This. I have been on many reservations and pueblos and have never seen or heard of anyone confined to it against their will. It’s just inertia, it’s their home, and they can leave any time. Many times they do. It’s bizarre to me that someone would even think there is enforced residency on reservations by the government. This is not the 19th century.
given this post and your use of Commonwealth spelling, I’m guessing you’re somewhere in the UK or RoI. If so, what exactly have you done to atone for all of the atrocities your country has caused around the world?
And those bad living conditions on some (not all!) reservations? It’s largely due to a toxic combination of alcoholism (native peoples are very vulnerable to it, for both physiological and cultural reasons) plus a completely stagnant economy. Why aren’t we doing anything about it? Because we don’t know how! You see, the economies of the small towns outside the rez are just as stagnant. It turns out that, contrary to the 19th century scientific theories, rain does NOT follow the plough, and even if it did agriculture is an increasingly small portion of the US economy. Fewer and fewer people can make a living as ranchers, and what are the rest to do? Those who have gumption pick up and move to Rapid City, or Sioux Falls, or Omaha, or go north to work in the booming oil fields in North Dakota. Those who don’t stay in their small towns, turn on the TV, and drink, because there’s nothing productive for them to do. Rural communities all over the Great Plains (and especially the northern plains) are dying, and we simply don’t know how to reverse the trend. The modern economy is increasingly an urban one.
(A big reason the tribes are interested in regaining control over some of the land in the Black Hills is that the Black Hills is THE big tourism destination in the state of South Dakota. Yes, they see the land as sacred - but they also see it as a way to make money. There’s not much that’s scenic for tourists to see on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations, but that’s not true of the Black Hills. Crowds of people flock there every summer. The tribes want part of the action, and I certainly can’t blame them for that.)
You could ask the same question of any place with grinding poverty here in the United States. I’ve been to the Mississippi Delta and I can’t fathom why anyone would want to stay in such an economically impoverished area. Not just that area either but a lot of other areas on either side of the Mississippi River. Grinding poverty. Of course a lot of folks did flee the Delta region during the Great Migration but there are still a lot of people who are there and have little prospect of escaping their situation.
It’s not easy to leave. Financially speaking it’s not easy to move to an entirely new location without a job. You’ve got to have enough cash to pay for at least the first month of rental and any security deposits for the property and the deposits for the utility companies.
Leaving the reservations might be the end of those particularly cultures. If I moved to Great Britain and had kids there they wouldn’t be American. They’d be British. And even if they were a little American my grandchildren and their children almost certainly wouldn’t. They’d be British and not in the least bit American.
Handy wiki. The salient quote here is: In 2012, there were over 2.5 million Native Americans with about 1 million living on reservations.
Let’s see… I live in Omaha, Nebraska, on the west bank of the Missouri River and just north of the Platte River. To the east lies Iowa, south is Kansas, and north are the Dakotas. Some of my drinking water comes from the Ogalalla aquifer, and this summer I’m driving out to see the Niobrara River. My house is a short drive from Standing Bear Lake, and back when I had the time to ride, I used to go to a stable in Ponca. Towns named Broken Bow and Red Cloud are located just a hort drive west of my city.
No, I never think of the original inhabitants of this land at all! As for injustice -there’s enough going on in the world right now for me to concern myself with; why waste time flagellating myself over previous generations’ sins?
Indians held land in common, and legal “title” did not begin until the purchase was made. In Connecticut, in the United States, nearly every town can be traced to a deed purchased through a deal brokered by an Indian chief (some land was won in “wars” with the Indian tribes - see Pequot War).
These were complex affairs, where some tribes fought to conquer other tribes, and some tribes allied with the colonist against other tribes. Very often, these were to gain new land and resources to trade with the Colonists. It was not unilaterally the Colonists versus the Indians - the Colonists would be wiped out if they had no allies among any of the tribes.
Not even a little bit. The entirety of human history consists of people displacing others from “their” land - a term I put in quotes because the concept of a group of people having some sort of innate entitlement to any land seems ridiculous, since they did not create the land and therefore they have no greater right to it than any other sentient. None of us have any greater right to it than any other, therefore our only claim on any land, in my view, is what we can hold by virtue of force or coercion.
The land is not a product of someone’s labor, and therefore no one is inherently entitled to it. There might be exceptions. If, for instance, labor makes an otherwise completely uninhabitable location livable, they’re entitled to it because of the work they put in to making it livable. Someone else marching in and taking over the products of their labor would be stealing - not the land, but the infrastructure they have constructed to make it livable. That can be stolen. Granted, I probably still wouldn’t feel bad if I was the descendant of someone who did such a thing, but I would at least agree that there was an actual theft involved.
The Nazis made great cars.
From an East Asian country.
I have never visited the US, so all my info about it is gained via the news media and films.
The English GOVERNMENT didn’t throw the Irish off their land during the Famine, though many landlords did so. They left because they were starving and the laissez-faire policies of the time meant insufficient official help was forthcoming.
This in no way excuses the English for the attrocious way in which they ruled Ireland though.
BTW the poor Catholic Irish didn’t own land- they were tenant farmers.
The tribes make great casinoes and yet the price of tea in China is unfazed.
This whole conversation reminds me of Mexicans griping because the US stole the land they stole from the original inhabitants. Everyone wants to go back in history just enough to make US citizens feel guilty but not enough so they have to feel bad. It’s bullshit but very popular with Europeans and others who get some kick out of hating the US. The thing is we are so mixed racially and over such a timeline that to feel guilt is sort of nuts. I would have thought by now it would be obvious.
I live in Toccopola which is Chickasaw for “crossing road”. The tribe comes back for the Betty Allen festival each year. Betty was the Chickasaw bride of Major John Allen who died and left no will. His wife changed US law when she got it changed so that a wife might inherit property for the first time instead of it going to the oldest male realtive. The property? A slave. This stuff is all mixed up within us and without us. I have a great grandfather who was pureblood Chickasaw buried five miles away. Am I supposed to feel bad? What in hell do folks expect of US citizens?
Well, I’m not American, and in my country they have been trying to rectify the attrocities of colonialisation by giving the land back where possible.
However, whatever the situation in the rest of the US I don’t see how anyone can justify not giving the Black Hills back to the Lakota. The way they were treated was ( and is ) shameful and is a blot on the US government by any standards.
I don’t feel bad in the least, and my family was involved in some of the earliest “stealing.”
*Spike: I just can’t take all this mamby-pamby boo-hooing about the bloody Indians.
Willow: Uh, the preferred term is…
Spike: You won. All right? You came in and you killed them and you took their land. That’s what conquering nations do. It’s what Caesar did, and he’s not goin’ around saying, “I came, I conquered, I felt really bad about it.” The history of the world is not people making friends. You had better weapons, and you massacred them. End of story.*
Yes, the way they were treated was shameful. But giving the entirety of the Black Hills back isn’t going to happen as too many people live there now, and they’re not going to be willing to move. The more feasible outcome would be giving the parts of the Black Hills which are still under federal or state control back, and then financially compensating the tribes for the loss of the remainder.
Not all historic injustices can be rectified. That’s a simple (if bitter) truth.
The Lakota stole the land from someone else; so if we gave the land back to them they would have to give it to someone else. They were also a warlike peoples. Why feel bad for them?
This is a point lost on many and not just non-Americans. The New World was not some Eden-like idyll before the coming of the Europeans. Many of the Indians were cutthroat land-grabbers themselves. The peoples subjugated under the Aztecs were tickled pink about the Spaniards’ arrival, thinking now those bastards in Tenochtitlan were going to get what was coming to them. Pity about that whole disease thing. Many of the Indians in the present-day US allied themselves with one European side or another to get back at their particular Indian enemies.
The Lakota had a legal agreement with the US. The US disregarded that agreement and murdered them at Wounded Knee.
It is often said that the US is a nation of laws, but this was a clear case of unlawful behaviour by the US government, therefore there is no legal basis by which the US owns the land. This was recognised by the Supreme Court, so it’s legally recognised as belonging to the Lakota.
Either the US is a lawful nation or it isn’t. Can’t have it both ways.
If the Lakota came and murdered your family and said they owned your land, would you accept it as lawful? Visa versa applies.
In fact, some Indian tribes employed European mercenaries to take other tribes lands.
However, that was long before the US made legal agreements with the remaining tribes, which should have had legal standing, but in many ways the US government was able to take the Indian’s land anyway. This did not apply to the Lakota though, as the US Supreme Court has recognised that the treaty was legal and that the Black Hills still belong to them.
The OP reminds me of the signs I see occasionally around my suburb (in Melborne Australia), recognising the traditional owners of the land. I see looking them up that it’s part of an organised movement which I hadn’t realised. But I take it that this sort of thing is not seen in the US?