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  • Posted by $ 10 years, 5 months ago
    The most inane part of this whole thing is that the tribal people arrived in North America 15,000 years ago, at the end of a glacial period. From that perspective there has been global warming for the tribes for 15,000 years. As they are all still around I'd say they have a pretty good handle on how to survive without the help of BLM.
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  • Posted by Snoogoo 10 years, 5 months ago
    Teaching Native Americans to deal with climate change? I would just tell them to turn the air conditioning up a notch, that should solve the problem.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 10 years, 5 months ago
    Why stop with Native Americans?
    Let's teach Eskimos to re-learn how to build igloos.
    Why stop with humans?
    Let's teach cranes to swallow.
    Wolves to hunt in packs.
    Russians to stop invading other countries.
    (Sorry, Russians are human, not too sure about their leader, though.)
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  • Posted by $ jlc 10 years, 5 months ago
    Virtually all of the land we occupy is conquered land. The early history of the human race is a story of migrations that pushed out the prior inhabitants (whose own migration had pushed out their predecessors) for a tract of land. The Australian abos and the Pacific islanders are the only actual indigenous people I can think of (even the Basques don't qualify, though they are pretty early).

    The American Indians are the descendants of the Clovis people, who displaced earlier populations in the usual fashion: fought, acquired territory, interbred with survivors. Just like we did with the Neanderthal in Europe. My mitochondrial haplotype is U, which is from one of the earliest migrations to Europe. There are three thereafter before you even hit the Neolithic period...and then y'all can track the historical migrations from that point on in history books.

    Are we attempting to find and give the pre-Clovis remnant populations victim payments? Are the Blackfeet trying to recompense the people they virtually exterminated when the took over their land?

    We are wallowing in guilt because we have been taught that we are uniquely evil in this respect. We are not.

    Jan
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  • Posted by scojohnson 10 years, 5 months ago
    I guess I'm a little unclear on this... do they think Native Americans are still out hunting bison on horseback with a bow & arrow?

    Most of the tribes I know are just vacuuming up cash from the floor of their casinos and go to the grocery store, or maybe they own 100 acre ranches with a few plots of farmland or something for themselves.
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    • Posted by $ blarman 10 years, 5 months ago
      None of the tribes is actually poor, they just waste all the money they get. Remember, they are their own sovereign nations: any revenue they generate from casinos, etc. they get to keep tax-free. That's besides the millions they get from the US government every year.
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      • Posted by scojohnson 10 years, 5 months ago
        They don't even do the little stuff, like car registration, they have their own DMV systems, their own insurance requirements (if any), etc. It's a government to government relationship.

        Many close friends of my family are tribal leaders at Leech Lake Chippewa in Minnesota, from the horses mouth, if someone in the tribe is in poverty, they choose to be... they get thousands in supplemental aid each year (each), free medical, free dental, free optical, tribal income from gambling, free education, and free scholarships to any level of higher education they want. The ones that take advantage of those opportunities are -very- well off... the ones that don't, usually choose to drink it down.
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  • Posted by $ Susanne 10 years, 5 months ago
    Does the BLM have legal standing over BIA?

    I hate to say this, but it was *their* land, and it was looted from them. So in the current fashion of our dotgov, the looters are going to tell the residents how to manage their resources. Nothing's changed. Maybe to help defer winter heating costs, they'll distribute free blankets as well...

    And, gee, I wonder why they're getting pushback from the natives...
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  • Posted by $ blarman 10 years, 5 months ago
    I have two friends: one a PI who worked a lot of cases on a nearby reservation and another who is 1/4 Native American (Blackfoot, I think) who left his relatives on the reservation to seek a real life. Here are their perspectives on the current life of the Native American:

    Want to know how they make a living? Many just wait until the road-building contracts come out. They sign up to work on the crews. They have to be taken, but are the laziest people on the crew. After one job, they go back to the reservation to drown themselves in the bottle until next year. Most of them are on reservations that get a huge payout every year from the Federal Government, so each gets an allotment of that payout and that's what they live on. Those reservations with casinos also make a killing off them, similarly distributing their non-taxed earnings to their tribe members. My friend was absolutely disgusted with that lifestyle so he left, went to college, got a degree, got married, has kids, and is leading a productive life. Booze is absolute anathema to him. Yet he gets petitioned by his family to send them money all the time.

    The Reservation-bound Native American is truly one of the most pitiable of souls.
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  • Posted by wiggys 10 years, 5 months ago
    why concentrate comments on the natives, but rather the absolute and I mean ABSOLUTE STUPIDITY shown by people employed by 0 in his administration of the country. treating the natives in this manner further isolates them from the rest of the population of the country. I thought 0 was an idiot now I know longer just think it as he continues to prove to me that he IS an idiot. like a drunk sailor spending money except the sailor is spending his own, not the politicians they spend ours. I would say give the Indians an education so they can join the rest of the country but what school would you send them to that has that ability, NONE. the country is living a bad joke.
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  • Posted by Temlakos 10 years, 5 months ago
    Let's stipulate that some Native Americans would love to go back to living with nature. Don't those BLM desk jockeys think they know how to do that? Weren't they doing it when our ancestors arrived? Who do they think they are, trying to teach those people what they already know?
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    • Posted by TheOldMan 10 years, 5 months ago
      Living with nature is just a faster death sentence. Mother Nature is trying to kill you 24/7. People born in 1900 had an avg life expectancy of 47 years. Today it is about 80 (USA). All of this increase is due to fighting nature, not living with it.
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      • Posted by $ jlc 10 years, 5 months ago
        Yes. This is the truth. And 47 is up from the Roman pleb norm of about 28 years.

        The answer to living well with nature is improved technology.

        Jan
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        • Posted by Temlakos 10 years, 5 months ago
          There's just one thing: to live with technology is to depend on that technology. I wonder whether the BLM know what they're doing--or whether their training would be beneficial. Anyone who can truly subsist away from the "technological network," or "The Grid,": would ipso facto be better able to make revolution, or at least subsist during the worst effects of someone else's revolution.

          Recall that, after John Galt makes his three-hour speech, at least (by my estimate) hundreds of thousands of people decamp from society and build militia-like camps in forested and similar "undeveloped" regions of the country. Regions that the demoralized United States Army do not dare investigate.
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