Chapter 5 Featured Submissions

“I believe that this [Editor: a case in which the IRS foreclosed on a parcel of land owned by an Indian tribe and then sold the land to settle the tax purported owed – read more within this chapter] is wrong and that the situation has been covered up or settled real fast to avoid answering questions that need to be addressed in our government to government relationships.

My belief is that the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe should not have to pay any debt that it owes and that the land should not have been taken away, to where they have to buy it back. This is crazy.”

-P.B.

“Europeans…took away land from people who had no concept of ownership; people who believed a word or commitment was a bond, not to be broken. Europeans did not have to honor their word or bond with ‘heathens/pagans.’ Neither did the government under the banner of manifest destiny have to obey their own treaties when it was later discovered the land ‘given’ back to its native inhabitants contained natural resources that were deemed to be of value.”

-M.S., Illinois

“In a spirit of adding to your point rather than contradicting it, I’d suggest that the recent financial meltdown is not retribution for the rip-off of indigenous resources, but a perpetuation of the exact same system.

The “settler narrative” that gives so many Americans a sense of national identity suggests that indigenous resources were taken for the benefit of the “little guy,” the pioneer.

But pioneers didn’t buy land from Indians, they bought if from Oliver Phelps who purchased 6 million acres of New York, and Richard Henderson who purchased 20,000,000 acres of Kentucky, the Ohio Company and Scioto Company and many other land speculation corporations.

And what often led Indigenous people to relinquish the title to land was the need to pay off debts to companies that had extended unlimited credit to Indians, companies that knew they would get government bailouts as a reward for driving millions of people from their homes. And that sounds so familiar today.”

-M

“I always hear of abuses in auto financing from border town companies. These are auto dealerships that are located in towns just off the reservation. First off, interest rates on an auto loan for Natives are usually around 18%, talk about abuse. With the conditions on the reservation, you have to have a vehicle to work, so people are forced to take these deals. This means that even if they work, about a third of their income is going to the loan.

(The Dealers) say it’s tied to risk because there is a process to reposses vehicles on a reservation. But, the government is at fault for that; why should the (Indian) consumer have to pay more because of where they live?

-J.S., Arizona