Replies

It's easy to see why these people are pissed off.

Compare that attitude with the Israeli's who took a hard scrabble piece of land nobody thought was good for anything and turned it into a bountiful agricultural exporter. Do a Google Earth of Israel and notice the green color right up to the borders with her neighbors where the green ends and the squalor begins.

Plenty of other examples, certainly the Nevada desert is far less productive than the Northern Plains but last time I checked, people figured out a way to make the Nevada wasteland productive.

Compare that attitude with the Israeli's who took a hard scrabble piece of land nobody thought was good for anything and turned it into a bountiful agricultural exporter.

That's a bad analogy - the Lakota/Sioux don't have religious and historical ties to the land going back 1000s and 1000s of years that Jews and Christians do to Israel. If you were on the Israel ping list, you'd see that things that might seem minor if they were anywhere else will set people off if they happen in certain parts of Israel, Jerusalem, etc.

I've been hunting and fishing all over North Dakota and Montana, and there are plenty of places that could provide a living (and do). The reservation areas usually suck (the justification being that the Sioux lost).

I will admit that it would be better if some left the reservations and went elsewhere, but I also see why they are trying to hold on to some semblance of culture or at least try and have some sort of identity - if they become 100% assimilated in American society as some here would like, then a people have basically vanished - game over, that's it. It's not like say somebody from Mexico who comes here and assimilates - their society still exists in Mexico. If these people assimilate, the Sioux as a recognizable group of people are gone forever.

I don't think much will come of this, but if somebody wants to get the federal government out of their lives, I'm all for it.