Why doesn't anyone care about Native Americans?

Their casinos tend to do pretty well, as I understand.

1000 wrote:

They aren't the real natives like Palestinians are who have inhabited present day Palestine Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, since the Ice Age. Present day Native Americans traveled from North East Asia across the Bering Straight to North America approximately 1000 years ago.

According to information obtained from the Human Genome Project, some Native Americans went in the opposite direction, westward, from North America to East Asia, then all the way to Western Europe.

However, since most current Native Americans crossed from East Asia some 1000 years ago, they are just like Europeans who started to arrive in America 520 years ago in 1492. In other words they arrived relatively recently.

Wow, that is some real racist logic.

"The archeological evidence suggests that the Paleo-Indians' first "widespread" habitation of America occurred during the end of the last glacial period or, more specifically, what is known as the late glacial maximum, around 16,500–13,000 years ago"

this was a good book:

empire of the summer moon / s.c. gwynne

http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Summer-Moon-Comanches-Powerful/dp/1416591052

Relatively small population, and by pushing them aside onto reservations it is "out of sight, out of mind"

They do still have many of their hunting/fishing/spearing rights that were granted to them in the old treaties.

Yeah, "1000" is completely full of crap on this--but I guess thinks that making stuff up fits his/her political agenda better. (Of course, manufacturing "facts" actually *undercuts* your agenda: people think that if you're BSing about details, you're probably BSing about the important stuff, too.) Indians were in North America before the glaciers had fully retreated--in fact, they followed the glaciers north.

For an interesting latter-day look at American Indians (who, by the way, typically refer to themselves as "Indians," or just by their individual nations--not "Native Americans"), I recommend the book "1491" by Charles Mann. American Indians' population numbers and culture, before the Europeans (more accurately, the Europeans' diseases) arrived, were at a much higher level than we're generally taught.

At the same time, the picture of Indians living in "peaceful harmony with nature" is a crock. And a lot of nations were bloodthirsty as hell. So the whole "noble savage" thing is wrong twice.

Because they live in the USA and are free to join society at large and do any thing the rest of us do, or they can stay in a tee pee on the reservation and drink their casino money away.

Their choice.

It's not that people don't care, it's that seeing where Native's are now is very off-putting (which is living on the street, usually drunk, or on the news because of the violence on their reservation). I've had friends who've taught school on various Native reservations, and it's a gong show. The kids rarely come to school, and when they do, they goof off and swear at the teacher. I have one friend who said in her elementary classroom, the kids were picking bugs out of the hair and having a contest to see which bug could run the fastest. I don't know what it's like in the States, but in Canada the Natives get a hefty wad of cash when they turn 18, and are notorious for squandering it as fast as possible.

Your post made me chuckle out loud (aka lol).

I'm in my forties and don't think I have ever known a Native American.

So if it is something that you don't come accross it is hard care very much for with all of the other concerns you have in a busy life.

I live in an area that is close to several Native American reservations. Each reservation has a casino. And I can say that many of the more serious crimes reported on the news (murders, etc.) are committed (allegedly) by NAs.

It's actually black Americans that often claim to have Indian in them.

I am a full blood enrolled member of the Tewa Tribe.

We prefer to be called Indians. Any person born in the United States is a Native American. Tribal members are called INDIANS. Just call us what we are.

All Indians are not the same. Thats is the biggest misconception that people make.

Real Indians want to be LEFT ALONE, not necessarily to do their tradition, but to not be constatntly bombarded with the complicated laws, taxes, regulations of the white american government. We as Indian do NOT want to be rich. We just want to be left alone and not subject to your contant civilized legal agenda.

Dr Democrat wrote:

Real Indians want to be LEFT ALONE, not necessarily to do their tradition, but to not be constatntly bombarded with the complicated laws, taxes, regulations of the white american government. We as Indian do NOT want to be rich. We just want to be left alone and not subject to your contant civilized legal agenda.

Sounds like a good reason to vote fro Ron Paul.

What do you call people from India and how do you differentiate?

Is it American Indians and Asian Indians?

A few comments:

I have always lived very close to reservations in South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. When I was a kid we had dozens of Native American foster siblings in and out of my house. I have been to many pow wows, sweat lodges, The Spiritual Unity of the Tribes (later changed to World) and and feasts welcoming people down from the mountain after a fasting vision quest. From my experience, the Native Americans are extremely diverse from tribe to tribe, and extremely misunderstood. Also, their own culture is not particularly accessible within their own reservations. Most youth don't take part, and do not know their own native languages (those are starting to be studied and preserved in a lot of western universities). I think their desire to be autonomous and to receive reimbursement from 'their' (their is in quotations because the majority of the tribes that I have experience with were nomadic) original land is no longer helping them (particularly with so few actually trying to preserve their culture). The only place where I've seen the reservation system work is in the Lummi Reservation in Washington state. Those people already farmed fish quite successfully, where most other tribes were nomadic, to it was natural to preserve their culture and way of live. For the Sioux who traveled with the buffalo herds, then given a fairly useless piece of land in southern South Dakota and told to farm, it was a complete cultural shock.

One thing that hasn't come up on this forum, even though it's relevant, is that there are dozens of Bill Mills type runners in high school in all of the states I've lived in. If you look at the top ten at state cross county in Montana and South Dakota, there are quite a few Native Americans, and you'll never see them in college. It's really disappointing. In Montana there was a guy named Jeremy Deputy, and another with the last name of Strange Owl (both around 2003 and 2004 I think), and they were relentless competitors and immensely talented. Both won state in Montana and were not academically eligible to compete in college. I was the top x-c runner for a college in Montana at the time and was involved in recruiting trips for both, and was absolutely killed by both runners on a 10 miler. They didn't just run away from you, they very slowly and steadily dropped the pace (almost unnoticeable) to make you think you could hang with them, but just grind you way to oblivion. I've never been so humbled as a runner.

Everyone wonders why America can't compete with the east Africans, and I don't. It's just that the system in place to bring up some of our most genetically gifted runners is absolutely failing them. Perhaps Billy needs to return to the rez and turn things around.

label wrote:

What do you call people from India and how do you differentiate?

Is it American Indians and Asian Indians?

... We call one group "AMERICAN INDIANS" (because they are from America...........and the other ones we call "INDIAn INDIANS" (because they are from India.)

The public cares enough to give Native Americans over $26 billion a year in gaming revenue as of 2010.

http://www.nigc.gov/Media/Press_Releases/2011_Press_Releases/PR-175_07-2011.aspx