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Monday, September 19, 2016

Failing American Indians Again

While politicians in Washington and pundits on TV bicker over the word Redskins, American Indians face a bevy of real problems at the hands of federal bureaucracy.

Americans are no doubt familiar with the early problems between white settlers and natives, along with the federal government’s brutal relocation in the Trail of Tears, but far fewer are aware of how poorly American Indians are faring in the present-day United States.

New York Post columnist and author Naomi Schaefer Riley says these problems amount to a new Trail of Tears. In Riley’s book by that name, she discusses the rampant sexual abuse, high crime rates, and widespread poverty troubling American Indians on the reservations and explains their causes.

American Indians have the same rights under the law as other Americans, but when they are on reservations, they lose control of important decisions about their lives and towns. Most issues on reservations are decided by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a hapless and destructive federal agency.

The land on reservations is mostly communal, owned by the tribe and run by a bureaucracy rather than bought and sold by individuals, which creates hurdles for American Indians living on reservations to start businesses and succeed on their own. Reservation land loses much of its value because of the government role in its management, while most of the jobs available on reservations are government jobs. Decisions are based primarily on government and tribal interests, with the interests of individual American Indians often left in the dust.

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5 comments:

  1. Trump will finally send them all back to where ever they came from. Make America Great Again!

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  2. The Indians? Really? Wow!!!

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  3. Failing them again? How about still?

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  4. We're spending billions on so-called 'refugees', giving them food, clothing, housing, jobs and just about anything else they want.

    The Native Americans are the original refugees, and we make their lives more miserable every day..

    I hope Mr Trump will consider doing something to help THEM, instead of all these other people from foreign countries.

    We OWE it to them. If there is anybody who deserves 'reparations', it's the American Indian tribes.

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  5. The Native Americans were the first people here. They should be sending everyone else back to where they came from. But we're so amalgamated, even with Native American blood, we could go just about anywhere.

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