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I guess I don’t express myself well as you don’t have any idea what I’m about. I agree with you on most of what you say except you think the Indians got themselves into this mess when it was put on them by people like you. Now you think, why in the hell don’t they get themselves out. Not so easy as you make it sound. I and most of my family got off the Rez many years ago, got jobs and own things now. We got a taste of free enterprise. Still more hang around the Rez getting handouts which hold them back from doing it on their own. That situation was hung around their necks like a millstone and it’s not that easy to walk away from. Just like you when you get to the age of drawing Social Security. You don’t have to take it but I bet you will. So will Bill Gates and Tiger Woods, why, because it was promised to you.

We may be in closer agreement than you think. There is no doubt that mistakes were made by my ancestors, but there were mistakes made by yours’ as well,

As a result, we have the Indian Reservation system in place, and few observers could say that it turned out to be a good idea for the Indians.

It definitely has relegated Indians to second class citizenship, and I don’t disagree with you at all that it’s hard for them to break out of there.

It’s created a cycle of dependency and despair. I would HATE to have been born an Indian on a reservation. The chances of me getting to where I am today are fairly small.

What I have a problem with is the Indians who defend the very situation that keeps most of their people in a hopeless situation. I’m glad we didn’t set up up black territories for our former slaves. They at least have more opportunity than today’s Indians.

The Social Security analogy doesn’t work for me. First of all, I’ve paid hundreds of thousands of dollars into the system, and am not claiming any of it based on what race I am or who mistreated my forefathers.

That’s a separate issue in my mind.

Ameria has always been a great melting pot of various cultures, and I don’t think the policy of keeping Indians apart from that has served them well. It may have been born of honest intentions and mishandled ever since. I won’t deny that.

But it hasn’t worked and only the Indian elite will deny that.

I’m all in favor of giving the Indians special assistance to leave the reservations. But I think the time for the reservations has passed and it’s time to bring the Indians into modern American society.

Means said anyone could live in the Lakota Nation, tax free, as long as they renounced their U.S. citizenship.

Means’ group is based in Porcupine on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

It is not an agency or branch of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. Means ran unsuccessfully for president of the tribe in 2006.

http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2007/12/20/news/local/doc476a99630633e335271152.txt