Posted on 10/08/2017 5:15:07 AM PDT by Kaslin
There is a move afoot to cast Christopher Columbus as an evil person instead of the person celebrated as the first to traverse the Atlantic Ocean, discovering there were two major continents not previously known to the world as it existed in 1492. In another feel-good moment, some cities are renaming Columbus Day as Indigenous People’s Day. American Indians are desperate for real help, not placating moments.
Naomi Schaefer Riley has defined how bad things are for American Indians and how Washington, D.C., bureaucracy is destroying the lives of these Americans in her terrific and terrifying book "The New Trail of Tears." Ms. Riley traveled all over the country seeing and hearing the experiences of these citizens and conveys that in her book. One of the fascinating aspects of her book is how the Canadians mistreat their Indians (called First Nation People in Canada). Interesting to know they are just as inept in adapting their people to modern society as we are in the States.
You don’t need to go far into Ms. Riley’s book to begin to grasp how bad matters are for American Indians. According to statistics maintained by the federal agencies (that are supposed to be helping), the estimated three million American Indians have the highest poverty rate of any minority group – almost twice the national average. They also have the highest rate of crime, suicide, alcoholism, gang membership and sexual abuse. The rate of child abuse is twice the national average. Indian women report being raped at 2.5 times the national average. As staggering as these figures are they are even higher for the one million American Indians living on reservations.
Lest you think these American citizens are not just a group of social deviants, it is fair to say that if one lived under the control of the American governmental entities as they do one might exhibit some of the breakdowns in social behavior that American Indians have.
That brought me to ask Ms. Riley whether the mission of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) was actually helping or hurting the people they supervise. When speaking of the BIE, Ms. Riley said “They are terrible. They have gone through 33 directors in 32 years with many directors fired for misconduct. The educational system for American Indians needs real reforms.”
Ms. Riley went on to say “They are spending $20,000 per student and they cannot even keep the roofs on the buildings. A lot of the problem is nepotism in tribal schools. They could really use charter schools.” Riley’s book goes in-depth into the horrifying conditions of the educational systems for American Indians and how that is central to challenges they face as a people.
Riley answered a question I have been asking for years: Why are people living on reservations in the year 2017? She said “Most people will say to protect the Native Americans. Part of it is the tribal leadership telling families they don’t want to mix with mainstream America.”
The Indians live under intolerable restrictions. Individuals cannot get a loan to build a home because the tribal land is held in trust. Everything is owned by the Tribe and has to be approved by multiple layers of the federal government. Thus nothing ever gets done. Though they have mineral and/or oil rights on their land, they need to go through a multitude of approvals to produce from these assets.
Ms. Riley said the most surprising thing she found “was the sheer shock of the living conditions these people are living in. They have housing shortages and live in broken down trailers. They are far away from where the rest of us live, so we never experience the squalor.”
The Indians are then led to focus on certain businesses. As Riley stated “Gambling, cigarettes, alcohol, drugs – who would not want these businesses to form the economic backbone of their community?” Once you review the decision-making process and the control by the BIA or BIE and the Tribal leadership, you come to conclude they are actually living in a Communist system. This system has failed as badly as any other Communist system anywhere in the world.
This all leads to the ultimate negative impact. On the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, Ms. Riley cites “The average life expectancy for men on the reservation is 48, and for women it’s 52. Suicide and poor health are partly to blame for these numbers, but so is violence.” That violence is within the community, and not from outside.
I could go on, but why further depress you. You should read first-hand "The New Trail of Tears." You will learn that many focus on false solutions that do nothing to help except to assuage their own guilt.
I contacted Major League Baseball to find out what they are doing to help American Indians. This is because Commissioner Rob Manfred has pressed the Cleveland Indians to rid themselves of their long-time symbol, Chief Wahoo. What has MLB actually done to help Native Americans? A couple of teams have held Native American Heritage Games, and there are a couple of players of Native American descent. Overall, this is another feel-good moment that does nothing to solve the problems or focus leaders on the challenges facing American Indians.
City Councilman Mitch O’Farrell led the charge to change the name of Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day in Los Angeles. Mr. O’Farrell’s office could not identify that there are actually any American Indians who live in his district or the city of Los Angeles. When asked what Councilman O’Farrell has done to help Americans Indians as they struggle to overcome the hurdles placed in front of them by government, we were told of some other acts of placating, feel-good legislation offered by the Councilman.
Tomorrow some will celebrate Columbus Day while others celebrate Indigenous People’s Day. Indigenous People’s Day will make some people feel good about themselves but will harm the American Indians who need real help. Americans will be diverted because of these feel-good acts. It’s time for actual help to be delivered to these American citizens.
Get rid of the government “help”.
Yes, it seems as if they’ve been helped to death, “literally.”
The author went see what Major League Baseball was doing to help the Indians.
What a ridiculously odd thing to do.
When you give it kills incentive
Why? Because they rode horses, wore armor and had guns!
Going up against a stone age people who didn't even work in metals or the wheel.
The Aztecs may have been as advanced as the ancient Romans, but the ancient Romans by 1492 in European history were well, ancient history.
By then they had become more advanced than The Romans, with things like the Compass, Eyeglasses and Guns.
Charity can be very toxic...
But who convinced the tribes that gambling would be a good business venture over the long run?
“Get rid of the government “help”.”
That’s step one.
Step two is ending the rein of tribal ruling families who take all the government gives, throwing sops to the ordinary tribal Indians who are just used - their ‘plight’ is the ruling families meal ticket. Its the system.
However, most American Indians do not live on the reservations for the above reasons and more.
They did not try a hashtag movement yet! That is the problem!
Seriously, they have corrupted the system so badly that if you let the Indians choose, they would be seduced by the same corrupt leaders who are in bed with the global socialists now.
This is how communism works and why it is so hard to recover.
A strong propensity in their genes to alcoholism sure dorsn’t help
Back when all this started in the 70’s many of us tried to convince the local Treaty Tribes to take the health angle - everything then was ‘new age’ and novel health aid was very big. The tribes have a long history of natural healing medicine, but the ruling families chose the greedy way, throwing their minions to the dogs and encouraging alcohol and drug use to more degrade them in order to gain more cash and other free stuff.
The stuff you see in print is a careful set up by the tribes to make things appear terrible through no fault of their own. Somehow over a century of aid has done nothing to improve their lot ... except for the sometimes black magic practicing ruling families - a certain Wisconsin ruling tribal family gets 5K a month per person just because they are who they are in the tribe (told to me by a tribal member).
Native Americans CAN'T be that great a population, so I would think all the cigarette and casino money could be tapped to help their own.
I think it is in human nature to work. It is also human nature to take a handout. Proponents of the welfare state need only look at the Reservation system to see what the results will be. The government took a group of hardy subsistence cultures and destroyed them in just a couple generations. We did the same thing to poor families with welfare, but it isn’t as apparent because those people still have iPhones and big screen TVs.
Lots of money is spent, but it doesn’t produce good outcomes.
There are no Native Americans.
Just an argument over when everybody’s ancestors got here.
I notice nobody feels sorry for the ebb and flow of conquest that destroyed many European societies over the last 3,000 years.
The “Native Americans” pull up a good fight against the Vikings around 1,000 CE but no match for the technology of 500 years later.
Blacks have the black ghettos in the cities.
Browns have their barrios.
Indians have their reservations.
All three groups are harmed more than helped by being cloistered and somewhat separated from the general population.
The only thing that could help the Indians is to end the reservation concept and bring them out into mainstream America.
But that's never going to happen.
Reservations are very restricted in the kinds of business they are allowed. I lived in Nevada and a local Paiute tribes wanted to open a gas and convenience store. The local chamber of commerce freaked and then the town said they wouldn’t provide fire protection. The tribe had to request fire response from the local Navy base.
Ii havent understood why the American Indians dont act like the countries that have stolen all our jobs? They are their owl little countries with their own tax and legal systems. Why dont they have high dollar medical facilities that dont have to curry to US laws and taxation? Get your knee replaced, get a tax break and gamble a bit while you recover.
Instead they ARE like every other 3rd world shithole in the world. The ones in charge get all the benifits and money and everyone else can work at the Tribal Cultural Center dancing and playing cowboys and indians.
In 1150, Cahokia was larger than any English city
The “reservations” should be closed. The bureau of indian affiars (run by 90+ % indians) should be closed. The indians should integrate into society. The lost their wars.
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