Controversy?
May. 16th, 2005 12:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mk_tortieI don't know why but I find this strangely inspiring. I don't necessarily agree with the Iraq war etc - though I do believe it's difficult to judge when you don't know the facts. On the other hand, I think there are very few, if any, situations in which war is a good thing, so.... but anyway. The article (about women GIs) made me think a bit - that for those women, who have chosen to fight, chose to join the army and fought prejudice to do so, even today in a society of supposed 'equal gender rights', for those women good things will come from this.
It just made me think, I suppose, and that must be a sign of a good article if nothing else!
Since I'm in a 'social commentary' mood right now, I thought I'd scan over other news headlines. 'John Paul II on Fast Track to Sainthood' is one that makes me laugh, frankly, since one definite thing you need to be a saint is to be dead.... 'fast track', in that light, could be read in an entirely different way!
And finally, we have this - an article on hate crimes against a Paiute reservation. Now what really surprised me was not the hate crimes, which in itself brings up issues of how hardened we are against things like that today. It was the fact that this happened on a reservation. I did the American West at GCSE, I learnt about the creation of the reservations and the rather awful, racist reasons behind their creation, and I've read Bill Bryson where he talks about driving through reservations, but still - I hadn't quite clicked that they still existed. But they do. And.... what a strange, strange life. The Native Americans were for the most part tribes that moved across the whole of the American Plains, and that was how their lifestyle worked. When they were confined to reservations in the 1800s, they were effectively prohibited in their movements, which meant they started dropping like flies - due to conflicts between tribes unused to being squashed together like that, who might have been traditionally enemies, due to epidemics of european diseases such as flu and smallpox against which they had little or no immunity, due to lack of food or rotten food because the agents who were supposed to provide them with food were corrupt... the list goes on. And now I want to find out if it's like that today. Actually will go look....
Gah, found some websites.
* 'An Indian reservation is land reserved for a tribe when it relinquished its other land areas to the U.S. through treaties.' - well, they didn't actually have much choice about it - it was that or get attacked, and it is a fact that every single treaty the US made, the US BROKE. The American Indians kept them. The US broke them.
* I found one book about them with the tagline 'America's Concentration Camps' - but I don't know how biased that is or how fact-based, amd not going to go so far as to buy the book.
* According to wikipedia - 'Some Indian reservations offer a quality of life that's among the poorest to be found in the United States.'
* Pine Ridge Reservation was created as a result of the Fort Laramie treaty - Life on the Reservation: The Pine Ridge Reservation has been designated as one of the poorest areas in the United States. The Reservation has few natural resources and no industry. Many residents travel more than 120 miles to Rapid City for seasonal employment. Tribal and federal governments provide the few jobs that are available on the Reservation: only one Oglala in five has a job. Medical care on the Reservation is inadequate, and many tribal members forego medical attention because of the long distance to medical facilities. In addition, housing on the Reservation also does not meet the tribal members’ needs. A severe housing shortage forces hundreds into homelessness while thousands of others live in overcrowded, substandard accommodations. Sixty-nine percent of Pine Ridge residents live below the poverty line, and residents must make do on $2,600 per year, less than one-fifth of the national average income.
* “The average age for Native Americans as a whole is 55, which is younger than for residents of Bangladesh,” (June 2, 2002 Miami News-Record).
I don't really know why I'm getting so het up about this - it upset me when I studied the history at GCSE, but as I said, I hadn't really realised it was still going on today. Grr. Human rights issues really get to me. It makes me feel so lucky, but just the fact that these problems stem directly from the total destruction of the Native American way of life - a total destruction which happened in the space of 50 years. 50 YEARS!
Anyway, will stop ranting now, because this has really become a MONSTER LJ post. This is why I don't normally read the news.
It just made me think, I suppose, and that must be a sign of a good article if nothing else!
Since I'm in a 'social commentary' mood right now, I thought I'd scan over other news headlines. 'John Paul II on Fast Track to Sainthood' is one that makes me laugh, frankly, since one definite thing you need to be a saint is to be dead.... 'fast track', in that light, could be read in an entirely different way!
And finally, we have this - an article on hate crimes against a Paiute reservation. Now what really surprised me was not the hate crimes, which in itself brings up issues of how hardened we are against things like that today. It was the fact that this happened on a reservation. I did the American West at GCSE, I learnt about the creation of the reservations and the rather awful, racist reasons behind their creation, and I've read Bill Bryson where he talks about driving through reservations, but still - I hadn't quite clicked that they still existed. But they do. And.... what a strange, strange life. The Native Americans were for the most part tribes that moved across the whole of the American Plains, and that was how their lifestyle worked. When they were confined to reservations in the 1800s, they were effectively prohibited in their movements, which meant they started dropping like flies - due to conflicts between tribes unused to being squashed together like that, who might have been traditionally enemies, due to epidemics of european diseases such as flu and smallpox against which they had little or no immunity, due to lack of food or rotten food because the agents who were supposed to provide them with food were corrupt... the list goes on. And now I want to find out if it's like that today. Actually will go look....
Gah, found some websites.
* 'An Indian reservation is land reserved for a tribe when it relinquished its other land areas to the U.S. through treaties.' - well, they didn't actually have much choice about it - it was that or get attacked, and it is a fact that every single treaty the US made, the US BROKE. The American Indians kept them. The US broke them.
* I found one book about them with the tagline 'America's Concentration Camps' - but I don't know how biased that is or how fact-based, amd not going to go so far as to buy the book.
* According to wikipedia - 'Some Indian reservations offer a quality of life that's among the poorest to be found in the United States.'
* Pine Ridge Reservation was created as a result of the Fort Laramie treaty - Life on the Reservation: The Pine Ridge Reservation has been designated as one of the poorest areas in the United States. The Reservation has few natural resources and no industry. Many residents travel more than 120 miles to Rapid City for seasonal employment. Tribal and federal governments provide the few jobs that are available on the Reservation: only one Oglala in five has a job. Medical care on the Reservation is inadequate, and many tribal members forego medical attention because of the long distance to medical facilities. In addition, housing on the Reservation also does not meet the tribal members’ needs. A severe housing shortage forces hundreds into homelessness while thousands of others live in overcrowded, substandard accommodations. Sixty-nine percent of Pine Ridge residents live below the poverty line, and residents must make do on $2,600 per year, less than one-fifth of the national average income.
* “The average age for Native Americans as a whole is 55, which is younger than for residents of Bangladesh,” (June 2, 2002 Miami News-Record).
I don't really know why I'm getting so het up about this - it upset me when I studied the history at GCSE, but as I said, I hadn't really realised it was still going on today. Grr. Human rights issues really get to me. It makes me feel so lucky, but just the fact that these problems stem directly from the total destruction of the Native American way of life - a total destruction which happened in the space of 50 years. 50 YEARS!
Anyway, will stop ranting now, because this has really become a MONSTER LJ post. This is why I don't normally read the news.
