The Native American Thread ("Dang Freeloaders...")

I was at the Horseshoe Casino in Tunica, Mississippi, sitting at a blackjack table with a few others. I got in a conversation with this old trucker-looking guy. After a few minutes, he told me that he regularly drives from Oklahoma to Tunica just to play the tables.

I asked him why he 350 miles out of the way when there were casinos back home. He looked around and muttered underneath his breath, "Indians."

I turned my head and got my chips after the hand. The funny thing is that I could just as easily hear one of my uncles from the area say that they were driving to an Indian casino just to get away from the blacks.

"When was the last time you saw an Indian family having dinner at Red Lobster?"

"The .99 buffet is by the Keno room, paleface."

Xpost: and yeah, that mascot thing! case in point!

I'm tired of, when it comes up, describing my heritage as, "uh... well scandanavian with a sprinkling of western european"

My mother's entire family is Native American and she's from the reservation at Pine Ridge. None of us or anyone in her family has ever benefited greatly by their heritage or been given anything resembling a handout or a free pass in life. We don't know anyone making millions off of casinos. And even if some are, so fucking what? Heaven forbid some indians make some money!

See what I mean? Hyperdefensive! Why the jumpiness?

"Well, it's true that most of the natives were wiped out,
but it was mostly by disease!"

Llike that affects the argument
in any way, it's just an irrelevant deflecting mechanism

but wait, i thought it was apologetic. surely an apology affects the argument.
whatever dude. yeah, I think how Native Americans were treated was perfectly okay and thank you for pointing out the error in my ways on this thread.

Anthony, it is admirable that you have chosen to be self-sufficient.
But it is not akin to turning down a "handout" or "free pass,"
your choice is akin to turning down an inheritance. The "handouts"
are actually partial repayments for stolen property.

What, like Rush or Journey or Styx?

I didn't say anything about turning anything down, I'm saying there aren't as many benefits to being Native American as some people would think. Well, we're Sioux, there is a lot of money that was given to the tribe and is sitting in an account, but the tribe won't accept it because they say they never put the Black Hills up for sale.

I really feel frustrated with these articles. While most of the facts in them are true, I think they don't depict Leech Lake realistically (The whole "lock your doors at the stoplight in Cass Lake" thing is SO MUCH BULLSHIT, and Brenton Headbird was in my junior high school class, he was popular and well-balanced and I have never heard anything to indicate that he walked in front of the car intentionally). What good is telling the entire state unrepresentative horror stories about life on the reservation going to do?

http://stanmed.stanford.edu/2013fall/article9.html

In the emergency room of the Rosebud Indian Health Service Hospital, suicide attempts by drug overdose are seen nearly nightly. Alcohol-related car accident injuries fill many of the small hospital’s beds, competing for space with tuberculosis, pneumonia and liver and kidney failure. Diabetes is common, leading to loss of life and limb.

The physical complications of poverty, joblessness and epidemic rates of alcoholism, diabetes and depression spill over into the wards here at the only hospital on the Rosebud Reservation, which has a population of 13,000 and stretches across 1,970 square miles of South Dakota prairie. Life is short, violence high and health care lacking in Todd County, the second poorest county in the nation.

“There are three ‘spiritual’ paths here: Native Lakota, Christian or alcoholism,” says Rick Emery, a physician assistant here for the past 13 years. He’s hunkered down in command central, a small office in the ER, awaiting the arrival of an assault victim. It’s late March — spring break for the local schools. Drug- and alcohol-related cases are up. The staff morale, down.

“Bath salts, meth, Sudafed, anything that’s cheap,” Emery says. His hair is gray, his kind face weathered. “It’s worse when school’s out, when kids on the reservation have nothing to do. We get young people, 17, 18 years old, coming in with chest pains.” Sometimes they’re drug-induced, sometimes not. The night before, a 16-year-old came in with a severe anxiety attack. The night before that, a 25-year-old male who had hung himself arrived too late to save.

Cursed with some of the highest suicide rates in the country, tribal leaders declared a state of emergency here back in 2007 making headlines in The New York Times. But today, six years later, not much has changed. Across the United States, American Indian and Alaska Native youth ages 15 to 24 are still committing suicide at rates three times the national average of 13 per 100,000 people for their age group, according to the U.S. surgeon general. On the Great Plains, the suicide rate for Native Americans is 10 times the national average. Unemployment hovers at 80 percent, and the life expectancy of 46 years is one year shorter than Haiti’s — 33 shorter than the U.S. average.

village of whitesboro votes to keep emblem of white man choking a native american man

what goes through your head when you cast that vote?

The official emblems of towns and villages generally attract little attention. Often pastoral, they are generally gentle and unassuming. Not so the seal of the Village of Whitesboro, in central New York.

A white man appears to be throttling a Native American man — clearly identified by the feather in his hair — and wrestling him to the ground. The Native American, eyes closed and head cast back, is on the verge of defeat.

Forget microaggression. Critics say the image is aggression.

"critics say the image is aggression"

nice work nytimes

it was just some friendly throttling

that story reads like the bully's version of why he and his nerd victim are actually friends now

that "critics say" construction in news stories is the worst

https://alaskaindigenous.wordpress.com/2017/01/21/federally-recognized-tribes-should-brace-for-possible-termination-policy-under-trump/

Whether we like it or not, Saglutupiaġataq (“the compulsive liar” in Iñupiatun) is now president of the United States and Republicans control Congress. Federally recognized Alaska Native and American Indian tribes should brace for the worst, including the possibility that Congress may move to terminate federally recognized tribes.

The termination era of 1953 to 1968 involved Congress stripping tribes of their lands and criminal jurisdiction. The policy was thinly disguised as an attempt to lift American Indians and Alaska Natives out of poverty by assimilating them into mainstream society. However the real goal was to privatize and ransack American Indian and Alaska Native lands.

http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Plan-would-bring-majestic-California-condors-back-10883087.php