Wiping out tribal economies has been a colonial tactic that remains in place today to undermine the first people of America. Native American reservations are overwhelmingly poverty stricken because of disproportionate oversite and regulations. Federal ownership of tribal lands makes home buying almost impossible for the American Indian. Today, the release of tribal lands from federal trust would more than any other action increase home ownership and economic development for the first people. Locking tribes into poverty has been a federal policy since the United States founding.
The United States has always restricted the American Indian’s economic development via government policy. Controlling tribal economies means controlling Indians. Congress gave permission to the Secretary of the Interior to withold treaty-guaranteed rations in order to force Indian parents to surrender their children to boarding schools to wipe away their tribal language and culture.
Today, restraints on tribal sovereignty continues to exhaust tribal economies, there by exhausting the vitality of the American Indian’s economic future. The American Indian is the most impoverished and underserved citizen in the United States. Federal policies trap tribes into poverty and economic failure.
Charles Micheaux
Atlanta *