This Noble Savage crap goes way back. Read Mark Twain’s comments on Fennimore Cooper.
Race is culture. Culture is race.
This is so very sad.
You can't fix this horrible mess while at the same time insisting that their culture is equal to ours.
That would take a spine, and the West lacks one.
I propose that complete separation is the best path.
Back around 1980, there was a PBS TV show called IMAGES OF INDIANS, about movie Indians vs Real Indians. In this show one man claimed American Indians never scalped or tortured anyone and this was a fabrication to justify the takeover of Indian lands by the evil white man.
Then came the discoveries at Crow Creek massacre and torture and scalping, and cannibalism in the South west long before the evil White Man arrived.
Add to this early descriptions of Indians scalping each other along the Eastern seaboard years before the evil White Man “taught” the Indians to scalp caused quite a stir and more denial from various Indian groups.
Cannibalism among the Pueblo tribes was discovered in the various ruins in the Four-Corners area, and to give the tribes “wiggle room” to claim innocence it was blamed on a possible “Invasion of Aztecs from Mexico” where eating the human sacrifices was known, from Spanish sources.