Indian tribes buy back thousands of acres of land

hosted ^ | Dec 27 | TIMBERLY ROSS

[JoeProBono]

OMAHA, Neb.- Native American tribes tired of waiting for the U.S. government to honor centuries-old treaties are buying back land where their ancestors lived and putting it in federal trust.

Native Americans say the purchases will help protect their culture and way of life by preserving burial grounds and areas where sacred rituals are held. They also provide land for farming, timber and other efforts to make the tribes self-sustaining.....

[Inyo-Mono]

I think it’s a she. Sacajawea is was the female that helped Lewis and Clark get through the mountains to the west coast.

Yes, Sacajawea was Shoshone.

[Habibi]

“It is time for them to be ordinary citizens — just like the rest of us.”

There are some of us that already are, though the “switch” was made over 100 years ago in our family. Since then, it’s been something of an American success story. The line seems to have produced poets, pilots and doctors (and a few nutballs of course). All of this over a century, with the next generation edging towards engineering. Was it because of the Indian heritage? On the contrary, it was because the decision was made early on that the future wasn’t back on the reservation, though they could have gone back if they ever wanted. None ever did.

Now, when their teachers ask my children what they are, they answer “Nebraskan” or “Coloradan”. This is as it should be. My kids, on their own, rejected the ethnic constraints that others too willingly let themselves be shackled with. I can’t tell you how proud I was when their charter school teachers told us about the class conversation that ensued. At first the teachers didn’t understand, though the lights began to come on. The students caught on sooner. The 4th grade teacher informs ua that there was more than one teacher in the class on that day.

So I guess you can hold on to your ethnic heritage if you want. It’s a free country, of course. But as to the path to fulfillment, satisfaction and happiness (whatever that word means), our family already knows the answer to that one.

Oh, owning land is fine. We seem to have a lot of it (not really sure why it continues to accumulate). Seems like we keep buying the stuff, and yes, once we have it, no one seems to want to get rid of it (that would be wrong!). Funny how that works. The difference between us and the tribal crowd is that it’s OUR land, purchased with our sweat, and it has OUR name on the title. Indian/tribal affiliation had nothing to do with it. It was all acquired under American rules, which is far better than the disfunctional setup that seems to be popular these days. Truth be told, guilty white folks made up the American Indian myth way back to Natty Bumpo, and there have been generations of Indians that have bought into it.

A lot of Indian must have been bred out of us over the last century. Though we seem to have a familial predisposition for acquiring land, none of us seem to be getting warm fuzzy feelings about casinos. Perhaps the racial separation is finally complete. It didn’t happen soon enough.