joev wrote Yeah, Native Americans in general don't have it that great right now, or really for the last 500 years. But do they really think they'll be better off without the tremendous resources of the United States? Without social programs and road building funds and all the other stuff?
Yeah, we really did good when we came here 500+ years ago and gave them our diseases, claimed their land for our own, killed the buffalo & destroying the plains indian culture, & pushed them into reservations... and them moved them to other reservations when we realized the land they had was valuable to us. Yeah, we sure the fuck made things really supper and fluffy. They should thank us. Sure most people on reservations live in abject poverty, alcoholism and suicide levels are much higher than in the rest of the country, unemployment can be as high as 85% (like on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, my roommate in CO taught there), and they are forced to scrape an existence on government handouts, which keep getting cut. & we haven't even discussed the cultural side. In the first half of the 20th century kids were forbidden to speak their native language, and there's been this slow drizzle away of cultures as the elderly die off. Shit, if this happened to your family, to you, wouldn't you be pissed?
It's interesting to me that this is happening now.
from that AFP article linked earlier:
Withdrawing from the treaties was entirely legal, Means said."This is according to the laws of the United States, specifically article six of the constitution," which states that treaties are the supreme law of the land, he said.
"It is also within the laws on treaties passed at the Vienna Convention and put into effect by the US and the rest of the international community in 1980. We are legally within our rights to be free and independent," said Means.
The Lakota relaunched their journey to freedom in 1974, when they drafted a declaration of continuing independence -- an overt play on the title of the United States' Declaration of Independence from England.
Thirty-three years have elapsed since then because "it takes critical mass to combat colonialism and we wanted to make sure that all our ducks were in a row," Means said.
One duck moved into place in September, when the United Nations adopted a non-binding declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples -- despite opposition from the United States, which said it clashed with its own laws.
"We have 33 treaties with the United States that they have not lived by. They continue to take our land, our water, our children," Phyllis Young, who helped organize the first international conference on indigenous rights in Geneva in 1977, told the news conference.
The US "annexation" of native American land has resulted in once proud tribes such as the Lakota becoming mere "facsimiles of white people," said Means.
Oppression at the hands of the US government has taken its toll on the Lakota, whose men have one of the shortest life expectancies -- less than 44 years -- in the world.
So, if the US uses the military to fight this, they could have the rest of the world crapping all over us. This isn't the 1800's anymore. Besides, bringing in the military against the Lakota now, especially when the US has never honored any treaty we signed with them, and then have us what, kill them? Put them in camps/prisons? Yeah, that would make us even more popular -w- the world.
It will be very interesting to see how this goes down. I just hope we don't do anything stupid.
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