Herald Columnist Doreen Yellow Bird Accuses Me Of “Backhanded Bigotry”
You can read her entire column here.
To be perfectly honest with you, I’m not sure what the point of her column is. She tells me to “check” my “facts,” and then launches into a long-winding, rambling description of all the successful people and businesses that have come from the Turtle Mountain reservation. But, the successful people and businesses who have come from the reservation weren’t the point of my column. The successful people and businesses on the reservation aren’t what we need to be talking about. What we need to be talking about are those on the reservation who are unemployed, addicted to drugs and alcohol and living in poverty in number disproportionate to the rest of the state.
Yellow Bird questions my facts, though she certainly doesn’t point to which of the stated facts in my column are false, but if she wants facts here are some more for her:
73% of Rolette County, North Dakota (which encompasses the Turtle Mountain reservation) is Indian, and that county has an unemployment rate 20% higher than the national average.
27% of North Dakota’s TANF (welfare) caseload is in Rolette County, yet the citizens of that county make up only 2% of the state’s population.
In 2005 Rolette County’s unemployment rate was 9.5%. The rest of the state was at 3.4%.
According to HUD, unemployment on the Turtle Mountain Reservation exceeds 30%. According to the North Dakota Indian Affairs Commission, the average unemployment rate for all of North Dakota’s Indian reservations is 63%.
According to the National Insitute of Justice, which conducted a nationwide study of crime on Indian reservations that included North Dakota’s Forth Berthold reservation, crime on the reservations ” is likely to be between double and triple the national average” and that “comparable communities would be large urban areas with high violent crime rates.”
Doreen Yellow Bird can talk all she wants about those Indians who have found success both on and off the reservation, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but one has to wonder why she gets upset when someone wants to talk about the overwhelming number of problems the reservations have as well.
Why she feels like she needs to call those who want to talk about those problems “bigots.”
Frankly, I think it’s people like Yellow Bird who are the biggest obstacle to change on the reservations simply because people like her will attack anyone who talks about the real problems those reservations have.
