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Non Indians in America

For one thing, there is a misconception that Indians receive free health care. These services were bought and paid for at great expense of the native people, the expense of loss of life, land and resources. If nothing else the health services should be justified by the fact that America practiced, or should I say promoted, major illnesses among native people that resulted in millions of untold deaths. The colonists and their army gave native people poison blankets, infected with small pox, measles etc., on purpose with the intent of eradicating native people through a form of rudimentary biological warfare. At one point in OUR story there were major campaigns of abortions and sterilization of our native women. Native people were purposely given hepatitis to experiment the effects of vaccines. These attempts at eradication of indigenous people to this day still have major ramifications regarding our population. Through hundreds of years America valued the black people as live subjects whereas the native people were more valuable dead. The black man had value because they were bought and sold, the native people had land and resources that they wanted to buy and sell, so they had to get rid of the natives. There were profits made from the destruction of the native people. 

They have sought to eradicate us in every way, including genetically by quantifying blood degree. Blood quantum was never a native concept until the federal government made it one of grave importance.   Blood quantum was devised to separate native people from their resources by saying half blood is only good for a half; a quarter is only good for a quarter, and so on, as a means to divide land and resources. Communities were so divided based on this concept.   In keeping the division strong, the teaching of these blood quantum concepts occurred regularly in boarding schools and government programs.   Division of resources and division of families are the result and continue downward through the generations.

Policies separated us from our culture such as how to eat, how to hunt, how to pray, how to sing, how to fast, how to grow, how to live in harmony with the earth. These polices that were taught in boarding schools, to our children that were detrimental in their effects are still continuing through today. The most devastating being they destroyed the family unit. Young men did not learn how to be a father from their fathers, young women did not learn how to be a mother from their mother, and likewise they did not learn how to take care of children from their parents. They did not learn how to be soft spoken since they were spoken to as a drill sergeant in the army. They did not learn how to care for each other as sisters and brothers and cousins and clan kin. The policies separating our people from our communities of unity continue to reap devastating effects on tribal youth through this day. 

It is believed that tuberculosis, measles, hepatitis, diabetes and even alcoholism was induced in Indian culture to facilitate negotiations for federal land acquisition. All of these measures have drastically reduced our life expectancies our health standards. The health programs that do exist are greatly underfunded. Often people with major illnesses are forced to stand in line for MRIs or other major medical examinations because of lack of funding. Children for example, with major seizure problems are often forced to be put on a list and evaluated as to the priority of their need, when in a non native community that child would automatically receive whatever services were required.   The Indian Health Service has been severely underfunded for many years; it is a well documented fact. Indians die while waiting on services because there is no other choice available to them. 

The housing, education, and health services were all agreed upon by this government by treaties in exchange for land and resources. However all the treaties that were signed by our people were signed under duress. Our Indian people have sought to honor the signatures made on the treaties even though the federal government has not maintained their promises in return. There are some 370 plus treaties ratified by congress that are violated feloniously every day. All of these have detrimental health, social, psychological and mental effects to our people.   If you plant a tree in an environment that it was not designed for by the great Mystery, our Creator, that tree will not grow as it should. So it is the tree of life for our people. They have been removed from their traditional homelands, their food source, their ceremonial grounds, their spiritual base, their land of creation, and it causes physical, mental and the destruction of health.   The mediocre health service that is provided to our people is exactly that…mediocre - just like their honoring of the treaties. Their word has only been mediocre.

If the laws of this country are based on any kind of religious morality - of any concepts of right and wrong that are held up as a plum line of human treatment of one another - then in the areas of what some call reaping what you sow, karma, or just deserves, then at some time in the future this country as a nation has some major reaping coming on a devastation level. Its no wonder the United States is at this time suffering from extreme diverse weather conditions and wildfires possibly extreme plagues as such was induced to Native American peoples. 

You might go back to the first non natives came here it is within HIS story and OUR story they were treated well and their health needs tended to by our people.   They suffered from scurvy, which is caused by the lack of vitamin C, they suffered from hunger, they suffered from parasites, they suffered from the disbelief of bathing on a regular basis (a common concept in Europe), and worst of all they suffered from of form of selfishness and lack of compassion for other living things which in many circles survives today. I am so thankful that these concepts with all the problems we have faced have not been adopted by our people. 

The next time someone tells you that Indian people are getting all these “free things” as a point of law, there is a major difference between acquired rights and retained rights. What we have left is only a small portion of the resources retained through treaty and aboriginal rights. To this day there are still remnants of the past that say give me your poor, your oppressed, your needy, and though they don’t say it openly, it means at the expense of native people. We will succor your future.