From: jammer@eskimo.com (Lyle Harwood)
Subject: Re: What if Sovereignty?
Organization: -> ESKIMO NORTH (206) For-Ever <-
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 10:12:49 GMT

: What I am interested in knowing is would the people be better off
: running their own affairs rather than having them dictated from 
: Washington?  I would hope so.  Sovereignty opens the door to many 
: things both good and bad, which ones come to pass depends on the
people.
: That is what sovereignty is all about.
: 
:
:
I've lived on my reservation, I've lived on other reservations.
I've lived in the city, I've lived in the country, I've lived in foreign
countries.

There are several things common to sovereign nations that the
reservations I've seen are simply not prepared to face.

The local labor pool, let alone the local skill levels I've seen 
are not capable of maintaining the transportation infrastructure, let
alone maintaining an independant economy or even a rudimentry defence 
capacity.

If the Continental US were attacked, I don't see how a land mass
surrounded by a nation at war could possibly survive, except by the
sufferance of the surrounding nation.

As we do.

We were not awarded choice land. I make no judgment on this, I merely
state facts. With certain notable exceptions, most reservations are
somewhere down around 3.5 or 4th world nations when it comes to natural
resources. The bases for stable economies simply do not exist.
Tiny tribes, scattered across the US, made up of as little as twenty
acres would simply cease to exist as a people.

There is another school of thought.
I hesitate to bring it up, it is ripe terrain indeed for flame wars.
Are reservations neccessary? Do they serve a truley usefull purpose?
Or do they stand in our way, and keep us bound to a second class 
status, both in economic and mind set?
Wouldn't our nations be better served by being forced to assimilate?

The line of reasoning continues that Jews, Irish, French, Turkish, and 
hundreds of other nationalities have no reservations, yet they manage to
keep alive their racial heritage, their traditions, their religions,
merely by strength of character, by conviction, by belief, by resolve.
Are we not as capable?
Are they truley reservations, dedicated to the preservation of a
culture?
If so, why does our culture require such extraordinary measures?
Do we lack some required means of maintaining it on our own?

Are they truley reservations? 

Or are they prisons?

Are they prisons of the mind, where Warriors face no foe, and Braves
wither from lack of challenge?

Prisons where Alchohal, Drugs, and soul destroying Despair have free
reign?

The fact of my personal matter is that forced to choose between my 
reservation and the US, I don't have to think very long.

It is embarrassing, but it is so, and I have learned not to hide the
truth.

I would choose the US almost without thought.
I point out that I would also choose the US over India, Pakistan, Korea,
Israel, or any part of the Central or Southern Americas, and for very
similar reasons.

Before the resident chapter of AIM gears up, I also recognize that there
does exist on all the reservations I've been associated with, 
that portion of tribal society that does indeed maintain and live
the lives that the reservations were created to sustain.

That this portion is so small is what makes me wonder...


Jammer
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