I have a few questions about Indian reservations and Native Americans. Why do they give Native Americans free bus tokens, scholarships, etc. etc. if they are descendants from the Indians of years and years ago? I guess my question is theses Native Americans living now did not feel the effect of what the white man did to them, so why do they get all the luxuries still? Native Americans have tribal courts and laws pertaining to their own land…so they can get tried in their own courts. Why is that? I heard of a young Native American getting a large sum of money, from some case just for being Native American. Another case is if you can claim your any oercentage of Native American the government will give you some kind of free healthcare…I heard a black girl (she claimed she had 1/16th Cherokee or Sioux) had a card that lets her go to the doctor for health services? Why all these perks for Native Americans? Why are the Native Americans still fighting for land from the governmnet when it was taken away many years ago from descendants that are already dead. I would think just let it die already? I know they suffered in past history, but I assume nobody born today felt the effect or lived through it.
My understanding is that it is not “the government” giving freebies to “Indians”. Rather, the way it works is that the reservations have limited autonomy (“tribal sovereignty” is the keyword here). They’re not full-fledged states, but they have authority to manage a range of own affairs autonomously, and they elect their own officials to run the business of the reservation.
The reservations also have their own sources of income which the reservation authorities can dispose of; and if some of them choose to spend that money on freebies of the sort you mention, well, then this is their business.
If you think that our government provides “all the luxuries” to the residents of reservations, you obviously have never visited one. And if you think that “nobody born today” (speaking of native Americans) feels the effects of what our federal government did to the native Americans you are grossly mistaken and/or misinformed.
You might ask yourself why poverty/alcoholism/unemployment rates among reservation people are as high as they are.
Well, if the natives are lucky enough to be part of a tribe that runs a successful casino, no one needs to work, so I guess the “unemployment rate” would be rather high.
You mean, beside the loss of a few million square miles of land?
Say that I injure you. A court finds that I owe you compensation. Nothing unusual there. Happens every day.
The Native Americans were injured by the U.S. Government. Treaties were broken, ignored, trampled on. Court cases ensued. The Native Americans had the legitimate claims because they were legally in the right virtually every single time. The government is now paying damages, determined through courts and legislation, for the injuries committed over hundreds of years.
This is different from black reparations because the government itself was signatory to the legal documents that it ignored.
Now go study some history.
The current living tribe members did not lose the land, their forefathers did. Hell, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, followed by the Nazi Arrow Cross party in Hungary stole all of my ancestors land. My ancestors no doubt stole it from someone else, who stole it from someone else, and so on back to the first H. Sapiens visitor to the land… who perhaps took it from a Neanderthal.*
It’s not like the boundaries of the various Native tribes in the USA weren’t constantly in a state of flux and change due to war, rivalries and what-not. If the USA took land from the Mohawks who took that land from the
Algonquin, who displaced yet another tribe from that land- who gets the land back? The Clovis people? Whoops, no it looks like they displaced yet another prior people.
*Yes, I know some scientists consider the Neanderthal to be a H. Sapiens subspecies.
I know I’m repeating something someone said above, but I spent some time (around six months) on the Pine Ridge reservation, in South Dakota (I was working for the Indian Health Service).
I assure you, the residents of Pine Ridge are still feeling the effects of history. And the phrase “all the luxuries” simply does not describe life in Pine Ridge.
I agree that returning these lands would be very difficult. But I also think that it would also be the Right Thing To Do.
I realize that the above opinion brings this thread into GD territory, but isn’t that what this thread is about? The OP asked what losses the current Native Americans are suffering, and I suggest that it is the loss of their rightful inheritance.
The “history” doesn’t go back that far, but it’s expensive if you ignore it:
Sure, so who do we give the lands to? The Mohawks? The Algonquin? The Clovis people?
And of course you know that means that 99% of all current residents will lose their homes, farms or businesses- homes that may have been in their families for 10 generations. This will mean that 100% of the land in America will now belong to less than 1% of it’s population. I will lose my home, you will lose your home, in fact every poster here will lose their home- unless they a member of a native tribe AND currently living on lands that their tribe occupied in oh, let’s say 1492. Which means something less than 10000th of 1%. Everyone else loses their land and home. :dubious:
So, let us say we have a hypothetical founding pilgrim family (the Smiths), who has been living on the same land for nearly 400 years. They settled on land siezed from a tribe which is now extinct (We’ll call this hypothetical extinct tribe the “Heckowi”), who siezed the land from another tribe 100 years before that (“Fukowi”- who still have a reservation about 200 miles away with a thriving Casino on it)), who took the land from another tribe 500 years before that (“Whokowi”), and so forth. Thus we have the Smith Family has owned and lived on that land for 400 years. The Heckowi (now extinct) owned it for 100 years, the Fukowi for 500 years and the Whokowis origins are lost in the mists of time- and so are the tribes members (no one claims to be a Whokowi). Who has the moral ownership of that land?
How about if the Smiths claim they bought the land?
That’s a slippery slope in both directions. If I take your land by force today, can I keep it? (No.) If my umpteen-times-great-grandfather took the land from yours in 1633, can I keep it? (Yes.) So it’s finding that middle ground, so to speak.
It’s also worth pointing out that enforced cultural change is really traumatic. Immigrants go through it too, but usually voluntarily, and with the knowledge that their native culture still exists somewhere, even if life there sucks. Native Americans know that whatever culture they have, that’s it, and it’s really hard to maintain a healthy minority culture when there’s such a power imbalance between your group and the mainstream. Economic and social opportunities are really limited unless you assimilate: at best, being bicultural, and at worst, losing your minority identity altogether. Not a problem unique to Native Americans, but certainly relevant.
Much of what the Indians “get” is simply a small part of what was negotiated in the treaties that ended the Indian Wars. Our government promised things to the tribes in these treaties, like the right to continue self government (limited) and therefore have their own court systems. The right to fish and hunt in their traditional areas. The right to education and health care. Nothing wrong with the government providing “benefits” if they promised to do so. The “large” sums of money some tribal members get are usually simply the royalities from mineral, gas or timber sales (i.e., income from their lands–just like lots of other folks get). As stated by others, some tribes have casinos that generate income. Nothing wrong with that. Much of that revenue goes to health care or scholarships.
The problem as I see it isn’t that we conquered and took their land. It’s that we signed treaties. If we’d just taken everything and said “Tough noogies” this whole matter would have been over hundreds of years ago. But because we signed (and reneged on) treaties we have reservations, lawsuits, reparations and the whole magilla.
People like the OP assume that this all took place 300 years ago. It continues to the present with cases like Celilo Falls on the Columbia River. The government decided it wanted to put a dam there, and proceeded to flood fishing grounds that were not only used in antiquity, but right up to the point where the area flooded in about 1959. If you wish to see another instance of present day fuckovers, look up information on the Native American trust, which appears to have been systematically robbed by the government.
When the government shunted the Indian onto worthless, unproductive lands back in the day, it condemned those tribes to a life of squalor for them and not much better for their descendants. Over generations, many become institutionalized in the worst sense of the word. A visit to most reservations is a fairly grim experience.
Spend some time reading up on the Mabo decision in Australia. Putting aside your Chicken Little hype, some Australians did lose their land.
Note that Mabo always claimed he owned that land, and lived there, and the land wasn’t owned privately but by the governemtn of Queensland. It appears to my non-legal mind that according to your cite that if the Crown had granted the land to other private individuals the Native title would be extinguished. "Repudiation of absolute beneficial title of all lands: The majority in Mabo also rejected the proposition that immediately upon the acquisition of sovereignty, absolute beneficial ownership of all the lands of the Colony vested in the Crown. The majority rejected the traditional feudal development of the doctrine of tenure as inappropriate for Australia, and rather saw that upon acquisition of sovereignty the Crown acquired not an absolute but a radical title, and that title would be subject to native title rights where those rights had not been validly extinguished. Thus the court accepted that a modified doctrine of tenure operated in Australia, and that the law of tenure (as a product of the common law) could co-exist with the law of native title (as a product of customary laws and traditions), though where there had been a valid grant of fee simple by the Crown the latter title would be extinguished. "
In other words, all that would mean is that if we have Amerinds currenly living on government lands, and lands that were never aquired by treaty, that according to Mabo the resident natives might have a claim on those government lands.
However, that is a special case, and outside the OP, being Australia and nothing to do with reservations or treaties.
What others in this thread are suggesting is that all lands in the USA- no matter how title was aquired or how many hands title passed through or how long the title has been in non-nativeshands; that the ownership be “given back” to the “natives”, even if those natives took that land from other tribes.
Again, the question is- if I have owned the land for a generation, and my father aquired the title legally, but his father aquired the title from someone who occupied the land by force- who of course also took the land some someone else by force, and so forth- who is the moral owner?
Taking my hypothetical *founding pilgrim family (the Smiths), who has been living on the same land for nearly 400 years. They settled on land siezed from a tribe which is now extinct (We’ll call this hypothetical extinct tribe the “Heckowi”), who siezed the land from another tribe 100 years before that (“Fukowi”- who still have a reservation about 200 miles away with a thriving Casino on it)), who took the land from another tribe 500 years before that (“Whokowi”), and so forth. Thus we have the Smith Family has owned and lived on that land for 400 years. The Heckowi (now extinct) owned it for 100 years, the Fukowi for 500 years and the Whokowis origins are lost in the mists of time- and so are the tribes members (no one claims to be a Whokowi). Who has the moral ownership of that land? *
Hundreds of years ago? When do you think all this happened? You know those cowboy and indian movies, when do you think they are set?
The reservation system wasn’t thought up as a way to give out freebies to Indians. Rather, Indians were herded onto the reservations, and in return for not being massacred, agreed to not bother white people anymore. And that meant they had limited self government, because otherwise white people would have had to govern them.
I think this is better suited for GD than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
It’s hard to quantify which people benefit from treaties. We know the people who got free health care or housing or scholarships because they have a greater ability to communicate - I mean, remote reserves in northern Saskatchewan aren’t exactly packed with people on the internet or with cell service.
I too know people that have gotten benefits from being able to prove they are an incredibly small percentage Aboriginal. It seems to be half ‘I give up, I’m going to perpetuate the cycle of drugs and abuse I grew up in’ and half not knowing these services are out there for those on reserves.
I lean more towards DrDeth’s opinions, but I don’t feel comfortable voicing them. In Canada, there’s a double-standard going on. Each Indian band wants to choose when they get to govern themselves and when the Canadian government governs them based on what they get for it. Financial compensation from the federal government for the residential school scandal? Definitely want. Government wants each Chief to disclose their salary and expenses? Definitely do not want.
I also have a sneaking suspicion that your success on reserve is tied to how close you are to the Chief. But because of the power each reserve has, we never really know.