From the American Chronicle

from http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/2455

"After incessant Presidential calls for freedom for oppressed people the world over, from Lebanon to North Korea to Palestine, America carries a consistent record of oppression that doesn’t see the light of day. From Hawaii to Panama to black America to Japan and onwards the heavy-handedness of command and control weighs heavily on our history books. Thanks to heaven, most of that is in the past or waning quickly.

But the Native American story keeps chugging quietly along as a reminder of how cruel America once was. In recent years, we (that’s right- we) decided to give Native Americans the right to establish limited gambling ventures as a boon to their mostly nonexistent economies. As a result, dozens of tribes are practicing business with success. Many of them have successfully worked American laws and our courts to allow expanded gaming beyond bingo and other “light” gambling. Consequently, Indian gaming is booming.

Other than establishing gambling on American soil, how is it that our laws are allowed dictate their laws. As free people, their gambling is irrelevant to us, right. How is it that we decide their laws? Oppressive command and control is how.

Here is another worse example. After more than 90% of Natives died by a combination of war, disease, and yes, genocide by our hand, we removed them to isolated islands of property we now call reservations. In 1887, the US congress passed a law called the Indian Allotment Act. That act ensured that American interests could develop natural resources on Native lands. In fact, the Federal Government took title and responsibility of their remaining lands.

The first issue is that the US has no right to control Natives, but they (we) do it anyways. Secondly, what will the US do with their profit from mining, harvesting, etc? Congress decided the money did belong to the Natives, except they couldn’t keep it. It was to be held in trust by the federal government. Kind of like a trust that parents establish for their kids. The money, while it is owned by their children, is held under certain criteria as outlined by the parents.



I don’t know the detail of the criteria the US has held Native money, but its unnecessary to tell the basic story. The money has been spent and lost. That is right. At least several billion dollars (maybe hundreds) has gone missing. Where did it go, you ask. Washington doesn’t know that either because they also lost the accounting of the money. Like the bank telling you they no longer have your money because they lost the deposit and withdrawal records for your account, the Natives are left not even knowing how much to ask for.

Why do we have their money in the first place? The answer is too ugly for me to talk about because I am certain that my country, after taking away everything natives had including most of their lives, continues to take their money and freedom, in 2005.

Why? I actually know the answer. That is why I am so depressed.

Let me put it another way. We are toxic! To them we weren’t settlers; we were invaders. To them we weren’t liberty-seekers; we were and are liberty-killers. To them we weren’t pioneers in a new land; we were brutal destroyers of their children. To them we weren’t striving to achieve honorable equality, we were striving to get rich at any cost, especially at the expense of other races. To the Indians, we brought death and destruction rather than freedom and equality. Still today, to them we aren’t working for the cause of freedom, we are working to ignore their cause of freedom.

A final thought: their means of survival destroyed, what is it they want? How does America make right the restrictions they put on Natives. We can’t give all their land back but it is their right. We can’t give them all their way of life back but it is their right. Do they even want their way of life back?

It starts with freedom. They deserve their freedom from the chains of foreign command and control. As we all know, no one likes to live under the tyranny of a foreign power."



The views here comparing our oppression of other countries to the oppression of Natives is obviously blatant truth. The fact is reservations were concentration camps. Now they are places for decay. I have never heard this issue about money, but The United States forced a bill (or treaty I don't remember) either in very early 1800s or just before forcing Natives to refer to the White people as their "fathers" and it also exclaimed that the states were the 15 (at the time) fires. This kind of rhetoric puts assimilation into perspective. Shows (what are now) minorities are thought of as less than their "settlers". I wont even get into the effects promoting a gambling economy has on the people.