Crime
Every American Indian alive today has been affected by the policy of assimilation implemented by the United States government not that long ago.
Few of us have been unscathed by alcohol, and I am no exception. A close Cherokee relative, big-hearted and kind when sober, was a mean drunk who finally ended his life in a drunken header off a bridge. When my son was 7, I had to tell him a drunken driver had killed his best soccer buddy.
I have been involved for the past several years in the Juvenile Detention Alternative Initiative (JDAI). There is overwhelming evidence that the wholesale incarceration of juvenile offenders is a failed strategy for combating youth crime.
Senator Maria Cantwell, the chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, stated in regard to tribal provisions in VAWA, “If you think you are rooting out crime in America and you are letting a sieve happen in Indian country you are not rooting out crime.
One of my favorite things to do each month – besides taking a shower – is to read the Crime Waves section of The Four Corners Free Press in Cortez, Colorado.
They represent the drama, comedy and tragedy of real life.
The Idle No More campaign is in full-swing to the north, and Dakota people associated with the 38+2 memorial horse ride have apparently abandoned the struggle for justice for Indigenous people here with the promotion of their mantra “forgive everyone everything.” That feel-good slogan will be lit
To Leonard Peltier supporters, the fact that Barack Obama has taken such personal interest in the U.S. government’s relations with American Indians renews hope of a presidential pardon after he was denied parole in 2009 for his role in the murder of two FBI agents on June 26, 1975.
Everything is not a matter of opinion and all opinions are not equal. In the U.S., we frame all policy arguments in terms of liberty, and since we don’t teach critical thought, who wins the framing dispute wins the argument.
I have been taught that “no nation is truly defeated until the hearts of its women are on the ground.” Native women have strong hearts, but that strength is constantly challenged by the high rates of domestic violence on many Indian reservations. Of course, domestic violence is not limited to w
Pretend you are a bank president, your bank has just been robbed at gunpoint, one worker has been assaulted and injured, employees’ lives have been threatened, and you call the police.
Who would think that a group that makes up about one percent of the overall population could carry such a wallop? From 2000, when we defeated infamous “Indian fighter” U.S.
The negative representations of American Indians have recently caught national attention in the news and on the Internet.
The battle is over, and pundits now stroll to the battlefield and shoot the survivors. I have used this bully pulpit to urge that Indians bloc vote only when threatened as Indians. My own vote turned on threats I perceived to my family. Your mileage may vary.
This is to correct a century-plus-long legal error that has been and continues to be perpetuated upon the Great Sioux Nation and all Indians alike. The lesson is that all treaties are specific unto themselves.