” ... Start treating them just like all other Americans protected by the U.S. constitution - no better and no worse - and they’ll start improving.”
Yes, if only there wasn’t a law requiring that Indians stay on the reservation ...oh, wait.
The problem is that they are like a child starting out on a bike with training wheels and nobody ever bothers to tell them all the benefits of taking them off, so they spend their entire life just riding a bike with training wheels, never knowing the joy of riding without them.
In a patriarchal (rather than matriarchal) form of government, dad takes the training wheels off and, after a couple of skinned knees, maybe, you are on your own. But there are too many afraid of skinned knees, and here we are...