Native American Politics Today
Issues Today:
Nuclear Waste Deposits and Uranium Mining
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You see that tin shed. It's like my culture. You can sit back here, ask questions, and describe it. But it's not 'till you get inside, 'till you see what's inside and feel it, that you really know what the tin shed is about. You can't ________________stand outside; you've got to go inside __________ ____ _-a Crow elder (Kan, p351)
___Although Native Americans are often thought of in a culture of the past, many Native American nations still exist today and face serious social, economic and political issues in the U.S. It is important to recognize individual nations as different peoples, but they all face similar problems. Perhaps the most significant problem Native Americans are grappling with is poverty. Many of the other obstacles facing them are compounded by or are direct results of poverty.
___The purpose of this website is to spread awareness of the difficulties Native Americans still face today. Many people see the rift between European settlers and Native Americans as a past conflict, but relations between the U.S. government and the indigenous people of North America are as strained in many ways as they were before.
___Instead of smallpox epidemics, alcoholism and depression has spread through many Native American nations. Bloody wars over land have been replaced by political struggles to ensure the government does not cheat them out of money. And though they are not being forced west, they now are forced to accept nuclear waste deposits on their reservations in exchange for money to sustain their people.
___Some scholars say that the U.S. has practiced imperialism on Native Americans, not just in the more distant past, but in recent history. Postcolonial scholar Edward Said defines "an effect of imperialism that results in settlements in distant territories." If you take imperialism to be the "practice, the theory, and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan center...most Native American populations in the United States have been subjected to all or a combination of these processes during the past five hundred years." (Thornton, p.61)
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