13 Issues Facing Native People Beyond Mascots And Casinos
These are the problems you're not hearing enough about.
Posted: 07/30/2015 11:16
AM EDT
Most of the recent headlines about
indigenous Americans have had to do with a certain D.C. football team, or a surpassingly dumb Adam Sandler movie, or casinos of the kind operated by the fictional Ugaya tribe on "House of Cards." And we're
not saying these issues don't matter. But beyond the slot machines, the movie
sets and the football fields, there are other problems facing Native
communities -- insidious, systemic, life-or-death problems; the kinds of
problems it takes years and votes and marches to resolve -- that aren't getting
nearly as much attention.
There are 567 tribes, including 229 Alaska Native communities, currently recognized by the
federal government. The Bureau of Indian Affairs -- the primary federal agency
in charge of relations with indigenous communities -- is also considering
extending federal status to Native Hawaiians.
Each of the federally recognized
tribes is a nation unto itself -- sovereign, self-determining and
self-governing -- that maintains a government-to-government relationship with
the United States. In addition, the rights of all indigenous peoples, including
Native Hawaiians, have been affirmed in a 2007 United Nations declaration. Each indigenous nation
has a distinct history, language and culture. While many face concerns that are
specific to their government, state, or region, there are certain issues that
affect all Native communities throughout the United States -- from Hawaii to
Maine, and Alaska to Florida. Here are 13 such issues that you probably aren't
hearing enough about.
Native Americans face issues of mass incarceration and policing.
Thanks in large part to the Black
Lives Matter movement, which has insisted that demands for justice
and equality for the black community remain part of the national conversation,
there is now growing
momentum to address the issues of policing and mass incarceration. But
while the brutalization of black Americans at the hands of police, and their
maltreatment within the criminal justice system, have garnered national
headlines, similar injustices against Native Americans have gone largely
unreported.
Earlier this month, Paul Castaway,
a mentally ill Rosebud Sioux tribal citizen, was shot and killed by Denver
police. His death led to protests in the Denver Native community, and has shed
light on the shocking rate at which police kill Native Americans -- who account
for less than 1
percent of the national population, but who make up nearly 2 percent of all
police killings, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention.
Native peoples are also
disproportionately affected by mass incarceration. In states with significant
Native populations, Native Americans are wildly overrepresented in the criminal
justice system. In South Dakota, for example, Native Americans make up 9 percent of the total population, but 29 percent of the prison
population. In Alaska, Native people account for 15 percent of the total population and 38 percent of the prison
population. And Native Hawaiians are only 10 percent of the state's population, but 39 percent of the
incarcerated population.
The issue of mass incarceration in
Native communities is complicated by overlapping and unresolved conflicts
between tribal, federal and state jurisdictions. If a crime is
thought to have occurred on a Native reservation or within a Native community,
it's not always clear which agency is going to be in charge of prosecution.
That's determined by a complex set of factors, including the severity of the
charges and the races of the victims and alleged perpetrators. The overlapping
jurisdictions of federal and tribal sovereignty also mean that Indians who
commit crimes on tribal lands can be punished
twice for the same offense: once under federal jurisdiction and again in tribal
court. Lastly, aside from cases of domestic violence, tribal courts are not allowed
to try major crimes as defined under the Major Crimes Act. This means that
suspects in most felony cases are prosecuted in federal courts, where sentencing tends to be more severe.
In February, building off the
momentum of Black Lives Matter, the Lakota Peoples’ Law Project released its
"Native Lives Matter" report, which gives an overview
of the inequities faced by Native Americans in the criminal justice system. The
report, like the voices of Native peoples in general, has been largely ignored
in the growing national conversation about policing and criminal justice
reform.
Native communities are often impoverished and jobless.
Native peoples suffer from high
rates of poverty and unemployment. Seventeen
percent of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders and 27
percent of all self-identified Native Americans and Alaska Natives live
in poverty, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
However, the national figure
distorts the prevalence of poverty on Indian reservations and in Alaska Native
communities, where 22 percent of Native people live. In 2012, three
of the five poorest counties in the U.S., and five of the top 10,
encompassed Sioux reservations in North and South Dakota.
Last year, President Barack Obama
visited the Standing Rock Sioux on the border of North and South Dakota, where
the poverty rate is 43.2 percent -- almost three times the national average.
The unemployment rate on the Standing Rock Reservation was over 60 percent as of 2014.
The federal government is still stripping Native people of their land.
The U.S. was built on land taken
from Indian nations, and indigenous peoples across the country are still living
with the reality of dispossession. Right now, members of the San Carlos Apache
Nation in Arizona are fighting the sale of their sacred Oak Flat site
to foreign mining conglomerates.
The Kanaka Maoli in Hawaii are
fighting to protect their sacred mountain Mauna Kea from the
construction of a 30-meter, $1.4 billion telescope. Many Hawaiians are now questioning the legality of the state's annexation, which
took place after a group of business interests, most of them American,
overthrew of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1893.
And in the heartland, the Great
Sioux Nation has refused a $1.3 billion settlement as payment for the
government’s illegal seizure of their sacred Black Hills in South Dakota in
1877. The faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and
Theodore Roosevelt are etched into the Black Hills at Mount Rushmore.
Exploitation of natural resources threatens Native communities.
Throughout the history of North
American settlement, the territorial dispossession of indigenous peoples has
gone hand in hand with natural resource exploitation. In the 1800s, Indian
nations in the West clashed with miners pouring into their territories in
search of gold.
Today, from the Bakken formation in
North Dakota to the Tar Sands in northeastern Alberta, Canada, Indian nations
often stand on the front lines of opposition to hydraulic fracturing and pipelines that pump oil out of
indigenous communities -- violating treaty rights, threatening the environment
and contributing to climate change in the process.
Other groups, however, such as the Ute Tribe in Utah and the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara
Nation in North Dakota, have tried to make the most out of the economic
opportunities presented by oil and natural gas extraction. For the Mandan,
Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, the rush to cash in on oil has resulted in a mess
of inadequate regulation and corruption -- including allegations of murder for hire.
Violence against women and children is especially prevalent in Native communities.
Native American communities -- and
particularly Native women and children -- suffer from an epidemic of violence.
Native women are 3.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted in
their life than women of other races. Twenty-two percent of Native children suffer from
post-traumatic stress disorder -- a rate of PTSD equal to that
found among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.
Often, this violence comes from outside
the community. The nonprofit Mending the Sacred Hoop, citing 1990s data from
the CDC and the Department of Justice, reports that
"over 80% of violence experienced by Native Americans is committed by
persons not of the same race," a rate "substantially higher than for
whites or blacks."
However, some progress has been
made. This year, despite staunch GOP opposition, tribes won the right to prosecute non-Native men who commit
crimes of domestic violence or dating violence or who violate orders of
protection against Native women on Indian reservations. Tribes have continued
to push for control over justice systems on sovereign Indian land, in spite of
resistance from state, local and federal lawmakers and law enforcement
authorities.
The education system is failing Native students.
Only 51 percent of Native Americans in the class of 2010
graduated high school. Native Hawaiians fare better, but still underperform
compared to their peers -- as best we can tell from the limited data, anyway.
In the mid-'00s, about 70 percent of Native Hawaiians attending Hawaiian public
schools graduated in four years, as compared to 78 percent of students
statewide.
For Native Americans, at least,
these disparities are in large part the result of inadequate federal funding,
to the point where some schools on Indian reservations are deteriorated and structurally dangerous.
Native families live in overcrowded, poor-quality housing.
Forty percent of Native Americans who live on reservations
are in substandard housing. One-third of homes are overcrowded, and less than
16 percent have indoor plumbing. Housing on reservations is funded by the
Department of Housing and Urban Development and administered and augmented by
tribes, and has been historically underfunded, despite treaties and the trust responsibility
of the federal government.
Native patients receive inadequate health care.
Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians face massive disparities in health as
compared to the general population, suffering from high rates of diabetes,
obesity, substance abuse and HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Although Native Americans and
Alaska Natives are eligible to receive health care through Indian Health
Services, nearly one in three are uninsured. Like many other federal
agencies that serve Native people, IHS has historically been underfunded. Local
IHS facilities often lack basic services like emergency contraception, in some
cases forcing Native patients to travel hundreds of miles for treatment elsewhere.
There's a dearth of capital and financial institutions in Native communities.
Indian nations do not own their
reservation lands. Rather, the lands are held in trust by the federal
government. This prevents Native Americans who live on reservations from
leveraging their assets for loans, making it difficult for them to start
businesses or promote economic growth in the area.
Compounding this problem, 14.5 percent of Native Americans are unbanked, and
therefore lack the basic financial resources needed for economic prosperity.
Native Americans have the right to vote... but that's not always enough.
Native Americans and Alaska Natives
are often unable to vote because there are no polling places anywhere near
them. Some communities, such as the Duck Valley Reservation in Nevada and the
Goshute Reservation in Utah, are located more than 100 miles from the nearest polling place.
These problems are compounded by high rates of illiteracy in some rural Native communities,
such as the Yup’ik in Alaska, who primarily speak and read their native
language because public education was not available in their region until the
1980s.
There is an epidemic of youth suicide in Native communities.
Suicide is the second most common
cause of death for Native youth ages 15 to 24 -- two and a half times the national rate for that age
group. In February, following a rash of suicides, the Oglala Lakota Nation in
South Dakota declared a state of emergency.
Native languages are dying, and the U.S. government is doing little to help.
Native languages are struggling to
survive in the United States, with 130 "at risk," according to UNESCO, and
another 74 "critically endangered." While some communities, such as
the Native Hawaiians, the Anishinaabe and the Navajo, have had success preserving
and revitalizing their languages, Native communities face obstacles from the
testing and curriculum requirements of No Child Left Behind. And educators who want to teach young
people about Native languages and cultures have to contend with a general lack
of funding and resources.
Many Native communities do not have their rights recognized by the federal government.
Native Hawaiians, and members of
many other Native communities throughout the U.S., have never received federal
recognition of their rights as Native peoples. This deprives them of basic
services, and even of the limited rights of self-governance available to other
Native communities. Many tribes spend decades wading through Bureau of Indian
Affairs paperwork, only to lose their petitions for recognition.
Recently, however, the Obama
administration announced that it would be streamlining the federal recognition process, making it
easier for unrecognized Indian nations to secure their rights under the law.
Need help? In the U.S., call
1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
MORE: Native Americans, Alaska Natives, native hawaiian, mass incarceration,
Police Brutality,
Poverty , oil, Education
