Be Careful What You Wish For

[docat]

Besides, I think [MENTION=11084]Zeke[/MENTION] was looking for a dingbat...

Oh yeah, If I remember right, Zeke was looking for a dingbat to go with his sports car. I think the salesman led him to believe that he'd have one with the purchase of said car.

Maybe it didn't turn out for him. It's Friday night and he's been HERE. Kinda sad really. Usually it is the princesses that find themselves alone on a Friday night...conspiring to hijack a totally innocent thread.

[Zeke]

And the land has never been formally turned over by the government, isn't it in many cases still held?

Correct.

It's not our land, it's Federal Reserve Land. Sum? It's Federal Land.

If the Feds gave us 100% sovereignty we'd just be paper nations with no economic base or homeland.

In theory, lands outright purchased by tribes could be assigned as our territory but then you're basically talking about parts of Oklahoma that would not be self-sustaining.

Full sovereignty would make us Jews prior to the post WWII carving out of Israel except nobody is going to equate Americans to Palestinians and force them to give up territory due to generational guilt.

Whether or not this is worthy of it's own thread is an open question but if the Cherokee Tribe backs down when the Feds say "the Freedmen are Cherokee or we won't recognize you," you may presume smaller tribes have ZERO odds for independent survival when push comes to shove.

Pressing that envelope -- like an unruly teenager -- is a bad place to be when you're kicked out on the street to be manipulated by others due to lack of alternatives.

At this point, without government support, we soon cease to exist: that's what limited sovereignty is.

[muskrat_skull]

Correct.

It's not our land, it's Federal Reserve Land. Sum? It's Federal Land.

If the Feds gave us 100% sovereignty we'd just be paper nations with no economic base or homeland.

In theory, lands outright purchased by tribes could be assigned as our territory but then you're basically talking about parts of Oklahoma that would not be self-sustaining.

Full sovereignty would make us Jews prior to the post WWII carving out of Israel except nobody is going to equate Americans to Palestinians and force them to give up territory due to generational guilt.

Whether or not this is worthy of it's own thread is an open question but if the Cherokee Tribe backs down when the Feds say "the Freedmen are Cherokee or we won't recognize you," you may presume smaller tribes have ZERO odds for independent survival when push comes to shove.

Pressing that envelope -- like an unruly teenager -- is a bad place to be when you're kicked out on the street to be manipulated by others due to lack of alternatives.

At this point, without government support, we soon cease to exist: that's what limited sovereignty is.

But technically, the land should not be Federal Reserve Land, it should have been turned over. Isn't it sort of "held in trust" or something? I always thought that was kind of creepy and just wrong.

Are the issues with turning the land over that individual land owners would sell their land, further fragmenting things? Couldn't it be turned over to the entire tribe/nation?

The way I saw it, the land was given to the tribes (whether it was the government's to give is another issue) early on. Certainly, Indians owned the land enough to have to government come back and take more of it. The ownership of the land then was not in dispute. I'm not talking ndn culture here, I'm talking from the white perspective.

From what I understood, and it may be wrong, the land was supposed to be fully turned over but never was. I assumed this was due to a greedy government wanting to maintain some kind of right, however illegally, to oil and mineral rights on the land. I just thought it was a greed thing.

I've heard that children were even adopted and girls married by white men seeking to become trustees and basically steal the oil or other valuable resources out from under the children/girls who had ownership of their land.

I do think that ndn nations should have control over their nations and who receives benefits, because without that, you cease to be a nation, tribe, whatever. I think it is a core aspect of any culture.

This is just my opinion, as an outsider to this because I don't receive any kind of benefit, but I'm not sure that the way they deliver benefits to people is good, I think it makes some people dependent, instead of giving the money to the nation and letting the people develop their own systems and bureaucracy, and become more fully functioning, and perhaps, creating jobs in the process. Laws would need to be passed to ensure people could get care anywhere and that providers would be paid.

Having stuff go through dhr puts Indian people in the position of having to be micromanaged by non-ndn people who may view them as just another burden on dhr, when really, this is debt owed by the US govt. And while the post office is required to keep funds in the bank for 15 years of retirement for their employees, is such a guarantee there for ndn people's benefits?

Separating things could make the benefits vulnerable to the isolate, gut and abolish trend that is going on with any type of social funding for Americans.

[docat]

Well this game is hijacked. You can thank muskrat_skull and Zeke. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

[muskrat_skull]

Well this game is hijacked. You can thank muskrat_skull and Zeke. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Oh, yeah, you deserted your own thread. You were too busy cheating on this thread by posting on other threads...starting things you can't finish.

No matter. I think there are plans to build a new Las Vegas here anyway...

[docat]

Yeah, I deserted it. You and Zeke got all serious. There are camels walking and pooping all over my thread. I mean, I like a clean place to post.