Blue Corn Comics -- Stereotype of the Month Entry

Stereotype of the Month Entry
(3/30/05)

Another Stereotype of the Month entry:

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Opinion

Shutting down the Trail of Tears

Eric Wang, Cavalier Daily Opinion Columnist

AMIDST all the attention given to Terri Schiavo, it was easy last week to overlook America's second deadliest school shooting in its history. Jeff Weise, a high-school student on a Minnesota Native American reservation, gunned down nine people, mostly schoolmates, before killing himself.

While the Schiavo story is sad, the case of Jeff Weise is arguably more significant as a reminder of an enormous social problem we often neglect. The issue is not firearms, as some gun control activists will try to make it; Weise wrested his weapons from his grandfather, a police officer. Nor is the issue youth alienation per se. Rather, the Minnesota murders were a case study of the dangers of what The Washington Post, in a news article, called "a long tradition of self-enforced isolation" on Native American reservations.

In our national dialogue about race, much ado is made about the continuing inequalities between whites, blacks and Hispanics. However, the disparities in respect to Native Americans are far greater. According to the Post, the violent crime rate among Native Americans is twice as high as that of blacks, while Native American youths commit suicide at twice the rate of other groups. Native Americans are by far the poorest ethnic group, with half the average income of other Americans; the unemployment rate on Weise's reservation was 40 percent. Native Americans also experience an alcohol fatality rate that is a whopping 670 percent higher than other groups. It was amidst this background of despair that Weise snapped.

Americans cannot help but feel some sense of moral responsibility for this plight. The "Trail of Tears," referring specifically to the 1838 forced relocation of Cherokees, is also a term that applies to all modern Native American history up to this day. Through slaughters and disease, European settlers literally decimated the Native-American population from the millions in the sixteenth century to a few hundred thousand in the early twentieth century.

Nothing we do today, however, can possibly restore Native Americans to their status before colonization. Returning the territory Americans have claimed, beyond that which already has been set aside for reservations, is impossible given the way our country has developed. While paying reparations will ease the immediate poverty, it cannot solve the long-term structural dysfunction on Native American reservations. Even the lucrative gaming industries some tribes have developed are of dubious value; a society cannot gamble its way past its pathologies.

The problem among Native American reservations is an extreme example of a problem that plagues all ethnic enclaves. Amidst a majority culture and society, self-segregated segments cannot succeed. One Native American blasted national politicians' silence in the wake of the Minnesota shootings. "From all over the world, we are getting letters of condolence … but the so-called Great White Father in Washington hasn't said or done a thing," The Washington Post quoted her as saying. But, according to the Post, the Minnesota tribe rejected federal programs, and one tribal member defiantly stated, "We have just not ever been too crazy about white people coming around the reservation."

It is this kind of marginalizing attitude that discourages reservation residents from participating in the national economy and encourages the rest of the nation to ignore them. Under "tribal sovereignty" self-government agreements, the reservations have no stake in the national political system, and vice versa. On the campaign trail last year, when President Bush was asked about the issue, he rambled, "Tribal sovereignty means just that; it's sovereign," before tacitly admitting he didn't have a clue as to what he was talking about.

Native Americans should not be forced to assimilate, as they were in the late nineteenth century. However, assimilation should also not be the dirty word it has become in our Orwellian, multiculturalist, politically correct society. Rather than continue to imprison individuals in the ethnic enclaves of our de facto apartheid, we should embrace assimilation as the way to shut down the trail of tears for individuals of all physical races.

A Native replies
After seeing Wang's column, a correspondent wrote the following:

Dear Robert Schmidt,

This was just typical cheapskate racist garbage...."Problems on Indian reservations? Indians in bad shape? Fault of Whites? Expensive to fix? NO problem...let's just encourage them to assimilate & disappear into the general population...where we won't have to SEE *OR* SOLVE the problem we created".

This is just a wishful look at the old "Vanishing Redman" fantasy, subsumed into the racist "if they assimilate into OUR society as lower class manual laborers & craftsmen, WE will be much happier about the situation" solution for the "Indian problem".

Inner city minorities...and poor rural minorities...don't have things much better. They already TRIED shunting Indians into mainstream society as a means of saving money & getting rid of the "problem"...it was called "Relocation" & was a dismal failure. Added to pre-existing poverty & lack of education, they ADDED the additional problems of poverty WITHOUT a land base (hard to garden or catch wild game in an assimilated "urban setting"), of poverty WITHOUT a tribal/extended family support network (assimilation means the family/cultural ties are weaker, resulting in less of a support network, PLUS you're less likely to be physical near your family & able to use what support exists)...AND the psychological/social problems that crop up when you weaken somebody's sense of identity.

Just LISTEN to this bastard's illogic..."we can't turn back time & *100%* restore our fantasy of what pre-Columbian Native America was like, so INSTEAD we won't do ANYTHING to make amends & should encourage them to voluntarily be culturally & genetically overwhelmed into nonexistence...so that we no longer have an Indian problem".

Sigh...and now it's ASIANS saying garbage like this. I guess THEY really HAVE achieved the American Dream....

Or maybe it's due to an ethnocentric Chinese view towards American Indians? A female Chinese friend of mine from college once told me that they saw American Indians as animals, as subhuman.

Sincerely,

Wade Wofford.

Rob's reply
Another right-winger calls for assimilating and thus terminating Indians in the guise of helping them. Ho-hum.

>> Rather, the Minnesota murders were a case study of the dangers of what The Washington Post, in a news article, called "a long tradition of self-enforced isolation" on Native American reservations. <<

This claim badly misstates what the Post article actually said. The article offered a decent rundown of the problems facing reservations. For instance, in the 27^th paragraph it said:

Compared with other reservations in Minnesota and across the country, Red Lake appears to have had an especially toxic history of violence, drug problems and gang activity.

The comment that Wang pretends is the article's theme actually comes later, way down in the 30^th paragraph:

The tribe's geographic isolation here in the northwest corner of Minnesota has been exacerbated by a long tradition of self-enforced isolation. For more than a century, the tribe has resisted federal programs that would open up the reservation to private land ownership. "We have just not ever been too crazy about white people coming around the reservation," said Lee Cook, a former member of the tribal council.

The article's statement is conditional: self-enforced isolation exacerbates geographic isolation, which is the fundamental problem. More important, it applies only to this tribe, not to all tribes on reservations. Whether intentionally or not, Wang has badly misinterpreted the article to make his point.

By the way, the article's proposed solution, private land ownership, comes out of nowhere and isn't mentioned again. No one involved in Indian affairs—except maybe right-wing nuts like David Yeagley—is suggesting private land ownership as the solution to reservation-based problems.

One wonders how private land ownership is supposed to help. Whether the land is owned communally or individually, by Indians or non-Indians, the problems remain. Living on a geographically isolated reservation ruled by a "self-isolated" tribal government, will people magically find a way to create jobs and spur economic growth? Even though they're as far from paying customers and distribution systems as the Red Lake Indians are now? How?

>> Nothing we do today, however, can possibly restore Native Americans to their status before colonization. Returning the territory Americans have claimed, beyond that which already has been set aside for reservations, is impossible given the way our country has developed. <<

Returning some territory certainly is possible, since it's happened many times in recent history. Returning more land would help restore tribes to their status before colonization. Let's try it first before we claim it's impossible.

>> While paying reparations will ease the immediate poverty, it cannot solve the long-term structural dysfunction on Native American reservations. <<

I don't think Native people are asking for reparations, for the most part.

>> Even the lucrative gaming industries some tribes have developed are of dubious value; a society cannot gamble its way past its pathologies. <<

Money can cure a wealth of social ills. See The Facts About Indian Gaming for the well-documented benefits of this business.

>> The problem among Native American reservations is an extreme example of a problem that plagues all ethnic enclaves. <<

You mean like all the segregated white enclaves across the country that lack significant minorities? How about all those Asian enclaves, Mr. Wang: Chinatown, Koreatown, Little Tokyo, Little Saigon? Yeah, being self-segregated is really preventing Asians from taking the top spots in business, science, and academics.

>> Amidst a majority culture and society, self-segregated segments cannot succeed. <<

I wouldn't exactly call reservations "self-segregated," since federal and state governments forcibly imposed most of their boundaries. Segregated but not self-segregated, perhaps. To remedy this, let's let tribes expand their reservations until they come up squarely against their neighbors' property. (Which they do already, but never mind.) Then the reservations will no longer be isolated; Indians and non-Indians can mix freely in schools, supermarkets, churches, and casinos.

More to the point, reservations aren't sealed off behind fences of barbed wire. The majority of Indians live in cities, not on reservations. They travel back and forth between their city and reservation homes, bringing with them their income, education, and ideas. So Wang's notion that most Indians are isolated and segregated because one reservation is "self-isolated" is flatly wrong.

>> One Native American blasted national politicians' silence in the wake of the Minnesota shootings. "From all over the world, we are getting letters of condolence … but the so-called Great White Father in Washington hasn't said or done a thing," The Washington Post quoted her as saying. But, according to the Post, the Minnesota tribe rejected federal programs, and one tribal member defiantly stated, "We have just not ever been too crazy about white people coming around the reservation." <<

So? The Great White Father, aka President George "I'm on vacation" Bush, didn't say or do anything to offer condolences, but the tribe has rejected federal programs. There's nothing contradictory about these statements. They do nothing to prove the previous claim, that "self-segregation" is the source of Red Lake's problems.

>> It is this kind of marginalizing attitude that discourages reservation residents from participating in the national economy and encourages the rest of the nation to ignore them. <<

So Wang thinks tribes like Red Lake should accept rather than reject federal programs? Funny, that doesn't seem to be the point of his column. If it were the point, it would be moot, since most tribes do accept federal assistance.

Tribes have no stake in politics?!
>> Under "tribal sovereignty" self-government agreements, the reservations have no stake in the national political system, and vice versa. <<

This will be news to all the politicians braying about how tribes have taken over, dominated, or corrupted the political process in Congress and state legislatures. Many people think tribes are too powerful—that they have too much of a stake in the system, not "no stake."

Wang's claim is as silly as saying states have no stake in the national political system because they're soveriegn too. For the reality of tribal sovereignty—how it helped tribes survive and flourish—see The Facts About Tribal Sovereignty.

>> On the campaign trail last year, when President Bush was asked about the issue, he rambled, "Tribal sovereignty means just that; it's sovereign," before tacitly admitting he didn't have a clue as to what he was talking about. <<

That reflects Bush's ignorance, not the tribes' lack of participation in politics.

>> However, assimilation should also not be the dirty word it has become in our Orwellian, multiculturalist, politically correct society. <<

Not to worry. Indians are free to assimilate if they so choose. And our society is only "Orwellian" because conservatives like Bush and Wang have tried to impose secrecy and limit our civil rights.

>> Rather than continue to imprison individuals in the ethnic enclaves of our de facto apartheid, we should embrace assimilation as the way to shut down the trail of tears for individuals of all physical races. <<

True, federal and state governments once hoped to keep Indians on their reservations, but in today's mobile and wired society, that's no longer an issue.

Still waiting for Wang's call to dismantle the Asian enclaves in many American cities. While we're at it, why don't we dismantle all the small towns across America, since their isolation is holding their people back? Let's compel rural residents to move to urban areas, since that's where most of the jobs and opportunities are.

Who says embracing assimilation is the only or best solution? What about alternative solutions? How about enforcing the rule of law, for instance? How about requiring the US government to uphold its treaties and fund federal programs at the necessary levels?

* More opinions *

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