Editorial cartoon by Duane Wilcox: Maybe he put his head in the sand because he was tired of having it up there?
Thirty four years and still counting
By Tim Giago
Editor and Publisher
Native Sun News Two things happened this week that are maddening. First of all the U. S. Census Bureau issued a map of the United States that showed the areas or regions with the highest poverty rate. Those with the more than 40 percent were colored a dark blue and were on Indian reservations, and of course the Indian reservations in South Dakota took the prize. We have been writing about this since the U. S. Census of 1981 that named Shannon County on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation as the poorest county in America. The other counties located on Cheyenne River, Standing Rock, Yankton and Crow Creek followed closely behind and all of them made the top 10 poorest counties in America. What has changed since then? Doesn’t America even give a damn? The second thing that happened that is driving us mad was an announcement by Vice President Joe Biden that he is allocating $50 million dollars to Ukraine. What could the poorest counties in America do with $50 million? And what about the other billions of dollars doled out as “foreign aid” every year? In 1981 we called for a massive Marshall Plan to attack and address the poverty in Indian Country. We did this immediately after the Census Bureau issued its release of the poorest counties in America. As you may recall the Marshall Plan after World War II helped to restore and rebuild Germany, Japan and other nations that were nearly destroyed by the war. It was a plan that worked. Germany and Japan are now two of the richest industrialized nations in the world. The good old United States of America poured billions into rebuilding the nations of our enemies. Nearly every fiscal year the United States allocates $1 billion each to Israel and Egypt. That’s just a drop in the bucket compared to the other U.S. dollars circulating on foreign countries throughout the world that is handed out under the guise of “foreign aid.” Is the United States government so ashamed of its history with its own Native Americans that it is like an ostrich who buries its head in the sand pretending that there are no problems in Indian Country? Yes America, we also were your enemies for a few centuries and through a concoction of disease, war and worthless treaties you nearly destroyed the Indian nations. Now aren’t we worthy of your largesse and shouldn’t we be looked upon as nations you destroyed just as Japan and Germany, nations that need to be saved and rebuilt? You did it for Europe and Asia now do it for America. There should be no guilt associated with this problem. If you broke it fix it; that is the only thing to be considered here and history will recall that America did destroy (break) the Indian nations and it takes more than a Band Aid to fix a punctured artery. When the Indian nations introduced legalized gambling on their respective reservations, it seems that America took a deep breath and said to itself, “Now our Indian problems are solved.” Gaming was good for some, but not so good for others and the same map that was drawn in 1980 listing the poorest counties in America is still the same map that illustrates the poorest counties in America now. Gaming was not the miracle cure America thought it was and there is a great disparity between the wealthy tribes with casinos located in heavily populated areas and tribes located in the middle of nowhere. So let’s look at America as a doctor and then we can say, “Physician heal thyself.” (Tim Giago, Editor and Publisher, can be reached at editor@nsweekly.com) Copyright permission Native Sun News
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