What a sad end to the proud tribes that once roamed free in America !

Thank you for bringing attention to the Native Americans and how they live. My husband and I drove through New Mexico and Arizona a few years back, full of innocence about how the Indians lived and survived. History doesn’t tell the half of it. Any reservation we came across was in a dry, barren, desolate area, no one could eke a living out of the land although we saw some horses in corrals, but very little actual grass for feeding. The poverty was just heartbreaking and in the Navajo nation there are a lot of very talented artists and craftspeople but they too are just about eking out a living. No alcohol in sight, run down homes and trucks, people who seem to have lost their spirit. My heart was broken to think that the so called powers that be could do this to such a proud people and pretend it was for their own good? God help them, I don’t know how they keep going. You’d have to see it first hand to understand how bad it is.

I have Indian friends living in Nevada. I visit at least once or twice a year. They live on a relatively small reservation and yes it is located in a fairly remote area. Not a lot to do there but thanks to good community leaders things are not as bad as described in the article above. Listening to their history it is hard not to feel sympathy for the native Americans because of the way their land was taken from them. I have been told by them that the Federal government still owe many millions of dollars in compensation hence the subsidies the Indians receive. Their spirituality is awesome and many still speak their own language. Sadly most young Indians have to got to the big towns and cities to get employment and of course they lose a lot of the native traditions etc. They are a lovely people.

Very similar to settlements in Austrailia, especially to ones north of Cairns. Prohibition, drug abuse domestic voilence, and general lawlessness.

I live on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma. My neighbors are Indian, my friends are Indian. They are a great people, but have their problems. Indians are horrible drunks. Tribes work hard to keep alcohol away from them as this article touched on. For whatever reason, genetics/culture, alcohol turns them into alcoholics.

Apart from that, boy do they know how to run a casino! Indian casinos here are ALMOST as common as churches.

I was born in Ireland, lived most of my life in Ireland, and now I get to hear my neighbors doing their Indian chants/drum beats most evenings. Life is strange but good.

Sad story, recommended reading is Dee Brown’s ‘Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee’, and the film ‘Soldier Blue’ is quite an eye opener about the attempted genocide of an entire race. the story of what the Choctaw Tribe did for this country during the famine despite what was inflicted on them is inspirational.

A very enlightening piece. Thanks for sharing.

It’s no surprise that oil companies found a legal loophole through which they could dump their crap there. For further enlightenment, read Leslie Marmon Silko’s ‘Almanac of the Dead’.

This is a truly shocking story, such despair these people live through, when the author said “There’s a fatalism here that’s hard to describe. A kind of unfocused anger. And, before I leave, I am told not to come back alone.” This is the most telling aspect for me, anger can be a great motivator, however if you can’t direct it towards something then it can be very counter-productive. I hope the native Americans can rebuild their communities and their lives and the first thing to do is to stop fighting amongst themselves and to try to find cohesion.

So how is the casino money helping these people, something stinks of corruption among the Indian Tribal Council here very sad indeed.

Corralled onto reservations and treated like animals for generations- victims of the arrogance of ‘manifest destiny’.
Bring back the American Indian Movement of the 60′s!

If you get the chance you should eat on a reservation. Best food I ever had. Navajo fried bread with honey, unreal

In the land of the free and the home of the brave..sick what the white man did to them.talk about crimes against humanity

Jesus, that’s depressing. So terrible what was done to the native Americans.

The white race turned out to be the true savages in America.

Good article. I believe the majority of reservations all over north American have similar issues

The Sand Creek massacre was committed by Colorado militia and not the US Army.

Yet another example of non integration into main stream society and the slip into ghetto type areas . There has to be a balance between traditions and modernism for a culture to grow in tandem with society as a whole .
Perhaps we should take note and not let our own country fall for the same mis managed cultural divid .

@P. “If it weren’t for European immigrants” they’d still be living in an unspoiled paradise. These people were butchered and enslaved because they saw the obvious truth: western so-called progress is a crock of shit.

Where are the people in those photos?

Spot on, Brian.

Wow. This just astonishes me. A nomadic people forced into settled communities, marginalised by the rest of the population and ending up in a vicious cycle of crime, drugs, low mortality rates, lack of education, etc. and look at the sympathy expressed by the Irish commenters above. Now, replace the words Native American or Indian with Traveller and watch the vitriol and hatred grow and the sympathy vanish quicker than you can say boo. Sickening double standards.

Ah feck, when I started reading I thought the journal.ie had sent one of its own journalists. I thought ye were gone all CSI and I imagined Sinead from the office doing tumbles and rolls, ducking for cover and what not.

@ Terry, them? They? Your references make ‘them’ sound subhuman

If it werent for european immigrants introducing a better way of life , alcohol , christanity ,trial by jury, farming ,etc. The natives would still be living in teepees hunting buffalo. Look at the standards they have now.. support the idle no more movement people.

as bad as it sounds at least they get dividends from the oil found on their land…here??