Life on the res
 |
| A three-year-old and her 18-year-old mother sleep on a mattress and subsist on Ramen noodles on the Lower Brule. |
The Argus Leader has a series about growing up on the reservation by reporter Steve Young and photographer Devin Wagner that uses the Internet medium at its best. A fine series marred by allowing comments on it.
3 comments:
Blogger Thad Wasson said...
Read the story about life on the reservation printed in the Argus-Leader. It describes a culture in chaos and children left to Grandma and parents jumping from bed to bed. How did this happen? One answer is the federal government replacing the father with social programs and handouts designed to replace stolen land.
Indian country votes for Democrats 80% of the time. Caring, concerned, social justice loving Democrats. Look at the result.
November 8, 2010 8:28 PM
Delete
I agree that government programs are at the root of the problems on the reservations. It was government programs which:
*instituted a campaign of war and genocide to make the ancestral lands available to white settlers.
*killed off the bison herds to induce a state of starvation and deliberately spread disease and alcohol to subde the Indians.
*violated treaty after treaty agreements on lands.
*created a near-perfect record in breaking the government's word so that no Indian could trust anything promised or said.
*herded the Indians onto those concentration camps we call reservations which were situated on the most desolate and unproductive earth in the country, and then condemned them because they were unsucessful at the white man's version of farming.
*gave cheap leases and land prices to West River settlers who had no better success with land, so we give special breaks on the leases and provide lavish subsidies to make up for their agricultural failures.
*took children away from their parents to boarding schools where they were punished for speaking their native language and tormented just for being Indian.
*constantly accuse the Indians and their sympathizers of creating a broken, welfare society, even though the assistance given was agreed to and spelled out in those broken treaties, which were never honored.
*contend that Indians are a primitive, subhuman species who has no culture, no human rights (until they were given the right to vote) and keep pointing to the reservations as evidence of their subhumanity.
And then along come Democrats and others who think that honoring the word is a good thing, living up the treaties is a good thing, not basing decisions and policies on racism is a good thing, that making reparations is a good thing. These Democrats are so stupid and incompetent.
Now that we have worked up a good case of blame and hatred for the Democrats, we should herd them onto the reservations with those people for whom their hearts bleed. And then we can work out a final solution and be rid of this problem.
President Andrew Jackson started the genocide against the Native Americans. He was a Democrat.
Fast forward to today. How many elected Democrats, be they state or federal office-holders, will return federal land to the Natives?
I do not believe in manifest destiny, and it was wrong to base expansion as the Lord's will.
Post a Comment