I'm suffer under no illusions about the Indians. I really don't care about the Indians. But there are just little BS flags that go off in me once in a while. When you read about Lewis and Clark, they want you only to learn about Lewis and Clark, but I guess I pay attention to everything; and their interaction with the Indians was one of those things. I've also driven around this country. Before that though, in the 50s one day when my father took me to a baseball game at the Polo Grounds, my father drove me around Harlem to show me "where the poor people live." Well, when I did that drive around the country, I went to New Mexico. And there I saw Indians living on land "we" "gave" them. The "reservations." No water. Nothing grows. Miles from anything useful. You see their cars and you wonder how they can get to anyplace they might want to go without a breakdown, or three. It's the closest thing we have to third world poverty that I have seen in this country; and all those folks in Harlem ought to be taken out to those reservations in New Mexico so they can see how lucky they are.
ML/NJ
I’ve lived in NM. FWIW, 19 of the 22 NM Indian tribes, the Pueblos, live pretty much where they’ve always lived. I’m not sure how it’s the white man’s fault they chose some truly god awful country to settle down in.
It’s not like they were wealthy and we went there and took away their stuff. By any rational standpoint every Indian tribe has more material things than they ever have. They just haven’t taken advantage of America to increase in wealth as much as the average.
You mention they have broken down cars. I wonder what kind of car Geronimo drove. It was probably a real nice ride.
I’ve always thought it strange that Indians (more often Indian wannabees) obsess about how the white man is destroying traditional ways of life. Well, their traditional ways, like the traditional ways of all other peoples, are based on being absolutely dirt poor.
So you can be poor and stay traditional, sort of, or you can become rich and abandon traditional ways. You just can’t be a rich traditional Indian. Most modern Indians would be appalled at having to live as their ancestors did.
Of course, so would most white or black Americans. It’s just most white people don’t obsess about their traditional ways.
If I, a white guy, lived on a reservation out in the middle of nowhere, I’d be poor too. No jobs. I’ve moved nine times in 34 years back and forth all over this country so I could take advantage of job opportunities. Nobody is preventing the Indians of NM from doing the same.