Challenging Indian Land Trusts

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• Reader Comments (8)

  Page 1 of 1 pages

  Giving the money to individuals would only create more pain and suffering. The last thing that helps people is gobs of free money (but this would be good for the liquor industry and perhaps the addition recovery business eventually).

  It would be much better to somehow invest this windfall money into some sort of social infrastructure. Build schools, wells, etc and teach the people how to become gainfully employed and self sufficient. But even that seems to be unlikely.

  At least they are not lobbing missiles into our lands and trying to drive us into the sea.

  Posted by wolf on Feb 18, 2008 at 1:18 PM

  Wolf, Perhaps you missed the point of the article.  The money belongs to the INDIVIDUAL Indians!  It’s money generated from THEIR lands.

  By the way, how is it free money?  The whole point of the lawsuit is that the money belongs to the Indians.

  Posted by Lakotaidaho on Feb 19, 2008 at 9:38 AM

  I totally agree with the Cobell case.  But hasn’t anyone figured out how the government intends to pay the litigation.  Bush has done away with basically all of the funds intended for education, health, etc for native americans.

  Posted by peggy whitford on Feb 19, 2008 at 2:55 PM

  This wolf, doesn’t understand because (he,she) is not native, so I wouldn’t wast time trying to explain because in the end (he,she) still wouldn’t understant. They just don’t relize how missed up the gove. is.
  All anyone has to do is look at this conflick going on over seas, besides the Bush croonies are going to make sure that the gove. don’t have to pay, I mean just look at when he got into office, the first group of people he attact was the Natives, by cutting off all of the program we had. I believe he’s still cutting program. They abuse the money owned to us by spending anyway seem fit, not keeping it for us like they should have.

  Posted by corey on Feb 19, 2008 at 3:48 PM

  “At least they are not lobbing missiles into our lands and trying to drive us into the sea.”

  But they would be justified in doing so. Yes, Wolf?

  Posted by Jiminy Cricket on Feb 19, 2008 at 9:31 PM

  Lakotaidaho - i agree with you in the sense that some of the money discussed “belongs” to individuals. It is “free” in the sense that any inheritance is free - it is due to an accident of birth. That said, just as lottery winners often destroy their own lives, large windfalls of such money given to individuals typically destroy lives rather than help (made even worse when coupled with addiction tendencies).

  Jimmy - From what i read here, many ITT readers would think that they would indeed be justified (well, unless it affected them directly, naturally). After all, we stole their lands and destroyed their way of life (note this includes Canada as well as the US, of course). Yet if this were to happen, it would only make things much worse for the natives and somewhat worse for the “newcomers”. A lose-lose deal.

  Of course, we all have slaves and slavemasters in our ancestry. We are all descended from victims and victimizers - the real trick is how to break the cycle once and for all.

  Posted by wolf on Feb 20, 2008 at 9:04 AM

  Conversation among non-native Americans who indulge in debate regarding the obvious and very evident miscarriage of justice that has been the Department of Interior’s Indian land-trust business for far too long seems usually to center on a presumption of entitlement as intepreted and defined by non-native Americans. In its simplest and most incontrovertible summation, the matter is essentially that of empowered theft against which protection is a carefully structured impossibility. Doubtless, our federal government will not produce a full accounting of trust losses attributable to the institutionally consecrated paternalism of zoo-ing native Americans and exhibited them in cages of poverty and desperation. Those of us deeply outraged by our considerable reading of the record of U.S. treatment of native Americans are now hoping that the vast profits earned by native casino operations might come to bear influence for federal actions to make amends for and permanently disallow the land-trust fraud to continue. Anyone who does not accept that our nation’s greatest evils have been treatment of this land’s native people and importation of Africans as slaves cannot be expected to fully grasp the urgency that should be given to rectifying the continued scandal of inept, felonious and racist native land-trust purview by Interior. The time has come to put Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton on the spot regarding this matter. They need to meet with Dusty Bull. Where is the William Kunstler of our time?

  Posted by Bud Wizer on Feb 22, 2008 at 3:32 PM

  It is wrong for anyone to look at race or sterotypes before making a decision on an issue because the decision then becomes bias. It is true that pain and suffering is wide spread on the reservations. How indians spend the money isn’t the issue the issue is that the government took gobs of free money from Indian people and need to give back this gob of stolen money which was paid to indians and not the government.

  Posted by real deal on Feb 23, 2008 at 2:16 PM

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