Turtle Mountain tribe greet news of fed payout with mixed feelings
December 8, 2012 at 11:22 pm in Grand Forks Herald
A long-awaited major settlement with the federal government means that checks for $1,000 will arrive soon at homes across Indian Country, including more than 15,000 going to members of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians: a nice Christmas present for some, a significant windfall for others. Continue Reading
Okay … the government took advantage of Native Americans. I get that and I do feel they should be compensated for it. What I don’t get is how they feel this gives them the go ahead to be unproductive. No jobs on the rez … than move. We did it and still do in search of steady income. This guy is pickled and it’s not from sipping on that jar of pickles. Three men living in that house and they can’t clean it up? My grandparents lived in a one room cabin with seven kids. The place was as clean as it could possibly be. There is no excuse for trash all over the place.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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I agreee, the Native Americans were taken advantage of. Get over it and get jobs.
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It’s interesting that so many of you took the description of the house to indicate “dirty Indians.” My first reaction? Men. You get a bunch of guys living together and the crap piles up, no matter what the racial origin. That’s my 2 cents……
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No one said the term you used. You came up with it. It’s inside of you. Don’t blame me for the way you think.
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And … and …. one more thing. I live with six men. They would never live in such filth. Even at the hunting shack, which is used by over twenty men throughout the season, the place is tidy. What is seen in that photo is pure laziness.
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Maybe Jessie can buy a broom with his share of the money. Just because you’re poor doesn’t mean you have to live like a pig.
Poor dog.
I’d love to own a liquor store near the reservation, they’re going to make millions in the next couple months.
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On numerous occasions the Herald has demonstrated its recoginition that the photos it runs have propagandistic power. Whether its a teen crossing near an intimate apparel shop, a 20 year-old pic of a Senate candidate, or this. So what was the purpose with this one? To generate pity or disdain?
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You hit that one on the head. Maybe they should take a look at the article a couple months ago in National Geographic about Pine Ridge. Granted it was a longer piece with many more pictures, but they were able to convey both the poverty side and the people’s pride in combating the situation without doing what they’ve done here…Put on what looks to be aboujt as dismal of a picture as they could find…Is this the Herald…Or one of those rags by the check out at the grocery store that always have the absolute worse shots of people they can find? Looks about the same…
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That is a rhetorical question Gene. Although I have no doubt the editor ran it to cause a sense of compassion, but since this is ND and we don’t do that, it simply causes disdain, as the remarks here show.
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Not sure about the compassion angle. The guy is obviously soused, or at least that would be the first impression. My thinking was you’d get both reactions, depending on one’s political stance:
Liberal: we have to fund government programs to help these people.
Conservative: this is what happens when no personal responsibility is ever expected.
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Agreed. In my professional opinion from what I can see he is displaying many signs of chronic alcoholism. Is he an alcoholic? I have no clue, but my first impression was the same.
Since I have more than a little experience with this, I was immediately turned off and wished they had chosen a more suitable spokesman.
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Promulgating a stereotype that is unfortunately accurate.
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Very poor excuse for not attempting to get a job. Western North Dakota is begging for ‘ANYONE’ with a work ethic to come out there. There are fantastic wages to be made…with or without an education. It is a poor excuse to say a person doesn’t have a car to get there.
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Don’t Indians living on the reservation get monthly government checks? If there are three adults living in the two room shack, I find it difficult to believe that not one of them can work, or afford to have electricity or running water just from a disability/”because you’re Indian”/welfare check. I wonder how much money spent on firewater is consumed in that household? In this day and age, the only reason for living in conditions like he does is because he wants to.
Will these people be required to pay income tax on that money, like those of us who don’t live on the reservation have to?
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So the gist of all these wonderful posts is…ok…So the original invading aliens took the theople who were living here and kept pushing them further and further from their home and into the worst pieces of property left that none of the invading forces wanted (Until they found a reason to want it…Then it was moving time again). Once there they were starved and all but suffered total genocide. Their childern were chastized and even punished for speaking their native toung or for practicing their culture in any way. They were a people basically tossed away with the attitude that if they weren’t seen they’d be forgotten. Yet somehow through all that many in these tibes have fought hard to bring back pride to their people by turning back to their original culture. And although they are trying to find ways to create incomes the gist here is that they should once again just move it down the road and finally finish what our ancestors tried to do so many years ago……Make them disappear as a culture?
In some cases I guess the apples continue to not fall far from the tree.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Glad to see Chuck Haga has more to write about than waddle around on the nickname issue. But, it appears some of the nonsensical nickname supporters are here again, slamming or condemning the very same people they were contending on praising and supporting.
Life on the Reservation can be hard for most. Jobs, as you can find with your research, are not filled with numbers of quantity. Many of these Reservations have some of the highest unemployment in the nation, sometimes I have heard as high as 85%. If some of you would actually do your research on the subject, instead of listening to your cousin or auntie’s version of life on the Reservation, without even being there, would find the life a lot harder for people that actually live there. The U.S. has not been kind to the Native peoples, as history indicates. All over land. You all live on land that belonged to Native peoples and you should be thankful you’re not given your eviction notices to move you back from where your ancestors came.
Have a pleasant journey.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Largest Sioux population in the nation: Pine Ridge Reservation in SD. 80% unemployment, 80% alcoholism/drug addiction, 20% of the babies born on the rez have fetal alcohol syndrome (the national average is less than 1%).
Those are Sioux numbers. They are lower than the numbers the feds publish.
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I did some resaerch on this topic and came up with this:
11 million acres of land was taken from the Indians. The Indians were sent to reservations. The white man and corporations (railroads, etc.) wanted the land.
If the US Gov’t promised them money for their land, then it should have been paid.
The Catholic Church frowns on owning land in the Red River Valley. The Indians were forced to give up their land for a mere 8 cents an acre. The Catholic Church still considers the land in the RRV to be owned by the Indians.
The Indians were given a bad deal all around and have had to live with this injustice for generations.
While I do not think that giving the Indians piles of cash will solve the problem. Giving them opportunities to advance themselves would help wrong some of the injustice.
The Chippewa originally came from Wisconsin. They migrated west to Minnesota and then some of them migrated further west to the Turtle Mountain in North Dakota.
If someone took your family farm, even several generations ago, without just cause, you would be screaming injustice. The plight of the Indians is this: they were herded off their land unto reservations, which in some cases, is the worst land around.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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You are describing what has gone on for millenia. More powerful militaries conquer weaker ones and take over, either killing or enslaving the conquered. The rules of the game applied to the situation with the Indians in North and South America. It’s fine to look back and say tut-tut, and express opprobium, but that is the way it was.
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The Chippewa pushed the Sioux out of most of their territory in Minnesota. When are they going to give the land back or pay reparations to the Sioux?
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Warring between various tribes went on for centuries over land. Hopi/Navaho, Arapaho/Blackfeet, Sioux/Chippewa, Sioux/Pawnee, Huron/Iriquois…
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Not really for “the land” though. Weren’t all those tribes migratory according to the food supply. Unlike what happened when the Euro decedents took over and forced them on to worse areas.
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Fighting to drive someone out of their territory is “for the land”.
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The point is that in their case the land generally wasn’t a long standing plot as what came later…..Besides…Much of it was akin to long standing fueds regardless of the land or hunting grounds.
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Not really true. Both groups, and I like the Canadian description of “First Nations,” made seasonal rounds. Therefore, both groups were familiar with not only the woodlands but the prairies. When pressure, be it weather or European intrusion, pushed one group out of their seasonal rounds other groups were ready to take advantage of whatever they could, and in areas they were already familiar with.
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The federal government forced my family (and many others) off their homestead land in the 30′s. The land was condemned and taken by the federal government for a wildlife refuge(J Clark Sayler). The first thing the federal government was to burn all of the homes and buildings there at the time. Then they built dikes to hold water on the land. Some of the most productive land in the area is now just a wasteland of sloughs and rushes. This subject is the only thing that I have ever seen my crandmother cry about. Am I upset about what the federal government did to my grandparents and great-grandparents? Yes. Do I think they owe my and my family payments and reperations? No.
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How did they “own” it? The Sioux were nomadic moving from place to place. If I understand what you’re saying, then squatting on a piece of property is viewed as ownership of that property.
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I was once sympathetic to their plight. That is until my husband told me he can’t meet federal requirements to hire enough Natives to work on projects on tribal lands. A few show up and do want a better life and I applaud them for doing so. A couple now work closely with him throughout North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. He would hire more but several don’t want to work. They would rather spend their days drinking and feeling sorry for themselves. After all so many people still feel they got a raw deal and are enablers. They draw the sympathy card and it works on some people. Consider how many immigrants enter this country everyday. Many come from war torn parts of the world. They come searching for a better life with little money in their pockets. They carve out a new life and get on with living. They travel where the jobs are to areas like the Bakken. They don’t plop themselves down with a bottle in their hands and drink all day. Sympathy doesn’t pay the bills. It doesn’t reward you with a decent place to live. How long are we to feel sorry for the Native Americans who have chosen to live in poverty? Should we slash Social Security and Medicare for hard-working Americans and continue to fund programs that allow people to not work? The jobs are there. Often in their own communities. Several don’t want to work. They would rather live on the small amount of money the government gives them every month and food stamps. Cold maybe …. but oh so true.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Maybe there’s another reason people don’t like working for your ol’ man……I’ve had bosses that you couldn’t pay me enough to keep working with
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Wrong. He’s a good man with remarkable patients. If you knew anything about this subject or had friends that work in the trade industry you would already know his company isn’t the only one that has trouble meeting federal requirements when working on tribal lands. It’s not personal.
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I mean if you’re going to make blanket statements like that then one is as good as the other
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Isn’t the term “blanket statement” a racist term when on a topic about Indians?
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I guess this wouldn’t be the right time to mention my girlfriend is president of a tribal college in ND. She has trouble finding enough students to attend classes at a greatly reduced price to justify staying open. Now what? Are you going to say “if she wasn’t such an ‘ol b!tch students would want to go to school there” … I await your response.
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You were posting heresay assessments and apparently want to continue to do so. I’ve had good friends in the past that were native (Lost contact like with most of my friends over the years…Trucking does that). I’ve worked various construction projects in the past and the natives working were generally as capable as anyone else. In fact on a few of the bigger projects that needed iron workers to work the beams several stories high the majority of their crew was native (Ever walk a I-beam four stories in the air? I have and there’s no way I’d do it all day long the way they did). So my response to your heresay is I’ve worked first hand with Native Americans and found them to be very capable
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Hearsay? No. I have had direct experience.
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“He said/ she said” is considered “Hearsay” (Man I can’t spell for crap when I type too fast) That was what your were basing your comments on….Nothing personal that I could see…
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The Indian culture is alive and well on the reservation. Indian women historically did all the work. The men went out hunting but the women did the butchering and all other preparation and day to day chores.
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I guess protecting the tribe with their lives really doesn’t count as work huh? Their training to fight, their learning to track and kill without being discovered wasn’t something they were born with. You want your hunters and protectors to be honing their skills daily because their jobs mean your life….I’ve heard that right wing nonsense about the working women and the laze men in the tribes before. Totally clueless to the reality of tribal life
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Try reading “A Journey from Prince of Wales Fort to the Northern Ocean”, by Samuel Hearne, written in 1795. Samuel Hearne wasn’t a “right winger”. His first two attempts to reach the Coppermine River on the Arctic Ocean failed because his entourage of Northern Indians had no women along to do the work and the men wouldn’t. His third expedition succeeded because they had their beasts of burden, the women, along.
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I see two already don’t like history.
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In Samuel Hearne’s estimation the Northern Indians were the good ones and he wrote quite favorably about them. You should see what he had to say about the Southern Indians
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I am one who does like history. And what I’ve found is that those like the guy you mentioned where not historians in the modern sense. That is they did not take an objective view of what they saw. This is what got us the terms “Middle Ages” and “Gothic Cathedrals”. They made clear what THEY liked and didn’t.
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Actually Samuel Hearne didn’t make judgements of the Indian culture and coresponding practices, other than of the Southern Indians.He just reported it as he saw it for the most part. It is a great source of information on the Northern Indians before their population was decimated by disease. This book is a journal of his three year trek, from 1769 to 1772,starting from what is now Churchill, Manitoba to the mouth of the Coppermine River and back.
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I have not read it, so cannot respond directly. However, journals written by numerous people from Marco Polo, Ibn Hazan, Cortez, et al have always been subjective.
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Samuel Hearne wasn’t on a mission of conquest. He worked for the Hudson Bay Company, out of Fort Prince of Wales, and was on a mission of discovery of possible resources in the unexplored territory.
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When you read any “first person” view of history, you need to know who that “first person” was, why he was recording what he wrote, and who paid him. Any or all of the answers to those questions color his remarks. They don’t negate them, but require that those remarks be put into a proper historical context.
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Your point really doesn’t change anything. The works loads were divided. The warriors hunted and protected and the women processed the food and hides as well as many other functions for the camp. They weren’t going to become servants just to please someone outside their culture. It’s that mind set that the males were just lazy so they wouldn’t work that’s so totally misguided. Think about it. Before the Europeans brought horses that eventually fell into the hands of natives they did everything on foot. They had to track, kill, dress, and then hike their meat back to camp. They didn’t have a whole lot of time to hang around the camp to make sure everything else got done. The job divisions were a part of their culture for many generations because it made common sense. The way it’s often presented one gets the impression they just kicked back and watched the women do all the work while they just lived the good life. It would be interesting to see how many of those making such claims came from homes with servants who were barely better of than slaves. Servants were’t really considered full citizens so they could be worked to death or basically whatever they wanted.
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You clearly have a romanticized view of the Indian culture. The tribes, even on foot, followed the game they used for food. The fact that the women did the hard work isn’t disputable. The men ate their fill first and the women got what was left. Warfare between tribes wasn’t a daily affair but more an opportunistic one.
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The food wasn’t always plentiful so there was a lot of hunting parties. Look at your towns…You get some game ocassionally wonder in, but generally they stay as far away as possible. The same would be true of a tribe. Animals would sense they should stay away.
As for battles. I know they didn’t war all the time, and I know that when young they learned by mock fights and such, but I really don’t know if they did any actual training for battle conditions once they got older. However; It is thought that Native Americans might be direct decendants of the Mongals of Russia. The Mongals did indeed have a very interesting way to train their young to prove they were ready to be warriors. They’d send out riders to circle an area that had really big game like tigers and bear. They’d make a bunch of noise to drive all the animales to the center. In the center would be young boys 10 to 12 years old or so. they were equipt with only knives and spears. They had to work together to kill a big bear or tiger or they’d be killed because none of the warriors could come in and use their bows. Talk about a school of hard knocks huh? No do overs on that one….
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One last cool thing about the Mongols……They learned to ride about the same time they learned to walk. Part of their training was to lear to feel that brief second when a horse at a gallop has all four legs off the ground. That was what made them the most feard archers on horse back because in that brief second they could shoot true without being shook up from the stride……Has nothing to do with the article, but is just so damn cool that someone figured something like that out all those years ago…
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As we discussed numerous times during the FS fiasco, the reservation system was set up because America could not decide what to do with the indigenous population. Some people wanted to just kill them all while others voted for forced assimilation.
Congress was not able to decide between the two choices, and since the number of Native Americans had been steadily decreasing since Columbus’ arrival, they chose a third option: out of sight out of mind and let them slowly die out.
The trouble is they did not cooperate. They refused to die.
The reservations are simply slow burning genocide. We could not bring ourselves as a country to simply murder them, so we voted instead to kill them slowly, one disease at a time.
If anyone truly cared about the plight of Native Americans, they would demand the government give up the sham of sovereignty (what a joke), deed the land (including water and mineral rights) to the tribes – subject to normal federal, state, and local laws, and get out of the Indian business all together.
That is the only way Indian culture will survive into the 22 century.
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Too late, FN. You don’t treat generations of a people like children, deprive them of responsibilty for their own decisions, foster a sense of victimhood and entitlement, and then hand over “rights.” The enormous corruption already on reservations would assure that the usual few would benefit.
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I agree to a point. The amount of “found dead” stories would be astronomical the first few years. Yet, unless you want the patient to die, you have to stop the bleeding. Right now the patient is bleeding to death and the only reason they haven’t already died is they are too stubborn.
I do not know the correct answer, but simply maintaining the status quo is no longer feasible: financially or ethically.
Sometimes you have to lose a leg to save a life.
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Grand Forks Herald, it is a sad representation of what you are about when you allow the kinds of comments (above) that target a group of people, yet don’t allow comments to a recent article talking about the possibility of yet another raise for Mr. Pete Haga. See: http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/251425/publisher_id/40/ . Or, does that article have a ‘thinness’ of skin issue….vs. color? Some of the comments above are nothing less than shameful.
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Sugar coat the truth to please a few touchy people or allow an open format to discuss the real issue…I go with the honest approach. You’re just angry because you can’t gripe about Mr. Haga.
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Far be it for me to take you away from your self-centered approach to honesty by asking you to read the following. So, I won’t ask. Go back to your newspaper, Mr. Wilson.
http://unsr.jamesanaya.org/docs/countries/2012-report-usa-a-hrc-21-47-add1_en.pdf
P.S. I guess you didn’t notice that I was griping about the potential of another raise for the already overpaid city position occupied by Mr. Haga. So, yes, I CAN.
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After studying Genghis Khan and the Mongols I can’t help but wonder what America would look like today if the Native Americans had their own Khan who brought tribes together (Through defeating them). The Europeans would still have came with advanced technology….Especially the horse which was the biggest part of the Khan’s ability to build an empire. But their Khan would have taken towns and aquired their technologies and those who knew how to use them and reproduce them just as Khan did. Once the Khan had gun powder from the Chinese he was virtually unstoppable until decendants finally had little or none of the wisdom of the original Khan.
I think that they would have at least held the Midwest and possibly the west coast from the mixed Europeans coming from the east coast, the French from the north, and the Spanish from the south. Quite possibly today the idea of an “Illeagle Alien” would be someone sneaking on to Native Terrority to poach….
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