Native America, Indian Country, Indigenous

I am a member at the White Earth Reservation of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe.

I grew up on more reservations than anyone I know. I attended 4 high schools in 3 states and lived on Indian Reservations at all times. My father was in Law Enforcement for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

I know Indian Country.

The American Dream does not sneak up on you and hit you over the head with a baseball bat. If not here? Where? If not now? When? If not you? Who?

Success is where opportunity and hard work meet. At 14 I was hauling bales, working in a hot hay field on the Ft. Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. At 15, I hired out to a ranch in Montana while my parents lived on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. My summer job in High school was working on that ranch in Montana. Pay was $200 per month working 6 days a week. My last year it increased to $300 per month. Wow.

Know what? I have worked 55 years of my 70 on this planet. I am a bit tired. You want a good life? Work for it. Strap it on. Forget your skin color. Grow a pair and shut up and work your ass off. Think it is better elsewhere? Then move. Or shut the fuck up.

People who are brought up to believe that work is for suckers and that they are entitled to food and shelter will never move up. This culture of dependence will stunt a child's work ethic for life.

And speaking of children, one quarter of children on Pine Ridge are born with fetal alcohol syndrome, meaning with some degree of brain damage. Stop the cycle. Stop the poverty, the addictions, the suffocating absence of opportunity, and the loss of human capital.

Try this Pine Ridge. How about a communal alcohol-free house for pregnant women and young mothers, with classes?

Get a skill and get your child off to a good start.

Close down the Bureau of Indian Affairs. End the reservation system - it's never brought joy or prosperity to anyone. If Native Americans have to depend on government money for survival, how much dignity and self-respect do they have?

I graduated from a University where today, 27% of the students are of Native American lineage.

I know how business is done in Indian Country therefore I know Indian TIME! I have heard it and seen it all. The kickbacks that tribal leaders wanted, the corruption, fraud and waste at the expense of tribal members who don’t have a clue about the financial dealings of their own tribes let alone the 560 plus other tribes that are not subject to government oversight.

I know people don't want to talk about the real issues in the Native American population.

Fatherhood is the single greatest role a man could play in society. It's an absolute catastrophe that two-thirds to three-quarters of Native children are being raised in a home without a father present, in terms of the social cohesion of the community. People don't want to say that. Fatherhood is the single greatest role a man could play in society.

Today, the big reservation wars are internal -- rape, elder and child abuse, gang violence, alcoholism, obesity, opioids, lack of parental oversight, and vilification of those who understand that the top problem of "Native America" is the lack of in-home fathers.

The permanent victimhood class and the welfare state have created generational welfare, "project housing" to warehouse generations of people who have been told for 50 years that they are powerless and have no hope of ever succeeding on their own. Their family structure has been decimated. Their education has been dumbed down so bad that grammar, spelling, and financial literacy are foreign to them.

The race card has been sold as a substitute for ambition and success. Social programs have been sold as a replacement for a job and education. Government money has been sold as a replacement for a father, and in some cases, the entire family.

Remember I said this. The only person who can make a substantial difference in my life is the person I see in the mirror every day. My decisions affect my outcomes. 

I refuse to beg for some scraps with the illusion that something of significance is being done.

To pay people not to work, incentivize fatherless parenthood, and diminish the importance of the family, and guess what happens? Granted, it happens to the most gullible and least educated first, but it's front and center. Millions of Americans don't have a plan A much less a plan B. Pay check to pay check and zero savings. That doesn't stop them from having cable, $200.00 sneakers, the newest cell phones and the free shit army rolls on!

What are the ties that bind Natives to the reservations? Love of that plot of land they were displaced to? Racial allegiances/prejudices/bigotry? Distrust of those not like themselves? Shared misery? Handouts? Rejection of curiosity, adventure, exploration, or socialization?

If only Robert Gipp from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation were still alive and in politics. For sure, Mr. Gipp was one of the greatest teachers at Oglala Community High School in Pine Ridge, SD.

Robert Gipp always said, more government is the problem, not the solution.

He was a smart man.