Uncle Sam’s shameful treatment of today's American Indians (CS Monitor)

[pinto]

Interesting piece from a regular columnist with CS Monitor ~ pinto

Uncle Sam’s shameful treatment of today's American Indians

By Walt Rodgers / October 4, 2010

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I have a friend, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general, who has a provocative theory. He says that when the United States goes to war in a foreign country, its armed forces – win, lose, or draw – leave behind a spirit of goodness and decency, which, despite the violence of war, leavens society, improving the lives of women and the poor.

The jury is still out on Iraq and Afghanistan. But wars in Vietnam, Germany, Japan, and Korea tend to confirm his theory. There remains, however, a glaring exception that should shame all Americans. One hundred and thirty-four years after the Battle of Little Bighorn, we still cruelly punish the native Americans for their resistance to white encroachment in the lands west of the Mississippi.

A few years ago I was fishing the Little Bighorn, a trout river flowing through the Crow Indian Reservation in south-central Montana. Lush, green, irrigated crops grew on either side. Well-heeled fishermen pumped cash into the area. A railroad ran into the reservation, giving the Crow additional income from leases to coal-mining companies.

But I also wanted my wife to see by contrast what Uncle Sam gave the Northern Cheyenne for a reservation just to the east. There, poverty was appalling. Countless auto hulks rusted in fields that could support no crops. Along Route 212, small white crosses with plastic flowers were planted about every mile, tragic signs of Cheyenne killed, most probably in alcohol-related traffic accidents. The Cheyenne reservation was parched and brown, supporting only outcroppings of scrub pine.

Guess which of those tribes allied with the US Cavalry and scouted for the US Army against their fellow Indians? And then guess which tribe resisted white encroachment and participated in the massacre of General Custer’s Seventh Cavalry at the Little Bighorn a few miles away?

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Walter-Rodgers/2010/1004/Uncle-Sam-s-shameful-treatment-of-today-s-American-Indians

[MissHoneychurch]

1. The last sentences are very telling

"The Obama White House has promised to pay, but Senate Republicans, bent on blocking anything with Obama’s imprint, are refusing to pass it. Custer would have been proud of the GOP. But how do these senators tell their children and grandchildren they are party to swindling the Indians again?"

[dkf]

2. They may not have very good farm land but they do have rights to minerals, resources and timber.

One wonders why the federal government has any say in these trust funds and why it isn't under American Indian control. On the other hand we too have a trust fund for Hawaiians and all they want to do is grow the amount instead of concentrating on people living now.

The dirty little secret is we don't trust American Indians to make good decisions and expect them to blow the assets if given control. Yet should we do so and possibly leave future generations with not much? We aren't doing very well by our kids anyway.

[era veteran]

3. Buffy! Says it all

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGaTrsoawlw

[classysassy]

4. Present, and past greed and hate

will destroy this country,Hate and greed are deadly.