http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/us/14gan...wanted=1&hp

It's a lot like poor kids in the inner city. No real surprise (most Native Americans are poor).

On reservations.

Anyway, that nitpick aside... damnit. That really sucks.

It tends to remind me of the insider vs. outsider anthropology arguement. Insiders don't like outsiders, but unless insiders train their own anthropologists...? Similary, the economies on the Rezs suck. But unless local individuals get out, get educated, and then come back to help... what is there to do? -_-

What I hadn't heard, and which I'm not fully convinced about, is the article's comment about the Northwest. I'm sure it's an issue of generalization (since the article wasn't focused on that point), but as far as I know many of the tribes are doing pretty ok in the Northwest, because of the casinos. It's giving the youth somewhere decent to work, and they are providing money for the families, to raise the standard of living and so the kids can go to college.

Anyway, I'm probably not making a whole lot of sense at this time of night, so yeah. (This subject just does not make me a happy camper.)

I go with Draco18's comment. Poverty among aboriginals extends into the urban environment, too. I don't know if there is a parallel in the US, but here in Canada there was a concerted effort in the 50's and 60's to force assimilation through residential schools. Kids were basically dragged away from their parents into schools hundreds or thousands of kilometers away, run by churches (mostly Catholic and Anglican). Lots of abuse... verbal, physical, sexual. Lots of denigration of the old culture. The kids were released eventually, not belonging to either culture. Those who lack a sense of belonging are prime fodder for gangs.

Exactly. Reservations are set up so the residents can't follow traditional lifeways, and are physically excluded from the mainstream.

Casino income has helped some communities, the ones that invest and provide channels for individuals to use their money constructively. I have occasion to spend time every year on one reservation in Ontario where life has improved dramatically since casino income has filtered in. One dramatic example is water manangement. This is a real problem on many reserves in Canada, with people sickening and dying from bad water. This reserve has it's own water treatment plant, run by people trained (elsewhere, as AngelisStorm points out) to do so.

There still are problems, though, with the youth finding destructive outlets for their energies. I have no doubt that those problems would be worse if the community were poorer.

Check out Scalped by Vertigo/DC comics. Interesting fictional portrayal of organized crime on the rez. Where there are casinos...

In answer to your question, AngelisStorm, the reservations can continuously press lawsuits against the United States government. The US government is guilty of multiple treaty violations. A recent verdict after a 14-year trial resulted in (I think) $2 billion being awarded to one Native American nation. IIRC, each member of the tribe received $1,000 and the government purchased parcels of unused reservation land for conversion into national parks.

Another tribe recently purchased a New York bank, making it the first wholly Native American-owned banking institution.

But at the end of the day, the reservation residents have to decide for themselves that they want to break the culture and cycle of poverty. Then do something about it.

Just like anybody else. Handing them a check for $1,000 isn't going to help if they have no idea how to manage money, if they run out and blow it on something stupid, or what-have-you. You can throw money at people all you want, if they're content living in poverty, or if enough people around them are (so that there's no momentum to bring about change), it won't do anyone any good.

I gotta say, when your local services and infrastructure is shit, it is really, really hard to pick yourself up by your boot straps. I know from personal experience that it is really hard to educate and improve the wealth of oneself when you are sick all the time.

Reservations are commonly huge sink holes for such basics as clean drinking water, sustainable healthy food production, commercial and industrial gradual long term growth jobs, recreational facilities, and not even allowed to make decisions (and taxes) at a town council level but must defer to the federal government bureaucracy, funding channels and programs determined by the Indian Act (from what I know in Canada). This has a lot to do with how Reservations were based originally on the winter camps of tribes, but in actuality those nations moved about following the resources and trade routes among nations that sustained their economies, like the caribou, various trapping lines, local plants, and marine habitats. And then throw in a generation that experienced the Residential Schools? Did you know there were many children who never even came back from those? The sins of our (fore) fathers indeed.

First Nations Tribes in BC, Canada who have been able to ratify current day treaties are in the implementation stages of setting up their local municipalities and the tax revenues that come with that, are seeing resurgences in their culture among their youth. Really, not surprising, most communities the world over when decisions are made locally for local long term growth that results in upswings in the economy result in cultural renaissance commonly.

Its one of the reasons I hate centralized governments in general and for an example of their bungling I only have to bring up Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) - first the east coast, then the west coast. A sufficiently large enough centralized government is an empire and I hope we all know from history how much fun it is to live on the edge of those.

This whole rant aside, which is close to my heart since my daughter's mother is from Ucluelet First Nation, the problems of Reservations aka ghettos with gangs is not unheard of around here in the more remote (aka rarely visited by the RCMP) communities where all there is to do is drink.

It's a little different on tribal lands in the US. Most have a local council of elders that calls the shots. In fact it can sometimes be a detriment. I used to work in a behavioral health setting with native kids from the Rez (including gang memebers) and there were numerous occasions where the elders would pull kids out of our program before they got the help they needed. Of course we were outsiders and the memory of those cultural assimilation programs pbangarth mentioned is hard to kill.

Aside from the rampant drug addiction and alcoholism (and both kept in plentiful supply), the rocky hills or desert they were given as land, an general refusal of society outside of the reservations to accept them, we have issues with in-fighting councils embezzling money away from where it is needed. It's a pretty dismal situation, and doesn't seem to be improving any. I can understand why people are turning to gangs to have some sort of power.

No one finds this hilarious?

Uh... not really.

Working as an EMT whose coverage area includes a reservation, I've seen both ends of the story. The casino on the reservation is, in fact, providing a lot of people with jobs and funding infrastructure projects that wouldn't have happened otherwise. That does not mean that a lot of the serious socioeconomic issues that existed prior to the casino have simply disappeared. Some of them will take generations to work out.

Hah hah hah, people are dead! You're right, that is funny!

No argument. The poor have to want to be helped and be willing to help themselves. But in every situation of collective poverty, be it urban ghetto, favela or reservation, there are those who benefit from it. Gangs, crooked politicians, outside business interests (ie: check cashing vendors), etc. And like Method mentioned, there's a history of "but it's for your own good" cultural superiority/quasi-racism that needs to be overcome.

I lived on a Navajo rez when I was a kid in the early 70s, and alcohol abuse and all the associated tragedies were very disturbing, nightmarish at that age in truth, but was not hilarious at all. Maybe you find the name Gaylord funny? Yes, Beavis, it is hilarious. hah-hah. hah. hah.

Right. Just so we're clear, I'm not blaming the poor folks on reservations (or elsewhere), themselves. Or, at least, not only them. It's just that not every person that's poor is poor because they lack money -- if that makes sense -- it's because they lack the skills or opportunities to get more money, get it steadily, spend it wisely, etc, etc. A poor person with a thousand bucks in his pocket is just gonna be poor again after he figures out what stupid shit to drop a thousand bucks on, y'know?

Folks living in abject poverty on a reservation don't need a check any more than folks living in abject poverty in the middle of the projects need their checks on the first of every month. They need steady and reliable income, money management skills, and a sliver of hope that tomorrow ain't gonna suck as bad as yesterday.

No.
I believe he said he found, "a founder of the gang named Gaylord, was stabbed to death at 27" to be funny.
A man named Gaylord was a founder of a gang.
That, that right there, is fucking hilarious.

its not education or being poor that gets gangs its a lack of work ethic. I'm from a rural area were most people were quite poor, heck are quite poor. There was no huge amount of violence, no gangs, none of it. why? most have a work ethic of some sort, at least enough to know they are only entitled to what they can make or earn for themselfs instead of steal or be given.

...

These sioux (and other FN) gangs are in places that would be called rural areas as well for the most part and I hope you will notice in the article it says:

Check out the italicized part, this guy who I am guessing has never been anywhere near a inner city ghetto assumes this is what ghetto life must be like, he identifies more with gangsta rap culture than his own. Still sure it is about 'work ethic' when these gangs are not economically driven? Check out the second page of the article and you get this:


This just isn't the same thing as lack of respect for a dollar earned and it is not like making ones dollars from criminal activities is for a lazy person, even when it comes to our fictional Shadowrun. If you are a lazy, inept criminal, probably the best you can hope for is an relatively comfy prison in fictional shows like My Name Is Earl or Trailer Park Boys. And lets not forget the tendency of certain groups of people getting thrown in prisons by judges in the first place contributing to such cultures, shall we? Racism takes all kinds of forms and consequences - perhaps if more people who weren't "white" just got community service rather than time inside in the past, things might be just a tad different in our present, eh?

Exactly.
Thank you!

I would presume Gaylord in spite of, or perhaps because of his name was a mean son of a bitch, unfortunately he found someone who was meaner and better with a knife.

A "check on the first of every month" is in what way different from a steady, reliable income? The rest of what you say is reasonable, but the first item is a very strange thing to include.

(You may have been thinking of the checks to members of the tribe, which are one-time and thus don't count as steady, reliable income, but that's not what you ended up actually saying)

~J

It might have been A Boy Named Sue.

Entitlement. They don't want to get a "real job" because their check comes every month and pays the bills. If they get a real job they have to work for their money and in some cases end up with less.

We are no longer talking about anything resembling Shadowrun.

That (if true) might make it bad societally, but in no way makes it not "a steady, reliable income".

~J

Right, because at best, in Shadowrun, it's a bag of kibble you get every month.

Right. Why run the shadows, when you can just steal cars for a living and make more money.

I really wish I could just embed the picture in the post, it'd be so much funnier. Instead you get to read my witty comment and click the link.

It was the whole sentence -- "steady, reliable income, and this, and this" -- that was the point, not just the first bit.

Someone getting chicken-feed from the government on the first of the month is in that situation for a multitude of reasons, but among them is either an incapacity or unwillingness to do better for themselves. Maybe they were raised on the welfare system, maybe they've been handicapped or disabled by an accident or other injury, maybe they've got other medical/mental issues, maybe they're just plain lazy...but the fact remains that doling them out a check every month isn't fixing them, it's just feeding them. Folks need more than food stamps and government housing, they need ways to get their ass out of that situation -- if it's physically possible for them -- and onto their feet. Some of those opportunities the government can provide, some of those opportunities private businesses can provide, some of those opportunities individuals within the community can provide...but all of them, as a rule, a person has to want in order to take advantage of.

If someone's content sucking on Uncle Sam's hairy-chested teat every month, that's it. They're content, and nothing will ever change their situation because they're comfortable where they are. Not everyone is like that, though, and there are plenty -- in the inner city, poor Appalachia, or on a Sioux rez -- who could do more, be more, know more, and accomplish more -- if their environment allowed for that sort of upward mobility.

The problem is that their community needs to have room for more people to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and someone wants to give their bootstraps a yank at the same time.

In Shadowrun, the problem's a moot point because Fuck The SINless. In today's society, the government makes a big show of supporting the poor because, depending on your level of cynicism and political paranoia, either politicians think it's the right thing to do, or big government likes to spend hard-working taxpayer's money in order to pander to and control the low-class masses (or somewhere in between, take your pick). But that's today's society. In Shadowrun, I imagine you get the occasional corp recruiter showing up in the less dangerous parts of the Barrens (inasmuch as "less dangerous" and "Barrens" can exist in the same sentence) in order to screen people for magical potential and offer them a selfless hand out of the gutter (in exchange for a lifetime of corporate servitude)...but I figure most of the rest of the "help the poor" comes from the pockets of individual charities.

Like the friendly folks at the Universal Brotherhood.

I think you can also make a strong case for securing votes in perpetuity. Generally speaking, no one in a government program will ever vote for a candidate that wants to cut that program...

Right, but my point is that a check at the beginning of each month fulfills the first component of that. You may be able to argue that it discourages the building of money-management skills (I can't persuasively argue against it, but as an anecdote I've historically been more profligate with money I've received in compensation for labor than money that has been given to me by relatives), you might even be able to make a case that it damages the ability to build or maintain that "sliver of hope" you talk about, though I'm not sure how, but those both seem to be claims that are not so obvious as to be able to stand via simple assertion. In the absence of argumentation in support of those claims, it seems strange to dismiss something that fulfills one of the prerequisites you mention.

~J

Of course politicians like to help the lazy by giving them someone elses money; it buys votes. For a similar reason those same politicians dont like capital punishment because it eliminates their constituents, and they don;t like hard long prison because it takes their constituents out of the voting pool. Problem is most people do not realise that TNSTAAFL. Or they do and they then realise that since it is a democracy and they have a vote they can simply vote for free bread and circuses.

Hold up a second here.

You're apparently in a very different country from the US. I say this based on your ability to deliver a line like "[politicians] don't like hard long prison" straight in an otherwise serious-sounding post. I don't know where you're from, but here being called "soft on crime" is something that politicians are so utterly terrified of that they're falling all over themselves to pass mandatory minimum sentences, three strikes laws, harsher sentencing guidelines, additional laws to take a preexisting crime (with laws against it) and separate out specific actions for the purpose of adding another charge and consequently component of the sentence, on and on and on.

I'm not sure precisely what country you're from, but I'd greatly appreciate it if you'd tell me so I can investigate what it takes to get citizenship.

~J

what country am I from? Louisiana, ever been around New Orleans long enough to find out about it beyond the tourism? I assume its about the same as it used to be when I went there reguraly and paid attention alot; I must admit though now that I add up the years it has been a while on the order of 10 years.

Yes I know its not so bad everywhere, but I assume most big cities would be similar to orleans. As far as being tough on crime, I don't consider prison being tough for those obviously pursuing a career in crime. I like hanging justice.

Ah. Louisiana's legal system is based around an entirely different kettle of fish than the rest of the country's.

This happened in Australia too with the Aborigines. We call them the "lost generation".

- J.