A reservation's relentless poverty

[NVMojo]

Or, why the Souix Nation gave up on Daschle while living under the "relentless" Bush Regime.

PINE RIDGE, S.D. — When the president came to town, Geraldine Blue Bird was lucky enough to be living in a four-room shack with 28 other people.

Had she been better off, President Clinton's 1999 summer "poverty tour" to the Oglala Lakota Sioux reservation might have overlooked her house among all the other cabins and trailers doing hard time in her neighborhood. But even in the poorest patch of the poorest place in the country, the Blue Bird residence stood out.

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The most glaring example, the Indian Health Service, was created by treaties drawn more than a century ago that promised high-quality health care (along with high-quality education and decent housing) for every Native American in exchange for the federal government's taking vast swaths of Indian land.

But the health service, run by the Department of Health and Human Services, is funded at less than $2,000 per Indian each year, half of what federal prisoners get. This year, Congress rejected legislation to increase its budget. The administration redirected Indian Health Service funding to homeland security and the Iraq war.

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The Pine Ridge Economic Empowerment Zone, which was the best hope for an economic shot in the arm after Clinton's visit, came with a promised grant of $2 million a year for 10 years as seed money for businesses.

But this year, when the zone began to see long-term plans get off the ground, the Bush administration cut its grant to $1.5 million. It allocated no money for the zone in its proposed budget for next year.

Some people blame politics for the funding slights. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Tim Johnson, D-S.D., his junior colleague, have proposed bills to increase funding for Indian programs, only to see them defeated in the Republican-controlled Congress.

In 2002, Johnson beat Republican John Thune by 524 votes based on late returns from Pine Ridge. Last week, Daschle, facing Thune in a nail-biter race, counted on the Democratic voting bloc on South Dakota's nine reservations to win, but went down to defeat.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002084906_indians08.html

[hlthe2b]

1. "christian" Genocide plain and simple...

So many Americans are totally ignorant about how badly most plains Indians have faired, and assume they are all "wealthy gambling beneficiaries, still drinking at the Federal trough." And given the FBI's brutal put-down of the American Indian Movement (AIM) with the imprisoning of Leonard Pelltier in the 70's, our government has insured genocide for these people, albeit slow.

Aren't we just proud to be Americans?