UN official: US must return control of sacred lands to Native Americans

[Tonitrus]

I'd smash thier puny tribal governments, steal the good looking women and sell the land to oil companies.

Where is Steven Seagal when we need him. 

[Ed Anger]

Eating the endless pancakes at Denny's.

[Neil]

If my avatar took over my posts, I'd alternate between being sad at the state that the Republican Party has fallen to and being the greatest success story in the history of US politics.

[CountDeMoney]

If my avatar took over my posts, I'd alternate between being sad at the state that the Republican Party has fallen to and being the greatest success story in the history of US politics.

Your avatar would wonder why the fuck he's looking at them from the wrong side of the border.  Furriner.

[katmai]

Eating the endless pancakes at Denny's.

Do they have Denny is eastern europe or where ever the fuck he's making all these direct to DVD movies.

[Tonitrus]

Eating the endless pancakes at Denny's.

Do they have Denny is eastern europe or where ever the fuck he's making all these direct to DVD movies.

I thought he was riding around with Sheriff Joe Arpaio and running over puppies with armored vehicles.

[Barrister]

I'm not sure I agree that drug abuse, domestic violence and teen suicide can be linked to "contentment with oneself".

If someone commits suicide, isn't that a pretty good clue they are not "content"?

Suicide is not usually a sign of high self-esteem and contentment, is it?

Similarly with other self-destuctive behaviour. Smoking the occasional joint as a teen is one thing. Sniffing gas until you get brain damage is quite another.

But I very much doubt that they are committing suicide or sniffing glue because they are not "content".  Or, it is not the lack of contentedness that is the root cause of the suicide.

It's probably more to do with the fact that your dad beats your mom and gets drunk every night, you have no education because nobody every made you go to school, because three of your friends have committed suicide in the last year.

[Malthus]

But I very much doubt that they are committing suicide or sniffing glue because they are not "content".  Or, it is not the lack of contentedness that is the root cause of the suicide.

It's probably more to do with the fact that your dad beats your mom and gets drunk every night, you have no education because nobody every made you go to school, because three of your friends have committed suicide in the last year.

You are looking down the chain of causation. The question you haven't asked is *why* there is nothing for dad to do, other than get drunk and beat on mom, *why* no-one is educating the kid, *why* other kids are committing suicide.

Perhaps part of the issue is that the family is stuck in what amounts to an isolated rural ghetto with no meaningful way of life to follow?

[Malthus]

I think that saying that the system is dysfunctional is all well and good. I'm not particularly invested in the word, and would rather identify specific problems and their possible solution (though there is of course value in placing those problems in a larger framework).

That, however, is very different from saying that Native culture is broken, that it's practices confer no self-respect and they are divorced from actual life.

So what you are objecting to is not the analysis of the reality, but the form of words used to describe it.

How does one attempt to artificially prevent assimilation?

By creating a system of laws and policies (with the best will in the world no doubt) that creates a legal distinction based on "race", and provides financial incentives for those of the favoured "race" to remain on isolated reservations and not to intermarry with those who are not?

My opinion is that there is not one "Native problem" but a variety of problems. It is also my opinion that any attempt at a solution that starts with "if the Natives were only better assimilated" is bound to fail.

I think any attempt at fixing the problems facing the problems faced by Natives need to primarily address the concerns identified by the Natives themselves. I'm pretty sure that "our cultures are busted, we should just assimilate," is quite low on the list of such concerns.

Well of course, we are back to your form of words again.

Yes, if you put it like that, no-one on earth is going to say "my culture is disfunctional". Given a chance, they, being human beings, are going to see that as insulting and patronizing - particularly comming from the majority culture, right?

Your mistake is mixing up an objective analysis of the problem with the impossibility of imposing a solution from outside. It may surprise you to know I quite agree that imposing solutions from outside is not going to work ... but of course, what we have now is not working, either. 

From where I sit, Native culture is pretty vibrant, but different bands and nations are facing a number of problems of varying severity.

I do believe band governance is an issue in many cases, but any solutions that relies on paternalistic interference is fraught with difficulty. Obviously, poverty and alcoholism are significant issues for many bands. I'm sure there are others as well. As CC pointed out earlier, I think land and treaty rights are issues that underpin a lot of these problems as well.

Ultimately, I think that to successfully address the problems it requires a lot of hard work, intelligent funding and sensitivity. Most importantly, however, it requires specific solutions tailored to the specific bands and their problems; the Uchucklesaht First Nation in BC may have different priorities than the Pictou Landing First Nation in Nova Scotia. Broad sweeping solutions dreamt up by people with no particular insight into the specifics of the problems and the aspirations of the people affected are not going to make anything less broken.

If there's anything we as non-Natives can do to help it has to do with concrete practical issues like infrastructure, health, the economic viability of reserves, education; that and dealing with them in good faith (starting with the process of settling land claims where applicable). It certainly has nothing to do with trying to fix or assimilate cultures as the starting point.

In other words, do more of what we are already doing, only do it better and with greater goodwill.

I'm not proposing any particular solution - I'm merely pointing out the problem: creating a two-tier system for natives has proved a dismal failure and indeed a disgrace. Proposing more of the same seems to me a simple inability to learn from failure.

[The Minsky Moment]

By creating a system of laws and policies (with the best will in the world no doubt) that creates a legal distinction based on "race", and provides financial incentives for those of the favoured "race" to remain on isolated reservations and not to intermarry with those who are not?

Which policies and laws are these?

[Barrister]

By creating a system of laws and policies (with the best will in the world no doubt) that creates a legal distinction based on "race", and provides financial incentives for those of the favoured "race" to remain on isolated reservations and not to intermarry with those who are not?

There are absolutely no restrictions on intermarriage.  Any children of such a mixed-marriage get Indian status.

There are no financial incentives to live on a reserve, other than the fact the individual band will provide free housing.  But given the quality of said housing many prefer to live off-reserve.

Approximately 50% of native people live off-reserve.

[viper37]

There are absolutely no restrictions on intermarriage.  Any children of such a mixed-marriage get Indian status.

legally, yes.  Socially... some indians will expelle the "whites" from their reservations, those that inter-marry, or those born of mixed marriage.  See the Mohawk reservations near Montreal.

There are no financial incentives to live on a reserve, other than the fact the individual band will provide free housing.  But given the quality of said housing many prefer to live off-reserve.

I believe they don't pay any taxes so long as they live on a reservation, except for special cases like the indian tribe(s?) in northern BC?

[Malthus]

By creating a system of laws and policies (with the best will in the world no doubt) that creates a legal distinction based on "race", and provides financial incentives for those of the favoured "race" to remain on isolated reservations and not to intermarry with those who are not?

Which policies and laws are these?

In Canada, under the Indian Act, people who meet the criteria for indian-ness are considered legally different from non-indians - they have "indian status".

This gives them certain rights.

Prior to 1985 revisions, indian women who married non-indian men automatically lost "status". There is some formula for limited re-admission to "status" for those who have lost rights due to intermarriage in the past.

Bands have rights to determine self-membership, meaning that after 1985, some have chosen to eject persons who have intermarried - so while they may have "status" they are not "band members" and not entitled to certain legal rights.

Having "status"  and/or "band membership" entitles one to a bag of legal and financial entitlements dealing with land ownership, taxes, etc.

Here's a link to the Indian Act:

http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/I-5/

Courts find in spite of 1985 amendments, Indian Act continues to discriminate against women re determining "status":

http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100032433/1100100032434

Effect of amendments - to ensure that "status" declines with intermarriage for men & women equally:

Bill C-31 was passed in response to a formal censure by the United Nations, which decried the old law's practice of discriminating against Indian women: Women lost their status when they married a non-status person. Men did not.

But instead of opening the doors to the non-status partners of aboriginal women – a move that would have hugely increased Ottawa's financial obligations – the amendments ensured that men and women suffered equal losses.

The new law extended Indian status and its accompanying rights, benefits and services – such as tax immunity, health benefits and reserve housing – to just one more generation by creating two classes of "status Indians": the 6(1) Indian who has two status parents, and the 6(2), who was born in a union of a status person with a non-status person. If a 6(2) marries a non-status spouse, their children are deemed to be non-status.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/631974--status-indians-face-threat-of-extinction

I dunno why BB is protesting, far as I know this isn't controversial.

[Barrister]

I believe they don't pay any taxes so long as they live on a reservation, except for special cases like the indian tribe(s?) in northern BC?

Not exactly.  You don't pay taxes on any income earned on a reservation.  It doesn't matter where you live.

You're right that in modern land claims agreements the federal government has been pretty insistent on ending that exception.

[Berkut]

I had a young woman working for me in Tucson. College age.

She told me that her tribe would buy her a house and a truck if she married within the tribe and lived on the reservation.

I don't know what system was in place such that this incentive made financial sense to the tribe, but *something* was in place that created the desire for such an incentive.

I thought even then that whatever system encouraged an authority power to engage in that kind of "incentives" was broken. Both the existence of such perverse incentives, and the disease that must be present such that it takes that kind of incentive to maintain whatever tribal identity they were struggling to sustain via bribery.