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Everyone knows they shouldn't drink, with Indians it's completely outta control. Maybe I sound racist now, but I have lived in villages. You can't compare natives to whites; for most part (up here) they were a stone age peoples, 50 years back. They don't think, act, or evaluate the world like we do. We begin going wrong when we judge them on our value system, how we were raised. Their culture is so much different than the dominent American culture, add in the 5 generations it takes for a people to assimilate into dominent culture and you see why it is what it is.

Alcohol has become part of their cultural identity up here and they are dissapearing as a people. Our village won't exist in 50 years. Our govt gives them just enough to keep them dying from booze, and refuses to close white run package stores no matter how much the village leadership begs them to be shut down. Almost like govt sponsered genocide.

One village we taught at had protected their lands for a 1000 years, killed a huge Russian expedition in 1840's to the last man. They controlled lands 150 miles in each direction around their village. When white gold miners moved in turn of century, they got along with indians or were run off, don't matter if America bought a Brooklyn Bridge from Russia, Indians were already here. In 1940's Fed govt tried getting Indians to stay put in one permanent village, rather than moving seasonally all over their lands (hunting fishing, ect). Govt couldn't homestead land with Indians moving around, controlling it. Indians would have just killed any homesteaders that didn't respect their rights, any whites on land did that and got along fine. So feds came in right after WWII and took all their kids off them and sent them 800 miles away to schools down Juneau way. Indians didn't see their kids for 2-3 years, many kids died, and many were sexually abused. In 1947, one father begged govt to get their kids back. Govt told them to build a permanent village, get all his relatives to live there and build log cabin school and they'd become proper Americans and we'll give you your kids back if you keep your mouth shut. Indians believed govt and lost 90% of their land holdings as the feds let whites homestead Indian lands. Before they had permanent village, they controlled their lands by seasonal movements. They actually had it stolen off them as they had no legal where with all, nor could read or write. The native kids today drive 5 miles out of village and see whites building houses on their traditional trail to neighboring village and are outraged. THey say: how did this happen, How did they steal my grandmas land? That white guy just built a house on a sacred place and is trashing it. Ton of pent up anger that just keep getting worse. Only answer is to give it back to Indians or hope they all die out from booze, and that's what is occurring.

Ya know, you can never begin to understand the Indian problem up here unless you've been the only white boy in a village for a year, and that reverse in your face racism does everyone some good. Mostly whites up here look down on Indians, Indians feel it and don't like it. I get along fine with Indians, don't give them money, don't get them booze, and don't drink with them, would share anything else in my house with them as they are good people deep inside. Give you the shirt off their back if they like ya. All you got to do is respect the good parts of their culture, respect them as a human being, and treat them as you would want treated and you won't find better people. Just never begin to judge them from our own enthrocentric perspective.

Our village won't exist in 50 years. Our govt gives them just enough to keep them dying from booze, and refuses to close white run package stores no matter how much the village leadership begs them to be shut down. Almost like govt sponsered genocide.

If not outright sponsored, which I believe to be the case in some areas, it's at the very least government authorized in an indirect manner, by the government looking the other way.

I'll give you all an example of how fair Indians can be treated by the federal government. My mother is a full blooded Choctaw (the level of blood classification is another rant for another day), whose mother and father both were enrolled with the Dawes commission. What the Dawes commission amounted to was to "give" the Choctaws some land and pseudo-citizenship in return for their abandonment of official tribal lands, so that said land could be used by whites. The reason I put the word give in quotes is because the federal government wasn't going to actually allow Indians to prosper from their lands.

These lands were titled to the individual Indians, but kept under federal control through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It is held in a trust, from which each owner must receive authorization from the BIA in order to do anything on their land. My mother's mother, my grandmother, at the end of her life held 120 acres in southeastern Oklahoma. This was passed to her three children, my mother, uncle and an aunt. Since it is in trust, it was not divided, as the BIA goes out of its way to prevent any subdivision.

To touch on that subject for a moment, I've sat in with my mother the few times she attempted to gain some control over her portion of the land; attempting to get it divided, lease negotiations, etc. The BIA officer every time stalled the process sometimes through deception; i.e. lost paperwork, not returning calls, etc. to outright discouragement of the process. The BIA leased the land as my mother and her siblings were not allowed to do so. These leases went to very low bids, at times to friends of BIA workers who found a way to get a great deal. I recall one five year lease, about ten years ago, going to a local cattle rancher for 120 dollars a year - for the full 120 acres. The BIA would approve these leases regardless of my mother's protests.

The five "civilized" tribes have some special rules with the federal government. One of them is the Stigler Act. Back to my mother's land, one of my cousins, who does not hold an interest in the land, was able to secure a small loan with said land as collateral. This was a three thousand dollar loan or so upon which my cousins then proceeded to default. At default, the courts are in the process of taking the land. Now, my mother knew nothing of this loan, she was only notified of the entire process when the courts sent her a letter informing her that her land was being taken. The reason this is possible is that the Stigler Act allows the five "civ" tribes to be treated differently. It treats all heirs to trust lands as one entity, instead of a number of individuals. In effect, one is considered to have the rights of merely a fraction of regular U.S. citizens. Since my mother had two siblings, of which they had passed leaving a total of six heirs, my mother accounted for only 1/7 of a citizen even though she is an individual who held 1/3 of the interest in the land.

Some people think back to a time when black people were only considered as having 3/5ths of the citizenship of white Americans. We have some today who are treated by the federal government as far less than that.

These threads evoke the worst of the stereotype slinging from a few here on FR. Most get upset and angry over casinos, assume we all are on the government dole, that we are all drunks and worship nature as typified by hollywood. It's odd that so many blame the Indians for the reservation system, and state the idea that they should be moved off of them. Yet they obviously hold those same Indians with disdain. Not surprisingly, this is the exact same attitude that the federal government holds today. It keeps in place standards that works to prevent Indians from prospering while publicly stating the opposite.