Current Event News item #2 Self-Government

While gambling is one of the major debates going on right now involving Native Americans, there are some other issues that are also central to Native Americans right now. All of the issues in some way are related to having self-government or not. This is because when deciding whether or not to have self-government tribes have to choose if they are economically able to. This ties into the income they get from casinos. Also, "death rates from alcoholism and tuberculosis among Native Americans are at least 650 percent higher than overall U.S. rates" and "Indian youths commit suicide at nearly triple the rate of young people in general" (Katel). Confronting these issues as at the forefront of many tribes agendas and in order to do this they need to have the proper assets, including money to confront these issues. So, some tribes simply are unable to have self-governmnet. According to Michael LaPointe, chief of staff to President Rodney Bordeaux of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe “when you have a lot of poverty and not a lot of economic activity to generate tribal resources to supplement the unfunded mandates, it becomes impossible" (Katel). He believes that tribes struggling with poverty cannot afford to choose self-government. This forces them to rely on the American government to delegate money and organize programs to these tribes, which sometimes is not very effective. It becomes somewhat of catch-22 in my mind as tribes who are struggling with issues such as suicide and alcoholism clearly need to change the form of their programs. However, to do this they need to be able to have self-government which allows them to "receive a single grant for a variety of services" from the U.S. Government (Katel). The issue is that tribes who are struggling with suicide and alcoholism may not be able to afford to self-govern themselves, so they are forced to continue receiving grants on a program by program basis from the U.S. Government which has not seemed to curb the problem. I think that overall self-government is a more succesful approach as tribal leaders can clearly see which programs work and which ones don't. So if the government could give struggling tribes larger single grants and then allow them to self-govern with this money it could be a succesful process. It would also allow tribes to feel more independent rather than having to rely on the U.S. government and have to continue asking for grants. This idea may be more expensive at the beginning for the U.S. government as they would have to give out a lot of money to a lot of tribes, but it would be a more succesful way of solving problems and then in the future the government would not have to give as much money to the Native American tribes. This may be impossible in the current economic climate, and people would be upset that we are giving all this money to the Native Americans, but in reality we have clearly taken more money from them than we have given back. For example, "the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which granted a total of $962 million to Alaska natives born on or before Dec. 18, 1971, in exchange for giving up their claims to millions of acres of land" (Katel). While $962 million seems like a huge amount of money, millions of acres of land filled with oil would be worth multiple billions of dollars, so America still profited from this act. We also stole huge amounts of land from the Native Americans during American expansion and we put them onto the worst and most unusable land that nobody wanted. After all the American Government has stolen from the Native Americans it seems only fair that they repay the Native American tribes in any way that they can.

Katel, P. (2006, April 28). American Indians. CQ Researcher, 16, 361-384. Retrieved February 10, 2010, from CQ Researcher Online, http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/cqresrre2006042800.

Suicide Rates extremely high among Native Americans

Suicide rates amongst Native Americans are abnormally high, so the North Dakota government has tried to curb this pattern. The senator of North Dakota, Senator Dorgan, is trying to take the lead to help lower suicide rates. In order to help try and do this, Senator Dorgan, as well as the rest of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs listened to Cynthia Lindquist-Mala give a speech on how to help reduce Native American suicide. One of the most important parts of reducing the suicide rates is understanding the cause of the large depression in the Indian Reservations. It is rooted deep in the history of the Native Americans and the actions of Americans hundreds of years ago is still impacting the youth of the Native Americans today. The policies that ended up with putting Indians on reservations ended up with “the dismantling of our families and the breakup of the structure of how our families lived and the way we lived” (Lindquist-Mala”). Lindquist-Mala further goes on to say that the “suicide epidemic happening in Indian country is just a manifestation of all its history and reflects our community’s historical oppression… our people are wounded” (Lindquist-Mala). The policies of yesterday are causing the Native Americans of today to commit suicide because they have had all of their culture stripped from them and are unhappy with the way the policies left them to live. What Americans did to the Native Americans, oppressing them, stealing their land, and ruining their cultural traditions is still causing Native Americans today to be depressed. They must hear tales of the glory time for Native Americans and of their once proud culture which is salt in the wounds for them because they live on small reservations and they have not assimilated well to the American society, nor have they been able to keep up with the traditions of the Native American culture. I am now realizing that the whites took away more than just land from the Native Americans. When they physically took away the land, they were metaphorically taking away the connection that Native Americans had with Mother Nature. They took away the culture and traditions of Native Americans. They stripped the Native Americans of everything they wanted in life and caged them in. This has had a deep impact on the individuals of the Native American society and has had a drastic impact on their increasing suicide rates. While this problem has been discovered, it now must be addressed. The speaker requests "that the Federal Government, that Congress appropriate adequate resources for our health, our education of our people" (Lindquist-Mala). The American government is the same government that kicked these people off of the reservations causing all of their problems, so it should be their responsibility to try and fix the issue. While they cannot give back the land, they can try to fix the problem that they created by giving more educational heath programs as well as offer health care to try and lower the suicide rates. Suicide is an issue that must be talked about, but people need to be educated to know how to talk about it. Community support programs would be one way to help people talk about suicide in a productive manner. There are currently models for programs like this, but according to Lindquist-Mala "there needs to be a sustained infusion of resources". Models are nice, but there needs to be action taken. The American government owes at least these efforts to the Native Americans for what they did wrong, and immediate action needs to take place.

Lindquist-Mala, Cynthia. "Youth Suicide Among Native Americans Can Be Reduced with More Federal Help." Current Controversies: Suicide. Ed. Paul Connors. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2007. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale. Deerfield High School. 7 Feb. 2010 .