[I_Like_Plants]

You can still bug out to Sturgis, you just have to become a Lakota citizen.

[RedStateGreen]

The balkanization of the US has begun.

[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

Oh man, that is just so cool. I hope they have a legal leg to stand on. This is so righteous!

[Cloud9]

I hear the ghost of Phil Sheridan calling his horse.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Wow, this is heavy stuff. I don't blame them at all. Their lives aren't too good and the men don't live very long. This is in the news and I'm sure there are millions of Americans who feel exactly as I do. It's blowing in the wind folks. I know because every time I mention peak oil in public, people clue me in that they know too. Nevermind the media, the public is catching on.

[Plantagenet]

Can't these guys get jobs parking cars or making change for the slot machines or doing something useful at the reservation casinos?

[Zardoz]

A shameful history:

U.S. Department of State: Indian Treaties and the Removal Act of 1830

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')ongress chose to disregard Indian treaty guarantees when it passed the Indian Removal Act, a bill engineered by President Andrew Jackson. Despite its language suggesting a voluntary and fair "exchange" of lands, the act opened the door for the militias of trans-Appalachian and southern states to simply drive the Indians across the Mississippi by force...

...Whether the system of Indian treaties were ever meant to work is a matter of debate, but in reality, most Indian treaties were broken.

[highlander]

It seems like it was "in the constitution" for states to break away from the union if they chose. We all know how well that went. Means should know better. He is just giving the feds license to come in and do what they are best at doing.
What will the tribe do if they send the national guard, or the 82nd?

[crossthread]

Lakota Indians facts:

Can you imagine that in the United States of America:

There is a group of people who have the shortest life expectancy of any group in the Western Hemisphere, outside of Haiti?
Families, children and elders go without food on a regular basis?
Families are often without heat during sub-zero temperatures?
People are without employment opportunities or adequate medical facilities?
That is the plight of Lakota People living on reservations in South Dakota.

Life Expectancy is 48 years for men and 52 years for women.
Unemployment is estimated to be 87%
90% live below the Federal poverty level.
The teenage suicide rate is 3 1/2 times higher than the national average.
Infant mortality is five times higher than the national average
Diabetes, heart disease, cancer and malnutrition are epidemic.
credits-> http://nativeprogress.org/content/view/35/39/

[PenultimateManStanding]

I used to be a right-wing Conservative Republican. But it dawned on on me, what are we conserving? There is movement in Conservative ranks. It's going to be clear to everyone in 2008 that we are in danger. Big danger. Liberal and Conservative is about to mean nothing.

[DomusAlbion]

And few people noticed and even fewer cared.

This will go no where except to perhaps another burying of someone’s heart at some place named after a wounded body part.

[I_Like_Plants]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'I') used to be a right-wing Conservative Republican. But it dawned on on me, what are we conserving? There is movement in Conservative ranks. It's going to be clear to everyone in 2008 that we are in danger. Big danger. Liberal and Conservative is about to mean nothing.

[Loki]

This is just a handful of activists making a statement. The Lakota Nation has not abrogated their treaties with the US.

[Denny]

I have seen so many Indian bands in Canada declare their "sovereignty". Their next move is to complain about their living conditions to elicit more tax money for schools, health care and public works - sanitation and water and roads. It seesm the U.S. Indians are getting on the same bandwagon.

Seems if you are autonomous, you have to take care of youselves.

I'd like to know, if the governments did a P&L statment with the Indian bands what it would show. Put taxes collected on the left side, and, on the right hand side, money paid toward Indians for all kinds of services, most of which did not exist at the time of their treaties being signed. I'd love to know the "net".

I bet every Indian in North America is subsidized by the rest of society to the tune of likely the thousand dollars a head.

It doesn't matter if we give what they are asking today. Tomorrow they will demand even more. The day will come when the rest of us give them sovereignty, but th real thing, no more money along with it.

[I_Like_Plants]

Of course the poorest whites, on Welfare etc are still living much longer, going much less hungry, etc etc on down the line, than the Lakota.

I think the Lakota have a legitamate gripe.

Of course they could just take on white names, Smith and Jones and all that, disperse into white society, take on the white way of life utterly and fully, and then their stats would improve, but that would be exactly what white society intended in the first place - what Indians weren't killed off, had their kids taken away and put in schools and forced to forget Indian ways.

So they're not going to cave in and do that - they're going to fight.

I wish them well.

[kabu]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Denny', '
')I'd like to know, if the governments did a P&L statment with the Indian bands what it would show. Put taxes collected on the left side, and, on the right hand side, money paid toward Indians for all kinds of services, most of which did not exist at the time of their treaties being signed. I'd love to know the "net".

[shakespear1]

Many Moons ago PBS channel had a week long series of documentaries on the American Indian History. Each day a different group of tribes.

To this day for me that was a cathartic experience due to the fact that what was presented was diametrically opposite to what I was taught in school and "shown" in numerous films.

Most people have no clue how badly the Indians were ripped off and I suspect that most think it was all done in a nearly honest way.

This is a very sad sad history indeed.

[NeoLotus]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Denny', '
')I bet every Indian in North America is subsidized by the rest of society to the tune of likely the thousand dollars a head.

It doesn't matter if we give what they are asking today. Tomorrow they will demand even more. The day will come when the rest of us give them sovereignty, but the real thing, no more money along with it.

[setag]

Applauds what NeoLutus says and further more I hope they pull this off!

[SpringCreekFarm]

I was afraid if I read this thread it would piss me off. And it has.

Funny how true colours of some people come out when you put this before them.

Ferretlover, if you really think that about Natives, what you wrote then you are just an asshole. Get an education.

Denny, it doesn't surprise me that you'd feel that way about Natives because your stinking so-called Christians gave a grand colonial attempt at assimilation and the stealing of Native lands and is clearly written in the history books. Fuck you both.

I'm a proud Native person living on a reservation in Ontario. My family is decendent of Joseph Brant and in fact Spring Creek Farm ( my naming ) was built by the grandson of Joseph Brant and 5 generations later we're still here.

If anyone thinks the Jews had a bad go with attempted genocide, you folks need to look at what the Natives of North America have gone through over the past 500 years.

For anyone to think that the Natives have some kind of free ride on the coat tails of others are just plain uneducated in my mind.

We can't get mortgages here on the reservation so we have to build things a piece at a time and so that is why reservations kind of look like third world countries.

The Natives of Canada were not able to legally hire the services of a Lawyer, vote or buy booze until 1960!!!!

Now that native groups are finally getting strength and fighting for their rights and trying to get their stolen lands back, fucktards like Denny and Ferret try to make like there is some hidden conspiracy to screw over the poor non-Natives.

To all those who wrote sane, kind words, thank you.

Edited: To remove ( some ) profanity. Sorry.