There was much ado last week about The Iroquois Nation’s Lacross team and their international troubles. It all smells of too many bureaucrats creating problems which, they were clueless about solving.
Yes, it could all have been settled if the US would have vouched for the Iroquois passports and it also could have been solved by the Brits taking a realistic instead of an institutionalized view of what was really happening. I mean were they really worried about some terrorist Indian shooting an arrow at Big Ben?
On the other hand, The Iroquois, who insist on being considered an independent nation should, maybe, start acting like one. Handwritten passports? I mean, really. Were they paying for their flight with wampum?
The unrealistic position of the Native American peoples in the United States is beyond fantasy. Sure they were the first ones here… maybe. The question of whether they attacked the Europeans or whether the Europeans attacked them is shrouded in mystery and myth but by the time the Europeans had settled here and made this a nation the natives were no longer able to compete. In the history of human relations, except in the case of our Native Americans, this has always meant one of two things. Either they assimilated or they were annihilated. Neither of these things happened here although the revised history books tell us that the US cavalry gave it their best shot.
Having not done the research as to why the present, unworkable situation exists (I refer to the fact that Native Americans’ are their own Nations instead of American citizens) I can only say that I think the Indians, got screwed. But it seems to be a screwing of, their own instigation. Yes, they have preserved their heritage but in doing so they have prevented themselves from integrating into the general society and much like the many successful immigrant influxes, harvesting the benefits of that integration.
Creating their own nations left them stuck on reservations, victims of poverty and alcoholism. The only good thing that being their own nation did for them was to give them sovereign rights to have gambling casinos on their non-US land. The result of this is that a small number of Native Americans have gotten pretty rich and the rest are still sitting on various reservations trying to figure out how to build their own casinos.
The bottom line is that Native Americans, probably weren’t the original settlers of this land but in all probability, like us, kicked the people who preceded them off their land and took over. Unlike the Mayas, Aztecs or Olmecs, the Native Americans built almost nothing and left very little behind in the way of a civilization to be preserved.
I am the child of immigrants. Unlike the Native Americans my grandparents traveled a huge distance across a great ocean to get here. Once they arrived they didn’t try to set up their own nation in Bensonhurst. They immediately started to integrate into the existing culture. This enabled them to preserve their own heritage while incurring great benefits to themselves and the country in which they now live.