Fox idiot: Natives are freeloading ingrates!

[SirNitram]

Link

No group has been more "helped" by the American government than American Indians. Yet no group in America does worse.

Almost a quarter of Native Americans live in poverty. 66 percent are born to single mothers. They have short life spans. Indian activists say the solution is -surprise- more money from the government. But Washington already spends about $13 billion on programs for Indians every year.

There are special programs in 20 different Departments and Agencies: Empowering Tribal Nations Initiative, Advancing Nation to Nation Relationships, Protecting Indian Country, Improving Trust Land Management, New Energy Frontier Initiative, Climate Change Adaptation Initiative, Construction, Improving Trust Management, Tribal Priority Allocations, Resolving Land and Water Claims, Indian Land Consolidation Program. This is just a partial list.

But that's still not enough for Indian activists. In my Fox News Special "Freeloaders" (10 pm ET tonight), Elizabeth Homer, who used to be the U.S. Interior Departments Director of American Indian Trust, argues the government must do more.

I say government already does too much. Indians would be better off without government handouts. I have evidence: tribes not recognized by the federal government, tribes that get no special help, often do better.

Members of the Lumbee tribe from Robeson County, NC, own their own homes. They succeed in business. Lumbee tribe members include real estate developer Jim Thomas, who used to own the Sacramento Kings. Lumbee Jack Lowery helped start the Cracker Barrel Restaurants. Lumbees started the first Indian owned bank, which now has 12 branches.

The political class doesn't understand that its independence, not government management, that allows people to prosper. Congressman Mike McIntyre (D-NC) is pushing a bill called the Lumbee Recognition Act. This bill would give the Lumbees the same "help" that other tribes get. That would give the Lumbees about $80 million a year.

"We shouldn't take it!" says Lumbee Ben Chavis, another successful businessman. Chavis says not getting any handouts is what makes his tribe successful, and if the federal money starts coming, members of his tribe "are going to become welfare cases. Its going to stifle creativity. We don’t need the government giving us handouts."

A report on this will air tonight at 10pm ET on the Fox News Channel. Its titled "Freeloaders". It also Re-airs Sunday at 9pm & Midnight ET.

No group has been helped more by the government.. If by 'help', you mean Trail of Tears, or the violent crackdowns on any tribe which dared point out the government wasn't obeying the treaties..

[The Cleric]

Is giving them more money the answer though? Does that every really help anything, in the long run?

[SirNitram]

Is giving them more money the answer though? Does that every really help anything, in the long run?

To poverty? Money tends to alleviate the problems with it, given it's a lack of money. To be more serious, properly channelled money alleviates alot of problems, as such programs as food stamps and Title X.

[frigidmagi]

Honestly? A better solution would be the development of the reservations so at the very least they can compete with places like Detroit in regards to quality of life. The schools are insanely underfunded, it's next to impossible to get a business set up there, the infrastructure is shit and when anything of value shows up white corporations start circling like sharks.

I'm not even gonna get into the health care system which is a substandard nightmare on most reservations.

The reservations already tend to be in the most remote, crappiest places in the US but add in the fact that if you live on one, your school system is worse then a deep south rural school, your hospital rivals African bush clinics in terms of supplies and available personale and there are no jobs unless the tribe as opened a casino meaning you now are in a fight with organized crime... Yeah no wonder they're in the shit so deep.

Of course that's how the damn system was designed, which the article conviently forgets to mention. The reservations were never meant to be actual viable places to live. They don't actually train or educate the children of the inhabitants to effectively operate in the modern world. They don't have the roads or other required systems to make travel on and off the reservation easy enough to make commuting workable. And even today it's next to impossible to get a loan to set up a business on a reservation (unless it's a casino or you're a white business man). Most of the unrecognized tribes never got herded into a reservation or had most of their individuals decide to integrate with white society. That meant getting treated like shit until very recently expect in a few select places.

But not being on a reservation meant you were stuck in a trap designed to make and keep you poor, ignorant and herd you into chemical abuse so you would hopefully die young. Go ahead and check, the most successful tribesmen tend to be the ones who left the reservation. The trap there is try to keep to your traditions and maintain your culture and die young, poor and woefully uneducated or leave your people sacrifice your cultural identity and see your children become white in every way that would really matter.

The solution isn't bigger pay outs to individuals, what do they have to spend it on? We're never going to give the individual members enough to actually change their situation within the reservation.

The solution is admitting that they are trapped in a system whose very workings ensure that their only way to success is turn their back on their traditions and each other. Having admitted that, we can try to find ways to make life on the reservations viable or at least try to offer another path to success.

The irony here is that I actually prefer that they chose to integrate but currently they have no real choice but to burn their bridges or rot. That's simply to brutal a police for me to support.

[The Cleric]

Why do we still have reservations, honestly? I mean, I'm well aware of how poorly the native population of the US was treated, but do reservations, as they stand now, have a place in modern america? If traditions are resulting in the continuation of such a poor way of life, and the apparent solution is to throw money at the problem until it goes away, is that really a good system to prop up? I'm all for development money and infrastructure investment, mind you, but just don't see the point for the reservations to exist in their current form. Should the US government really subsidize cultural traditions?

[frigidmagi]

So what are you gonna do? Drive Native Americans out of their homes, again?

Also those reservations are set up by treaty. On the reservations the tribes are sovergin, normal state and city police and other government units cannot operate there. Bascially what you're suggesting would be seen as a white government deciding to finish the job and wipe them out as a cultural and political unit.

As for why we "subsidizer" them (has in, yeah we stole your lands and killed most of you but tell you what, we'll kennel you in lands we don't want and give you just enough to live in poverty) because it's the agreement we made with them after the wars, in short treaties with the tribes which still have the force of law. Haven't we broken enough treaties with them already?

[The Cleric]

How long should we, from a moral and ethical standpoint, honor them? Another 100 years? 500? As long as the US is a sovereign nation? Are we still obligated to provide massive funding or investment? We don't enforce 40 acres and a mule, we no longer pay respirations. Isn't it a similar situation?

[Comrade Tortoise]

How long should we, from a moral and ethical standpoint, honor them? Another 100 years? 500? As long as the US is a sovereign nation? Are we still obligated to provide massive funding or investment? We don't enforce 40 acres and a mule, we no longer pay respirations. Isn't it a similar situation?

As long as the union is a sovereign state from a legal standpoint. The thing is, what we give them is not exactly massive (just enough to live in poverty...)

As for what we owe them... our crime is continuing. We put them on the worst land, made it illegal to speak their languages outside reservations (IIRC), genocided their people etc. New towns do not regularly crop up(save by expansion of an existing city via urban sprawl). What makes a town form is usually some sort of resource. Farmable land, mineral wealth, a cattle ranching run etc. The town grows because the people who exploit that resource need other things. Shoes for example. People then come to make money providing those services.

By design, we did not give the native americans land with a resource worth exploiting, because we TOOK the land that did have those resources. They cannot start municipalities that will prosper on their own, and it is amazingly hard given the prior crushing poverty to make it if you leave.

[frigidmagi]

ow long should we, from a moral and ethical standpoint, honor them? Another 100 years? 500? As long as the US is a sovereign nation?

According to the treaties? Yes, as long as the US is a sovereign nation. That's the agreement. Or do you seriously suggest that the US break treaties with the native Americans again? Realize this, saying that they're only US citizens is in fact false. They are citizens of US protectorates and dependent nations. Nations kept in poverty for decades and generations as a matter of policy to convince their citizens to change their alligence. This isn't a matter of the US handing out free money to a favored group of citizens but of the US honoring treaties signed with defeated peoples in order to take their land as conquest. What your suggesting is that we go back on our word, because you find it inconvient. Which honesty has happened plenty of times before.

Are we still obligated to provide massive funding or investment?

Or let me put this another way. The only reason the Native Americans are in this position is because the US came in, stole their lands, killed most of them and herded the whoever was left into the desolate waste lands that no white men wanted and told them that was now their land where they could live without our interference. Expect there was no way for them to live without outside support. We designed it that way. There's no one to blame for it but us. We chose the lands of the reservation, we set up the infrastructure and worked to block any economic development. The reason they could not develop is we wouldn't let them, it is rather dishonest to scream about it.

As for massive funding? Get real, each individual tribe gets a drop. And frankly you can't consider the natives in a block because they don't operate in a block. The only reason you would is due to race. This isn't a single group but several hundred. They do not share language, religion or custom. It is comparable to lumping in Russians with Englishmen under the same foreign policy.

We don't enforce 40 acres and a mule, we no longer pay respirations. Isn't it a similar situation?

It is not comparable at all. For one thing 40 acres and a mule was never official US policy nor was it a law. It was a set of military field orders by General Sherman in a small geographic area in the south. Congress never even seriously considered it. It only affected 10,000 ex-slaves.

The treaties are US law made in agreement between the government of the various tribes and Congress. In short they are the agreed upon framework between us and them. You're suggesting breaking the treaties without even discussing it with them.

For another recuperation for slavery was never paid by the US overnment. Today in some isolated cases it has been paid by individuals, which I am neither for or against, it's their call. Blacks also were never members of tribes, nations or groups that the US conquered and made treaties with, they have always been considered an internal population of the United States, the natives have not. It would require frankly ignoring alot of history to say they are the same situation.

[General Havoc]

We designed it that way. There's no one to blame for it but us. We chose the lands of the reservation, we set up the infrastructure and worked to block any economic development. The reason they could not develop is we wouldn't let them, it is rather dishonest to scream about it.

The treaties were signed over a hundred years ago in the most recent of cases, and not one personal party to them, even by implication, is alive today, which is why it's perhaps better to keep these sorts of discussions free of accusations of what "we" did or "our" blame. Nobody is willing or generally should be willing to accept retroactive blame because of treaties signed by people who look like them that were unfair towards people who did not to which neither they nor their relatives were party. At the time, for example, that these things were signed, my family was getting conscripted into the Tsar's armies in between Pogroms. My guess is that most people in this country could say something similar, to say nothing of those who are part-native and part-not. Casting this issue as "something you did to me" is what usually turns the debate into name-calling.

That being said, the US as a nation is of course party to those treaties, and therefore they must and should be maintained insofar as they specify. The US did not sign them under duress, after all.

Blacks also were never members of tribes, nations or groups that the US conquered and made treaties with, they have always been considered an internal population of the United States, the natives have not. It would require frankly ignoring alot of history to say they are the same situation.

This is true, but I would say that it is long since time that this situation were changed. The rights and the many many wrongs of the conquest of the continent by the United States can be debated and have blame hurled about them for a thousand years without helping anyone. We cannot simply unilaterally abrogate the treaties signed between the United States and the Native tribes and nations, but with mutual consent, they can be modified. If the current treaties do nothing but keep most natives penned on crap reservation land where their only choices are to open casinos and compete with the mafia or be mired in grinding poverty, alcoholism, and crime, then I'd say those treaties are fairly shitty implements of policy on all sides.

Not every development that could be proposed to alter these treaties consists of fucking the natives over yet again, nor in "reparations" or additional welfare handouts. Surely there is some form of medium that could be proposed to elevate these places out of the shithole status they are in.

[frigidmagi]

You note Havoc I've already made a suggestion to that, I'm not suggesting additional handouts or even reparations. I'm suggesting that we make the reservations viable places for the tribes to function. The Alternative being we give them back their original holdings, which I think we can all agree won't work. Nor do I think any of us desire to cut the US into a hundred smaller nations, I know that I'm the most sympathetic person to the tribes in the discussion so far and I view that as utterly unacceptable and unallowable.

As for modifying treaties, that's fine. If a tribe and the US government both agree to new conditions or even new agreements I can't think of a reason to protest, assuming everything is done above board. But that's not what's being suggested here, what is being suggested is a unilateral pull and declaration that after hundreds of years of consistent work to ruin their ability to stand on their own feet, that we no longer feel like putting any resources into keeping them on life support and they can either abandon their traditions or wither on the vine.

[General Havoc]

Well then I'll ask what does making the reservations viable places for the Tribes to live consists of doing, exactly? Reservations, as you pointed out, were designed intentionally by the treaty writers to be completely unable to sustain themselves due to being located in the shittiest parts of the country. Making them viable places to live would entail either expanding them to incorporate economically valuable (and thus, already owned) parts of the country, or massively increasing the economic aid provided to them, into perpetuity. This in a time when the government is going bankrupt just trying to run its usual operations.

I think honoring the treaty obligations is important, but to do what you're discussing would, as I understand it, require increasing financial support across the board tenfold. I can see why people are objecting to that notion.

[The Cleric]

Havoc hit on the points I was driving towards. The reservation model is not viable. I am not suggesting cold turkeying them by any means, or unilaterally abrogating the treaties. But the system does not seem to be working for anyone. Not the people on the reservations, not the US government, not the taxpayers, not the people living the states around them (aside from cheap cigarettes and gambling). Are we doing anything at this point but subsidizing traditional lifestyle for nothing more than the sake of tradition? Is this good for ANYONE?

[General Havoc]

Don't get me wrong, whether I think they're good or not, the treaties must stand as legal treaties. But the treaties as they stand are not going to solve anything. It's been four generations since Natives were required to stay on the reservations by law, and though the treaties have been held to all that time, they remain shitholes by and large. This is of course because they were designed to be shitholes, and have performed their function well.

Given that, any actual solution will require going beyond the scope of the treaties in some way.

[frigidmagi]

Well then I'll ask what does making the reservations viable places for the Tribes to live consists of doing, exactly? Reservations, as you pointed out, were designed intentionally by the treaty writers to be completely unable to sustain themselves due to being located in the shittiest parts of the country. Making them viable places to live would entail either expanding them to incorporate economically valuable (and thus, already owned) parts of the country, or massively increasing the economic aid provided to them, into perpetuity. This in a time when the government is going bankrupt just trying to run its usual operations.

Okay I'm sorry it took so long to get to this. I'll try to make it good but we'll see. Let me make clear that I'm not pushing for massive handouts to individuals or tribal governments, to be blunt even if we gave each native citizen thousands and thousands of dollars a month... On the reservations there's pretty much fuck all for them to buy expect booze, crap food and worse drugs. And by drugs I don't mean crack and cocaine. I mean the red neck drugs like meth. In order to give the tribal governments enough money to make a dent we would be talking millions really quickly (which I'm not enough an idiot to do so, dumping million on the government of a downtrodden and poor people is a swift way to encourage massive corruption, Iraq taught me this also).

First in the grand military tradition I was taught, I will describe the objective so that all of us know what victory looks like. My goal here isn't to turn the reservations into the new L.A's or New York Cities of the country. That is frankly impossible. Instead what we're aiming at is making them as viable as a small town (roughly the population of most of the reservations anyways) in the United States can be. With any luck, we can create reservations that have functioning economies that can operate without government support. In the long run that would be cheaper. That is what victory looks like, reservations that are not by any means rich but allow their residents to live fairly decent lives free of crushing poverty and the problems it brings.

To do so the first thing required is the necessary infrastructure. Most reservations are barely connected in any real sense to the surrounding world. Access is required for trade, employment and any chance at a better tomorrow. To that end we need roads, or railroads or any means of dependable routes of travel. We additionally need to set means of communication to the outside world, I honestly think the internet is the best bet for this even with all the many, many problems internet access could bring them. With travel made easier, it may be possible for native businesses to be set up at last.

Secondly and perhaps more importantly if not most importantly is education. As you might guess education on reservations is for the most part abysmal. The graduation rate for Native Americans is 50%, and as a population they have among if not the highest rates of suicide, drug use and other problems that usually set in the teen years. No matter what else we do, nothing will change for the Native Americans unless they can get a decent education. I doubt even Paul Ryan or Glen Beck would dispute that. Is more money the solution? I honestly can't say, but clearly something has to be done and done quickly to improve the education system on the reservations.

Lastly, there has to be a set up to ensure that Native run businesses can interact with outside businesses without finding themselves bought out or locked out of the deal. I am perhaps being naive but my thought is education along with existing laws should be able to serve this need as long as they are enforced. In short the goal is to connect them to the greater US economy and bring them into it as a functional producing part. In the end isn't that better for all considered? Instead of a drain, they become productive citizens. Instead of living under a boot, they get to make lives for themselves. This can't be done by simply stopping the payments and declaring that they must pull themselves up. One cannot pull himself up unless there is something to hold on to.

If we achieve victory then the various Native Americans who still take part in tribal life will have a viable choice for the 1st time in a long life. They can live a decent if not extravagantly wealthy life within their own culture and traditions, or they will have the education and the skills to leave and join the outside world on even footing. That frankly is what I am after, a choice. If they all decide to leave the reservations and become culturally "white," well and good, if they don't and can still function, just as good.

While some of us may feel that they are under no responsibility to subsidize a foreign and alien culture, let me point out how it seems from their point of view. From their point of view it looks like you're demanding that their culture hurry up and die and they become just like you. This is especially galling when from their point of view the only reason they cannot live in their own traditions and culture without outside support is because the US has ensured that they do not have the means to do so. I ask that those of you who believe this consider that and think on what it means to be a member of one of these tribes, living in poverty because your forefathers were herded into the wastes by a conquering nation, denied opportunities because of your race and creed and constantly having your traditions and beliefs under systematic assault.