We're still killing Native Americans

[Magoonski]

Okay so maybe not exactly but indirectly we are allowing the demise of Native Americans by essentially forcing them to be in a rock and a hard place.
Most reservations for the tribes are put in places with little economic value so most are unemployed. Second, the federal government is supposed to provide health care for the tribes but spends more money on a prisoners' medical care than the Natives (http://www.seattlepi.com/local/403196_tribes12.html). Third, some states such as Maine have laws that will not allow the tribes to build casinos which they need not out of greed but desperation, "The average life expectancy on the Passamaquoddy reservations is 48, or one-third lower than the national American average, according to the tribal government." (http://news.mainetoday.com/indepth/gambling/020505casino.shtml). My parents are going to be moving to Eastport, ME it sickens me that their neighbors the Passamaquoddy are dying so young. It's not just in Maine but all over the country tribes are suffering.

This Thanksgiving remember that without the help of the tribes the pilgrims never would have survived isn't it time we return the favor?

To help...get educated about the needs of your local tribes. Learn about the laws at the federal and state level concerning their treatment. Once you're aware of the problems write to your congress and if you're a Mainer like me for the love of all that is Holy vote in favor of the casino (I signed a petition yesterday for one in Oxford county)!

[Gene Rock]

andrew jackson made the us the world power it is to day. if you think back if france and america would have gone to war over louisiana(i would have to happen sometime) they when hittler came around america either would be to weak to fight him or would have to still be dependent on slave labor(in which case we would probably be on his side). so if america dident fight hitler then either he would have taken over the world or stalin would won some how(think of how many people he would kill if he had the world not just the north).

[sabelmouse]

pity america did not start fighting the nsp earlier and that there as so much support for nazism.
imagine the people who could have been saved.

[Gabrielle]

Gene Rock is a troll, ignore him from now on.

[sabelmouse]

ok. sometimes it's hard to spot the difference.

[Magoonski]

You're statements are flawed; Louisiana was PURCHASED when THOMAS JEFFERSON was president and it was purchased because Napoleon was running out of money to fund his war in Europe.
And as for Hitler there were plenty of Nazis sympathizers living in the U.S. before Pearl Harbor (which is when the U.S. officially decided to enter the war in the Atlantic and Pacific). Also, eugenics (look it up) was very popular in the U.S., many people were forcefully sterilized and anti-semitic views were popular in the day.
I highly recommend you watch the movie "Fatherland." The United States was only neutral until Pearl Harbor and then we entered the war, if Japan had never attacked us and we remained neutral the Holocaust would have continued and we wouldn't have even noticed because no one even knew what was going on until the Allied troops found the death camps.

"The fact is that Hitler stole most of his ideas on eugenics from publications originating in the USA." (http://www.notdeadyet.org/eughis.html)

Therefore, I suggest that you...READ A HISTORY BOOK!

[sabelmouse]

true. the german terror regime did get a lot of it's ideas from the land of the free.
some people claim that they, the usa, knew a lot about concentration camps to but still did not intervene untill it was in their own interest.

as they do now.

[Gabrielle]

I reiterate, that person is a troll. Ignore them from here on out.

[Gabrielle]

Anyone saying Native Americans choose to live in poverty and be alcoholics or whatever else they "choose" is being ignorant and has a completely skewed idea of poverty and addiction in general. No one, Indian or not, ever dreams of being poor when they're a kid; no one ever has aspirations of being a drug addict. So to claim, be it implicitly or explicitly, that Native Americans are an exception is racist, flat-out. I'm not going to go into great lengths about the biological differences, either, but suffice to say that Native Americans are more prone to the diseases Europeans brought over, as well as to alcoholism. "Making the choice" to drink in ANY case, white, black, brown, red- there is an underlying thread of mental illness going on there. I'm not saying psychos, either. Poverty breeds poverty, depression breeds depression, addiction breeds addiction. I'd suggest people remove the race aspect out of it and then think about it from a humanist perspective: is it better to blame or show compassion to a person suffering from addiction or poverty?

Not all Native Americans receive free services, either. Every tribe has a different amount of wealth and thus different resources available to it. Some tribes can indeed afford to give scholarships to students in college, others can't even afford an office for the IHS to run out of on "their" land. It isn't like the government gives each tribe a bunch of money to play around with, though. Tribes, being supposedly sovereign nations, have to make their own money, so they resort to whatever businesses they can- and these do often end up being casinos. But these casinos frequently aren't even run by Native Americans, and only some of the money they make goes back to the tribe that owns the land said casinos are on. Any figures about how much money a given casino made in a year are most likely NOT going to say how much of that ACTUALLY went back to the tribe supposedly in charge of it. The wealthiest tribes are the ones with the most control over their sources of income, if there even is any sort of infrastructure whatsoever- but usually, there isn't, or, again, it's controlled by non-Indians.

The plight of Native American tribes today is the result of the systemic and juridical genocide of Native American culture and peoples. Tribal leaders often were given mis-translations of treaties they agreed to (by "signing" an "X" at the bottom); land allotments shrink all the time to this day; non-Indians would take over tribal land anyway, then come back and propose another treaty; and there are minimum requirements of percentage of blood for what "counts" as Native American in the eyes of the U.S. government as a way to slowly make Native Americans die off- eventually, none will be left because they won't have enough Native blood in their veins. Contrast this last one to what a person can mark on an application if they are a part of any other minority group: often, there are stipulations for being American Indian ("You must be 1/16th in order to fill in this space," or something, for example). There is no such thing for any other minority group, period- so long as you identify with it, you can claim it, otherwise, but Indians need to basically prove they're Indian enough.

(Case Study: The last Indian School, Stewart Indian School, outside Carson City, Nevada, only closed in 1980. This is a place where children were beaten if they spoke their native language. That's what happened at those places. They weren't just about education, they were about breeding out and eliminating Native culture. Some, like Stewart, have been turned into museums; but any cruelty is glossed over and euphemized with language making it sound like it was totally altruistic and for their own good- and it is, thus, totally racist and imperialistic.)

And every argument against any sort of service completely ignores that the western hemisphere was INVADED by outsiders that gradually and in myriad ways took over. And if you think, "Well, we won, so they need to accept their defeat," I suppose that's your choice. But would you say the same if the United States went over and claimed to have "discovered" England? Spain? France? Of course not. Just because the tribes on the American continent were "easy" to control and dominate doesn't make it right. What it means on the part of a person thinking this is there is an underlying support for imperialism in every facet it can take place- socially, culturally, geographically, etc. You'd be called a crazy imperialist if you said we should invade and take over any other country today, so why should you be called something different for condoning what happened in the past? Rome was an empire, nobody says they weren't- what the colonizers and the U.S. government did is the same thing.

And they aren't sovereign. Far from it. Think of tribes like No Child Left Behind: they are given all sorts of rules by the federal government to live by, but they are then not funded properly or administered fairly. So they fail. And there is all kinds of corruption. For example, if a non-Indian commits a crime on tribal lands, the tribe cannot do anything about it; but if the reverse happens and a crime is committed by an Indian off of the reservation, the tribe cannot come to their defense. This is NOT how international law works, so to say they are "sovereign" shows a lack of understanding of what "sovereign" actually means.

Lastly: The term "government handout" with regards to Indian country is a loaded, value-language term implying grace and selflessness on the part of the federal govenrment and lazy greed on the part of Native Americans. They aren't handouts in the case of Native Americans, they're recompense for colonization.

Sorry if I sound heated or angry. I was just rather baffled by the thread and some of the things I read there. The naysaying, it's-their-own-fault attitude I see here is part of the problem, part of why things are the way they are. And not just for Native Americans, but for every minority, every person living in poverty, in this country. Like I said before, nobody CHOOSES to be poor because they think it will be fun. If there is any sort of choice in the matter, it is taken this way because the person feels they have no other options. For this, I blame society, not individuals. But to reverse it, the mindset must start to change on the individual level and work its way out.

Gabrielle, signing off and going to bed. Again, sorry folks- long rant.

[sabelmouse]

dear gabrielle

i sincerely hope that you have a folder for the wonderfull articles/essays you write. you write so well and put information together so well.
the only fault that i can find is that you keep apologising for your excellent work.
humility is a virtue but i hope you appreciate yourself as well.
bravo or brava, well done.

[Gabrielle]

Aw, thanks... ::blush::

[Übereil]

Seconed.

If you're not able to become a lawyer you could go for a career in political journalism. You've got talent for that kind of thing. :)

[Gabrielle]

::blush::

Thanks.