Reply #8: Not surprised you know nothing about the Red Nations

[SpiralHawk]

even though, presumably, you are living on Turtle Island (North America), ancestral territory for the Red Nations, land long ago stolen in a campaign of genocide against Red Nations peoples who are still being abused by the government now claiming the land. Most people choose to ignore the realities, since they are so "inconvenient."

There is no excuse. Please don't tell me it is OK because everyone else has done it. That sounds like a typical republicon (or First Grader) cop out to me, and to anyone concerned with honesty, integrity, and justice.

Here' one snippet on the ongoing abuse and ripoff -- Massive Bad Karma....

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American Indians Demand an End to Theft and Broken Promises

by Brian Awehali
r

Eloise Cobell, chief plaintiff in the Individual Indian Monies trust case, whose team has won victory after victory in the last 7 years. The courts have ruled that the government is clearly in the wrong. The question now is: Will they pay up? Voices of people like you will be a large part of the answer.

After taking most of their land and reducing their population by almost 90% over the past 150 years, the U.S. government set up a bank for Native Americans. A special bank. A bank that let them keep using Indian land, taking in money, never issuing a statement or tracking how much money it has, rarely paying out any money at all, and refusing to provide any information about the money it manages.

Welcome to the heart of the landmark Individual Indian Monies (IIM) trust reform case. It’s the largest class action lawsuit ever lodged against the federal government. It’s possibly the most important piece of legislation affecting Native America today, and the government is losing badly, but the story garners almost no media coverage, and although public outcry and demand for justice is crucial, few people even know about the case...

...Originally filed in 1996 by Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet tribe, the heart of the case involves more than 100 years of revenues generated by government leases on Indian land held “in trust” for mining, grazing, timber, oil and gas exploration and other uses. The Departments of the Interior and Treasury and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), say they’ve misplaced or can’t account for more than $100 billion in Indian land revenues.

"I've never seen more egregious conduct by the federal government," said Royce C. Lamberth, the federal judge overseeing the case. In one ruling, Lamberth also wrote that "the results of Interior's failure to take its trust responsibilities seriously are plain today...Although they are citizens of the greatest and most prosperous nation in the world today, the beneficiaries of the IIM trust live under conditions that would not be alien to citizens of the poorest Third World nations. Many of them live in abject poverty."

http://www.circleoflifefoundation.org/news/newsletter/2004-05winter/trustus.htm