I logged over 300 miles on a rental car week before last, driving around the Pine Ridge Reservation, meeting with people in various towns. Mostly I avoided the gravel roads. Those being the majority of the roads. You drive for miles on gravel without encountering another car, but when you see one, you see it a couple miles ahead, because dust plumes up and out behind any vehicle.
You drive through low, grass-covered hills, collecting dust on your bumper and spreading it on either side of the road. Crop fields square off the hills in some places; the growing things are dark and light green, short and tall. The only stuff I recognized was sunflowers, their faces all turned in the same direction.
Rarely, there's a house, or a small group of them. Most often, they're trailers. Now, given the poverty on Pine Ridge, you might expect a prevalence of trailers. This might surprise you, though: the people living in trailers might qualify for the mortgage on a "real" house, one with a basement. Except they don't hold title to their own land. The federal government holds a lot of land on the reservation "in trust." Banks can't take the land in foreclosure, so there's no collateral, so there's no loan.
This phrase, "in trust," really gets under my skin. It's the same legal idea as "trust funds." A responsible party looks after the assets of a (legally) incompetent person until the person comes of age or starts taking their meds or dries out in rehab or whatever. Back in the 1880s, the U.S. government declared Indians incompetent and began looking after their assets. So, every time a rancher leased an Indian's land to graze his cattle or an oil company wanted to drill on Indian land, they wrote a check to the U.S., who held the money in trust. Understand this: the money paid (or not paid) by the U.S. to Indians is not welfare; it's money earned by assets that the government acknowledges belong to Indians.
Turns out that the U.S.'s "responsible party," the Department of the Interior, hasn't been very competent itself. Nine years ago, a large group of Indians filed a class action lawsuit against the DOI, claiming that the U.S. government owed them money. But the DOI--more specifically the Bureau of Indian Affairs--can't account for the money they've been "looking after" since the 19th century. Don't know how much they took in. Don't know how much they've paid out. Don't know who they owe.
A Reagan-appointed judge, who's been hearing this case for nearly a decade, recently referred to the DOI's behavior in this case as a warning to
There's so much more that's wrong, but I'll take a break for a while.
For a good story about the lawsuit--both the big picture and individual people's experiences--use this code, MJ9ASW, to access this article in Mother Jones. That magazine has also gathered a collection Lamberth's orders and opinions.
You drive through low, grass-covered hills, collecting dust on your bumper and spreading it on either side of the road. Crop fields square off the hills in some places; the growing things are dark and light green, short and tall. The only stuff I recognized was sunflowers, their faces all turned in the same direction.
Rarely, there's a house, or a small group of them. Most often, they're trailers. Now, given the poverty on Pine Ridge, you might expect a prevalence of trailers. This might surprise you, though: the people living in trailers might qualify for the mortgage on a "real" house, one with a basement. Except they don't hold title to their own land. The federal government holds a lot of land on the reservation "in trust." Banks can't take the land in foreclosure, so there's no collateral, so there's no loan.
This phrase, "in trust," really gets under my skin. It's the same legal idea as "trust funds." A responsible party looks after the assets of a (legally) incompetent person until the person comes of age or starts taking their meds or dries out in rehab or whatever. Back in the 1880s, the U.S. government declared Indians incompetent and began looking after their assets. So, every time a rancher leased an Indian's land to graze his cattle or an oil company wanted to drill on Indian land, they wrote a check to the U.S., who held the money in trust. Understand this: the money paid (or not paid) by the U.S. to Indians is not welfare; it's money earned by assets that the government acknowledges belong to Indians.
Turns out that the U.S.'s "responsible party," the Department of the Interior, hasn't been very competent itself. Nine years ago, a large group of Indians filed a class action lawsuit against the DOI, claiming that the U.S. government owed them money. But the DOI--more specifically the Bureau of Indian Affairs--can't account for the money they've been "looking after" since the 19th century. Don't know how much they took in. Don't know how much they've paid out. Don't know who they owe.
A Reagan-appointed judge, who's been hearing this case for nearly a decade, recently referred to the DOI's behavior in this case as a warning to
...those harboring hope that the stories of murder, dispossession, forced marches, assimilationist policy programs, and other incidents of cultural genocide against the Indians are merely the echoes of a horrible, bigoted government past that has been sanitized by the good deeds of more recent history....Yeah, a federal judge said that. On the record. Last month, the U.S. government tried to get this judge, Royce Lamberth, removed from the case. A DOI lawyer said, “The tone, extensiveness, and persistence of such statements raise serious questions about whether the judge can render justice dispassionately."
There's so much more that's wrong, but I'll take a break for a while.
For a good story about the lawsuit--both the big picture and individual people's experiences--use this code, MJ9ASW, to access this article in Mother Jones. That magazine has also gathered a collection Lamberth's orders and opinions.
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