Posted on 11/21/2015 8:50:16 AM PST by Kaslin
It goes without saying our history with Native Americans is not our nation's finest hour.
Native Americans lost right at 98 percent of their land in about 200 years as Manifest Destiny took hold. They now account for about 1 percent of the population about 3 million people scattered across 566 recognized tribes.
About a quarter of Native Americans live in poverty the overall rate is about 14 percent. Their rates of alcoholism in particular and drug and alcohol abuse in general are significantly higher than the population at large, and their educational attainment, life expectancy and income levels significantly lower.
Over the last century, they have become immigrants in their own countries shuffled into reservations that amount to refugee camps and which only concentrate the problems of poverty and substance abuse.
In recent years, tribal leadership has tried to integrate their reservations and nations into society overall and the economy specifically. The first forays have come in areas traditionally worked by immigrant groups staking their economic claims, such as entertainment and capital resources. Casinos serve both functions; payday lending, another prominent income stream for tribes, serves the latter.
Out West, the Crow Nation, headquartered in Montana, is attempting to take things in a new direction. It has entered into a deal to build the Gateway Pacific Terminal at Cherry Point in Whatcom County in northern Washington state not far from the state's largest oil refinery.
The county issued a permit for "substantial shoreline development" in 1997, but changes to the size and scope of the project necessitated another round of environmental impact statements. Today, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Washington state Department of Ecology and the county are jointly assessing the environmental impact of the project, which would enable the export of 54 million tons of dry bulk products per year mostly coal.
Public comment periods have accompanied every stage of this review since it began in 2012, and more than 100,000 stakeholder comments have been produced. Yet another opportunity for public comment will occur when the Environmental Impact Statement is produced in 2016.
Now, another tribe, the Lummi Nation, seeks to stall the process indefinitely. Leaders and others appeared at a sparsely attended rally two blocks from the White House last week asking Congress to order the Corps to delay the study still further. The Corps is said to be considering the request, and the Crow and its co-investors in the Gateway project have stepped up to oppose any further delays.
Crow officials point to the 9,100 jobs that will be created in the construction phase of the project and the 2,100 permanent jobs, with an annual payroll of more than $150 million, and $1.5 billion in promised private investment that would follow. Crow tribal chairman Darrin Old Coyote says this project is "quite literally, the difference between potential prosperity for the Crow people and dire poverty."
The Lummi say they are acting out of concern for their tribal rights and possible environmental damage to what they consider tribal lands. But sorting out tribal claims is part of the Corps of Engineers review.
They say they've "concluded that the impacts of significant increases in rail and vessel transportation cannot be mitigated to any level that would protect tribal treaty rights." That's also part of the Corps' review.
But they're not shy about admitting there is more to this than concern for tribal lands.
"We're taking a united stand against corporate interests that interfere with our treaty-protected rights," Tim Ballew II, chairman of the Lummi Indian Business Council, said at the Washington, D.C., rally. "Tribes across the nation and world are facing challenges from corporations that are set on development at any cost to our communities."
Why would corporations being set on development that involves tribes be a "challenge?"
On one reservation in nearby Montana, unemployment for working-age men is 69 percent. Alcoholism rates are twice the national average, and fetal alcohol syndrome is four times the rate of the rest of the country. A corporation offering good-paying jobs would not be considered a challenge to most of these people. Building trades in the area have suffered unemployment as high as 40 percent the last three years – those workers certainly are not complaining.
If the facts were on the Lummis' side, they would want the process completed. If the tribal claims are as they assert, they would want that to come out. If they were confident the project will fail its environmental tests, they would urge a quick and transparent resolution.
But they're not. They're throwing sand in the gears. They're trying to game the system, although all indications are the system is working as planned.
bump for reference
+1
John Stossel had an article about them several years ago, if I am not mistaken.
I guess it’s sort of like the blacks who choose to live in
the black ghettos in the cities instead of coming out to
the sticks, clearing enough trees and building a cabin.
The Indians seem to feel more comfortable on the rez.
Really? So I can claim to be a victim and open a casino while collecting billions in federal aid?
Or do I need the right pigment and check bones?
I only said that if you can make a blanket judgment and say "screw 'em" for something their ancestors did 230 years ago, we can judge you for whatever your ancestors were doing 230 years ago.
Goose, gander.
Fair and square.
You made my point. ALL land currently possessed used to belong to someone else. the reasons for taking it...whether it was 150 years ago or 2000 years ago are varied...whether it be gold...better hunting...or a feeling of manifest destiny.
The point remains: NOBODY is currently sitting on any land that they had from the beginning of time. ALL land used to belong to someone else.
Everyone is guilty of taking land that didn't belong to then...whether they are Cherokee...American...French....British....Italian...Chinese...you name it.
In other words: uncontrolled envy. Anthropology tells us a key evolutionary step a primitive tribe must conquer on the way to civilization is figuring out how to suppress envy. Native Americans will remain primitives until they get a handle on envy.
On the flip side Democrat politicians use envy to get votes. To the extent they succeed Americans get more primitive and less civilized. Humans are only a percentage different than baboons, and only a fraction of that away from turning back into savages. Inflaming envy is playing with explosives.
Wonderful post, reeses! Just shows you that anyone of intelligence who has experienced envy - as all of us has - recognizes its destructive nature.
Perhaps another reason the Indians never developed the wheel no matter how long they were in China and the Americas...
A key point.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
If liberals had a clue that this was in there, they would demand that it be removed.
“...230+ years ago (that would be, your 500+ great, great, great, great, great, great-grands) -—”
Where did you get that? My great grandfather on the paternal side who was a confederate soldier was born 171 years ago. It’s only three generations from him to me. President Tyler was born 225 years ago and according to Snopes two of his GRANDSONS are still alive today unless they have died recently!
http://www.snopes.com/history/american/tylergrandsons.asp
My husband, now 80, tells about a conversation he had with his great aunt when he was a boy.
He was saying that he wished he was an Indian or at least was part Indian.
She told him that there had been an Indian grandmother in the family but not to worry, she was the white folks kind of Indian.
That was enough for him, he was thrilled!
(Make sense. Otherwise, if your great-grandfather is living at 100, with living kids, grands, and a great-grand --- you --- is that just one generation?)
So I guesstimated 230 years at 8 generations, which makes the dads a mean average age of 28 1/2 at the time of begetting.
Ancestor.com.uk (like genealogy sites) considers a generation now to be about 25 years - from the birth of a parent to the birth of a child. The length of a generation in some earlier periods of history they reckon at 20 years when humans mated younger and life expectancies were shorter.
This Townhall dumbass obviously never heard of the 1622 Jamestown Massacre, Prince William’s War, the Fort Mims Massacre, or any of the other routine massacres, kidnappings and rapes along the frontiers from the first days of American settlement.
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