Native American Times - America's Largest Independent, Native American News Source
Native American Times - America's Largest Independent, Native American News Source: "After the tornado the white people in Rapid City had a standing joke that went, “Did you hear about the tornado that hit the Pine Ridge Reservation? It did about a million dollars in improvements.”
But the years of dependency upon the federal government did not diminish the cooperative spirit of the Oglala people. Their extreme poverty notwithstanding, they went to work as one to help each other. But this was a reflection of who they are as a people. They are a people who have always cared for those within their community not able to care for themselves. Ask any of them why they worked day and night helping their neighbors and they will simply say, “It is the Lakota way.”
For nearly 100 years a benevolent, but often misguided government, has set itself up as the “trustee’ of the Indian people. Program after program, almost all of them enacted as first time experiments, have been foisted upon the “trusted.” The programs covered everything for schools to hospitals. But is it any wonder that some of the poorest schools in America with the highest dropout rates are to be found on Indian reservations? Isn’t also ironic that the life expectancy of Native Americans is lower than that of many Third World nations?
When the Blackfeet lady Eloise Cobell brought a class action lawsuit against the U. S. Department of the Interior charging that agency with mishandling, misappropriating and concealing the theft of more than a billion dollars in money intended for the use of the Indian people, it stirred hardly a ripple in the rest of America. Why is that?"
But the years of dependency upon the federal government did not diminish the cooperative spirit of the Oglala people. Their extreme poverty notwithstanding, they went to work as one to help each other. But this was a reflection of who they are as a people. They are a people who have always cared for those within their community not able to care for themselves. Ask any of them why they worked day and night helping their neighbors and they will simply say, “It is the Lakota way.”
For nearly 100 years a benevolent, but often misguided government, has set itself up as the “trustee’ of the Indian people. Program after program, almost all of them enacted as first time experiments, have been foisted upon the “trusted.” The programs covered everything for schools to hospitals. But is it any wonder that some of the poorest schools in America with the highest dropout rates are to be found on Indian reservations? Isn’t also ironic that the life expectancy of Native Americans is lower than that of many Third World nations?
When the Blackfeet lady Eloise Cobell brought a class action lawsuit against the U. S. Department of the Interior charging that agency with mishandling, misappropriating and concealing the theft of more than a billion dollars in money intended for the use of the Indian people, it stirred hardly a ripple in the rest of America. Why is that?"
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