"The shooting occurred on the Red Lake Indian Reservation. Forty-percent of the reservation's residents are unemployed and living in poverty. Red Lake High School scored second-lowest in the state for 11th-grade math and third-lowest for 10th-grade reading. Three hundred students attend the high school.

What will be ignored is the glaring fact that we have perpetually pushed the original stewards of this land into holes of abject poverty and neglect. We will overlook the fact that these natives at every turn have been uprooted from their symbiosis with Earth and have been forced to live like parasites, sucking their nourishment from casinos that are in turn fed by the lower middle-classes' dreams of relieving their own poverty by some favor from fortune.

We will continue to close our eyes to all those schools and their students who are continually left behind because tax cuts to the parents of those kids who go to better-performing schools are more important, because we are more interested in spending our money on bombs instead of books. Our moral leaders will perhaps raise the issue of our nation's declining values, or about the decay of community, but they will feel no dissonance in their conscience as they drive their luxury cars home to their three-story suburban homes."

Get the Story:
Eric Anthamatten: Another shooting, another chance to ignore problem (The Houston Chronicle 3/25)

Relevant Links:
Red Lake Net News - http://www.rlnn.com
Red Lake Nation - http://www.redlakenation.org
Red Lake High School - http://www.paulbunyan.net/rlschools/hs.htm

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Response continues to tragedy at Red Lake Reservation (3/24)
Yellow Bird: Red Lake community in deep pain (3/24)
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Opinion: Violence not uncommon at Red Lake (3/24)
Column: Has media underplayed Red Lake? (3/24)
Opinion: Media circus won't get to heart of matter (3/24)
Letters: Star Trib readers respond to tragedy (3/24)
Indian Country sends support to community in shock (3/23)
Details emerge on tragedy at Red Lake Reservation (3/23)
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