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Thanks for the link.
I did not take the time to dig too deep, but when I run a Google search on "Lakota Casino", the basic results suggests quite a different motive for the declaration of independence than that presented in the article about the evil white man etc.
This is a very hard issue to address since I have seen both sides. I lived on the Navajo reservation for a few weeks during high school as part of an exchange program. And I also have a few years experience on the finance side of the oil industry where I have seen tribes blackmail oil companies into paying as much as $25,000 per acre for right of way to run pipelines across barren and otherwise useless land when the actual going rate for right of way over land own by the government or US citizens is closer to $150.
But the casinos could be an even bigger gold mine than that- and they are not subject to the same regulation as casinos in Las Vegas, Atlantic City or on any other US real estate outside of the Indian reservations.
There is no regulatory or public visibility into just how much the reservation casinos make, what the odds are on the games or whether the machines are programmed to run in an "ethical manner" for lack of a better term.
In recent years, there has been rising pressure in Congress to regulate and perhaps even tax revenue on the Indian casinos. With the country so evenly split at election time, not much is being done- but it is definitely a big issue on the table.
And in one recent highly publicized re-negotiation of right-of-way between one Indian tribe and a major US energy company, it was made publicly clear that the intervention of the US government might be sought to prevent the tribe from seeking extortionist levels of compensation. And to bring such an issue to the attention of the public when gas prices are so high would likely have not only resulted in government intervention, but also in the tribe being forced to accept a deal closer to $150 per acre than the $10K+ under their old contract or the $20K+ they were demanding in the new contract.
So it would not surprise me one bit to see Native American tribes try to secede from the United States.
In the grand scheme of history- both man and other forms of life struggle and compete. And typically the stronger party wins and eventually takes full domination. The surviving defeated either assimilate or become extinct.
While the concept of the reservation was a noble one, it is fundamentally flawed because it flies in the face of reality.
There are no sales taxes on Indian reservations. To my knowledge there is no income tax either. Most residents live in government built housing and work jobs paid- in part or in full- by the US government.
The unfortunate by-product of this is that the tribal peoples of the reservations are raised in an isolated environment and offered little opportunity to ever really break out into the real world.
When I was staying in a town on the Navajo reservation, I attended classes with the high school seniors. The ones I befriended had a wide range of career interests- but ALL of them expressed an incredibly powerful desire to leave the reservations forever and never come back.
While it is a form of guaranteed existence and subsidy, it is no life for any American seeking opportunity and a better life.
Right-of-way revenues and casinos have the promise of providing that better life- but just as a small elite ruling class in Mexico and Russia controls all the wealth, such it is in the reservations today. Clinics for 40 patients (such as the one the article linked in the original post mentions) are window dressing. At the end of the day, a very few people derive any real benefit from the enormous wealth being amassed today on the reservations.
The only solution I see is to disband the reservations entirely and let nature take its course. Only when all reservation residents are subject to the same laws as other US citizens, and only when the financial operations they undertake are subject to the same open trade and free market principles we enjoy can the next generation of Native Americans have a real shot at making something of themselves in their own right.
Traditions and culture can be preserved. These are matters of personal belief more than place. America is full of people far from their homeland who continue to live by their ancestral beliefs.
Just consider this- how many of you have a Native American co-worker? And by that I mean someone who looks the part.
These people are invisible in modern society. Enough time has passed for any actively racist oppression to not really matter in the workforce. Native Americans are not in the same unfortunate position as African-Americans are presently on that score.
And so there is no need for the continued protectionism at the enormous expense to the US taxpayer. It is not just your incomes tax dollars paying for this mess. It is also every state and city sales tax that must be higher in states with reservations to account for all the non-taxable revenue on the reservations. And it is also big-time in your cost for heating oil and gasoline given what it costs to transport these items through pipelines that run across reservation territory.
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