4 ms·

I haven't been to the Cherokee reservation, but have been to a couple of reservations for smaller tribes. They were universally sad/depressing places. Usually

I haven't been to the Cherokee reservation, but have been to a couple of reservations for smaller tribes. They were universally sad/depressing places. Usually they have one central liquor store/"market" with drunk people hanging out in front. Dirty and dilapidated buildings...lots of natives suffering from diabetes and obesity. What this country did and continues to do to the natives contrasts sharply with how we preach "human rights" and such to the rest of the world.

my_usernam3 7y ago
> and continues to do to the natives What is it that we are doing now (other than inflammatory sport team names)? I'm pretty naive on this topic, so I don't mean this as an attack, but as a legitimate question.
- Frondo 7y ago
  I feel like someone else can do a better job with a comprehensive list, but I can give an anecdote from my experience. A few years ago I sat in on a tribal economic development forum in one of the western states. Not a tribal member, just an invited guest. One of the issues one of the tribes had was: they don't have water rights to the water that supplies one of their towns. The water comes from their land, but they're required by a 1920s-era local ordinance to sell it to a neighboring town, that then sells it back to them. They want that local ordinance removed, so they aren't paying the neighboring town for, literally, their own water. The neighboring town isn't filtering it, isn't processing it, it's just enjoying the largesse of some local politician nearly a hundred years ago, writing a law that rips off the tribe. They just want the ordinance removed. They just want to have their water at extraction cost. This was one 15-minute section in a day-long conference. This was the "rapid fire" petitions to representatives from state government. Next section: In a city somewhere else in the state, someone's building a police station. The contract is out for public bid, but the contracting language said "Bidders must reside in our county, with zip codes xxxx, yyyy, zzzz excluded from bidding." The excluded zip codes corresponded exactly to where the reservation land lay. The tribe was there, asking for the contracting language to be changed, so that they could merely submit a bid for one of their construction companies -- not that they wanted any special treatment, but they literally just wanted to be treated like any other zip code in the county. That was another 15 minute section in the rapid-fire requests. All day long like that.
  - hurrdurr2 7y ago
    Wow... thanks for sharing your story. I always thought it was mainly the feds being completely inept when it came to Indian Affairs but I guess it's not surprising the local governments are the same way.
    - vkou 7y ago
      Not inept, just malicious and corrupt.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    So, institutionalised rasism. (And a lot of other dirty -isms, I'm sure.)
- markdown 7y ago
  Neglect.
- hurrdurr2 7y ago
  The federal government continues to horribly mismanage reservation lands and the resources located on them. "Tribes historically had little or no control over their energy resources. Royalties were set by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but the agency consistently undervalued Indian resources. A federal commission concluded in 1977 that leases negotiated on behalf of Indians were 'among the poorest agreements ever made.' Unfortunately, it hasn’t gotten much better. A recent class action suit alleged that the government mismanaged billions of dollars in Indian assets. The case settled in 2009 for $3.4 billion—far less than what was lost by the feds." https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/03/13/5-ways-the-government-keeps-native-americans-in-poverty/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/03/13/5-ways-the-...
- xtian 7y ago
  Check out Days of Destruction by Chris Hedges. One chapter is focused on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.
- michaelbrave 7y ago
  There was the whole oil pipeline thing right after the recent administration came to power.
- littlekosh 7y ago
  We like stealing their children for one thing: https://www.npr.org/2011/10/25/141672992/native-foster-care-lost-children-shattered-families https://www.npr.org/2011/10/25/141672992/native-foster-care-... https://theintercept.com/2019/06/17/indian-child-welfare-act-goldwater-institute-legal-battle/ https://theintercept.com/2019/06/17/indian-child-welfare-act...

my_usernam3 7y ago

> and continues to do to the natives What is it that we are doing now (other than inflammatory sport team names)? I'm pretty naive on this topic, so I don't mean this as an attack, but as a legitimate question.

Frondo 7y ago
I feel like someone else can do a better job with a comprehensive list, but I can give an anecdote from my experience. A few years ago I sat in on a tribal economic development forum in one of the western states. Not a tribal member, just an invited guest. One of the issues one of the tribes had was: they don't have water rights to the water that supplies one of their towns. The water comes from their land, but they're required by a 1920s-era local ordinance to sell it to a neighboring town, that then sells it back to them. They want that local ordinance removed, so they aren't paying the neighboring town for, literally, their own water. The neighboring town isn't filtering it, isn't processing it, it's just enjoying the largesse of some local politician nearly a hundred years ago, writing a law that rips off the tribe. They just want the ordinance removed. They just want to have their water at extraction cost. This was one 15-minute section in a day-long conference. This was the "rapid fire" petitions to representatives from state government. Next section: In a city somewhere else in the state, someone's building a police station. The contract is out for public bid, but the contracting language said "Bidders must reside in our county, with zip codes xxxx, yyyy, zzzz excluded from bidding." The excluded zip codes corresponded exactly to where the reservation land lay. The tribe was there, asking for the contracting language to be changed, so that they could merely submit a bid for one of their construction companies -- not that they wanted any special treatment, but they literally just wanted to be treated like any other zip code in the county. That was another 15 minute section in the rapid-fire requests. All day long like that.
- hurrdurr2 7y ago
  Wow... thanks for sharing your story. I always thought it was mainly the feds being completely inept when it came to Indian Affairs but I guess it's not surprising the local governments are the same way.
  - vkou 7y ago
    Not inept, just malicious and corrupt.
- jacobush 7y ago
  So, institutionalised rasism. (And a lot of other dirty -isms, I'm sure.)
markdown 7y ago
Neglect.
hurrdurr2 7y ago
The federal government continues to horribly mismanage reservation lands and the resources located on them. "Tribes historically had little or no control over their energy resources. Royalties were set by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but the agency consistently undervalued Indian resources. A federal commission concluded in 1977 that leases negotiated on behalf of Indians were 'among the poorest agreements ever made.' Unfortunately, it hasn’t gotten much better. A recent class action suit alleged that the government mismanaged billions of dollars in Indian assets. The case settled in 2009 for $3.4 billion—far less than what was lost by the feds." https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/03/13/5-ways-the-government-keeps-native-americans-in-poverty/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/03/13/5-ways-the-...
xtian 7y ago
Check out Days of Destruction by Chris Hedges. One chapter is focused on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.
michaelbrave 7y ago
There was the whole oil pipeline thing right after the recent administration came to power.
littlekosh 7y ago
We like stealing their children for one thing: https://www.npr.org/2011/10/25/141672992/native-foster-care-lost-children-shattered-families https://www.npr.org/2011/10/25/141672992/native-foster-care-... https://theintercept.com/2019/06/17/indian-child-welfare-act-goldwater-institute-legal-battle/ https://theintercept.com/2019/06/17/indian-child-welfare-act...