Pacific and Northern Atlantic and the Southern Hemisphere. As of 2009, the International Union for Conservation of Nature considers them an animal of "least concern."

3. How banning a pesticide brought the brown pelican back from the brink

Rachel Carson wrote "Silent Spring" in 1967. In her attempt to explain how pesticides like DDT were poisoning entire animal food chains, she helped birth the entire environmental movement. This was good news for the brown pelican — one of the most beloved birds on the U.S.'s south coast.

Photo by Kevin Cole/Flickr.

DDT makes brown pelican eggshells thin and brittle, causing them to break when pelican mothers try to incubate them. Researchers quickly made the connection: No eggs means no new brown pelicans. Without intervention, this unique species would have been extinct within a decade.

Thanks to conservation efforts, 1972's nationwide DDT ban, and the signing of the U.S. Endangered Species Act in 1973, brown pelican populations have had an impressive recovery. By 2009, all subspecies of the brown pelican had large enough populations to be delisted as endangered.

4. The world's largest tiger finally has its day

War leaves victims everywhere it touches, even in the animal kingdom.

There are no official statistics on how large the Siberian tiger population was before the Russian Civil War, but we do know how many were left afterward. By 1935, only 40 Siberian tigers remained in the wild.

Photo by Matthias Appel/Flickr.

The Soviet government banned tiger hunting from 1947 until its dissolution in 1991. During that time, populations increased slightly to several hundred tigers, but massive threats still remained from habitat loss and poachers selling tiger parts to Chinese markets.

Starting in 2010, the Russian government got serious about tiger conservation. They started a Global Tiger Day, unveiled new monitoring and research programs to study current and potential tiger habitats, and launched new regulations to fight poachers.

It appears to be working. As of 2015, there are an estimated 480-540 Siberian tigers in far eastern Russia, including 100 cubs.

5. Before conservation organizations ever existed, ranchers helped save the bison

The European colonization of North America continues to have many, many casualties, but few are quite so unnecessary, brazen, and shocking as what happened to the bison.

Photo by Doreen Van Ryswyk/USFWS/Flickr.

Before the 19th century, there were more than 20 million bison roaming the prairie — being chill and eating grass — with a small number sustainably hunted by Native Americans.

Then came the Europeans with their rifles, railroads and manifest destiny. In a few short decades almost all of the bison were slaughtered — mostly for their hides and their tongues. By 1889, just over 1,000 bison remained.

With extinction seeming inevitable, ranchers and amateur conservationists began raising their own herds to try to save the species. Conservation organizations also joined the cause, helping to create Yellowstone and Wood Buffalo National Parks as safe spaces for wild bison to roam. Today, about 500,000 bison live in North America mostly in privately-owned herds. 15,000 roam free.

We can change things. We've done it before. We'll do it again.

And that makes me want to dance. Like the currently endangered panda you can learn more about by clicking below.

Conservation is hard work, but real, positive results can happen. Especially if we're willing to face how we ended up in this situation in the first place. Learn more about what you can do to help at Racing Extinction's website. And if you wanna share the times we made a difference, that'd be awesome.