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Originally Posted by Toro I do not know enough about this history, but all i know is that we are not our forefathers, why should anyone pay for what their father did or didn't do? |
If your Father did wrong, and because of his wrong you have gained, do you not owe something back?
Mind you, I'm not entirely certain I completely agree with this line of reasoning to the degree that some seem inclined to carry it, but I can at least understand it.
The last I knew, the United States Government had entered into 323 treaties with the various tribes of American Indians. It had outright broken 322 of them, and the remaining one (the establishment of Reservations for each of the Indian Nations) has been so bent it might as well be broken. The establishment of the reservation in Oklahoma for the Cherokee Nation and the forced march on the "Trail of Tears" ("Nunna daul Tsuny" in Cherokee) is one of the most brutal elements of American history, rivaled only by the slave trade. (My great-great-grandmother came from Georgia on the Trail of Tears when she was a little girl; her mother and father both died on the march.)
The Bureau of Indian Affairs is supposed to look after the best interests of the American Indians. The best interests of the American Indians would be better served if the bureaucrats in the B.I.A. were all drawn and quartered, burned, and their remains scattered to the winds.
Our goverment, in the guise of 'caring' for the American Indian has, at nearly every turn, either neglected or outright ignored the requests of the tribes for basic necessities. I know people who live not 30 miles from me on Indian land who live in run-down shacks with dirt floors. They get a visit once a year from a B.I.A. representative who promises to do something to improve their conditions, goes back to Washington and promptly forgets about them.
They OWN (by American law) the land that they live on, yet they are not permitted to lease it to someone else to use for farming, mining, or anything else. That has to be done by the B.I.A. because the B.I.A. looks after their interests. About the only thing they CAN do with their own land is sell it to someone else, unless they want to declare the land to be no longer part of the reservation (and therefore no longer Indian) and pay taxes on it.
That is exactly what many of them have done. Many of the members of the Quapaw, Seneca, and Cayuga tribes have sold their land to people for development, for a one-time fee, and now they have nothing.
However, all is not lost. It seems some bright boy found a loophole in the law. The tribes have been banding together to build casinos on their land. Because it is Indian land, it is outside the jurisdiction of U.S. law, and is governed by the laws of the tribes instead. Which means that although Missouri has a law against gambling (except on the Missouri and Mississippi rivers), the tribes can have gambling establishments of their own. Because of the loophole in the law (I don't know all the details), they are able to hire an outside firm to develop the land, build the casino, and the Indians manage it and reap the profits from it. They have been taking these profits and turning them back to helping themselves. Heh. The white man ripped them off. Now they're getting even.
