The State of Native America Notess

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Native North America

The Political Economy of Radioactive Colonialism

• Land
  • Central issue to North AM politics and econ
  • Control of land = control of resources
  • 1/3 of Western U.S. low sulphur coal, 20 % of known oil/nat gas reserves, over 1/2 uranium deposits are on reservations
    • given to Native Americans through treaties
    • Land expropriations by corporations and land withdrawals from indigenous nations was orchestrated by the federal government
    • Allotment Act, Honestead Act, Termination Act
    • Government makes deals that undermind previously agreed upon treaties
    • Water rights are also at play, especially in the arid West
• Internal Colonialism
  • The colonization of indigenous people is a fact of life in US/Canada
  • Native American nations in North America today have only 2.5% of original land base
  • Indian Reorganization Act
    • 1934
    • US imposes a system of tribal council governments on each reservation
    • Designed to replace traditional/ resistant Indian government with new governments that are allegiant to Washington DC
    • Now the reservations have to go through the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affair) which is run by leaders who the traditional governments did not like
    • However, now the US government can say that the BIA is run by "Indians" themselves
    • The fed gov immediately started undercutting their economy by reducing stock because of "overgrazing"
    • Leads to dependency : instituted "educational" systems (labor skills for industrialism), housing programs (work force concentrations), unemployment, welfare
  • Welfare exists as a "form of pacification", keeping people alive and happy enough not to revolt but keeps them as "captive consumers" of capitalism, it dictates a corporate profit
  • 1980s/1990s Bush/Reagan econ cutbacks default to reservations
    • The reservations have to turn to corporations to "negotiate" over land/ extraction of resources
  • North American Native American populations experience the HIGHEST:
    • Rate of infant mortality
    • Incidence of malnutrition
    • Death by exposure
    • Unemployment
    • Plague/communicable disease
  • They experience the LOWEST:
    • Life expectancy
    • Level of formal education
• The New Colonialism
  • Training programs by corporations to train Native Americans in "practical" skills
  • Radioactive Colonization
    • "Gunnery Range" in the NW quadrant of the PineRidge Reservation "borrowed" from Oglala Lakotas and the military may have used it for radioactive waste dump site
    • Leads to leaching into local groundwater - damage is permanent
• Radioactive Colonialism
  • Energy corporations and government use local Native American work forces and pay them low wages, do not commit to community safety, do not pay severance taxes and pay minimum loyalites
  • To fix this in the short term, Native Americans can join unions, but does not actually solve any of the problems
  • These jobs KILL
  • Short term benefits include big pay, big time employer, but leaves people in a more destitute position and a TERRIBLE environmental position
  • The only people who benefit are the corporate/government representatives of Native American populations