Update: For those of you coming here from the Grand Forks Herald article, please click this link to read my response to the banishment.

For the January issue of the Dakota Beacon magazine I wrote a column entitled “The Appalling State Of Our Indian Reservations.” I also posted that column here on Say Anything.  I’m publishing it again at the bottom of this post.

It has come to my attention recently that photocopies of the column have been circulating up on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation along with this website’s URL and the phone number for Beacon editor Steve Cates.  I am happy to learn that my column has generated so much attention (comments have been trickling in from readers of it visiting SA) and I welcome all to the debate over the conditions on this state’s reservations.  It is a serious problem, and one that needs lots of attention.  I have been contacted by the Turtle Mountain Times and they’ve asked permission to reproduce my column in the edition of their publication on newsstands now.  I was happy to agree to do so and will be writing a second, follow-up column to appear in the next issue.

Many of the responses I’ve gotten, both in comments and via email, have taken exception to some of the descriptions I made of conditions I had observed during a visit to the Belcourt area in late 2006.  I’m not surprised that people would be defensive about my descriptions as I was very blunt in making them, but I don’t think it’s very productive to get angry at me simply for pointing them out.  Anyone who has spent any length of time on the Turtle Mountain Reservation (and a lot of other reservations, for that matter) knows that my descriptions are accurate.  These conditions exist.  They’re real, and we should not dismiss them or sweep them under the rug simply because talking about them makes some angry.

What I’m saying is “Don’t shoot the messenger.” I wouldn’t write about the Indian reservations if I didn’t care, and I wouldn’t be trying to draw other people’s attention to the problems of the Indian reservations if I didn’t want them to care as well.

Here’s the original column:

Recently I had occasion to spend about 15 hours visiting people on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in northern North Dakota, and I’ve got to say that I was pretty shocked by what I saw.
I’ve spent a lot of time on North Dakota’s Indian reservations.  I’ve worked there, visited businesses and restaurants and driven throughout them. I’ve even been up to a lot of people’s houses to deliver things or obtain information, so I’ve been aware of the poor conditions on the reservations for some time, but never before yesterday have I had the opportunity to have such an intimate look at life on the reservation. I was not impressed with what I saw.

The first thing I noticed was that while I was going around neighborhoods and knocking on doors was that nearly everyone seemed to be at home. Just about every knock received an answer. In a non-reservation community when I go through residential neighborhoods during the day it’s hard to find people at home. Everyone is out and busy. Why isn’t it like this on the reservation? Probably because in most of North Dakota the unemployment rate is around 3%, while on the ND Indian reservations it’s about 63% (according to a recent report from the Governor’s office).

Which is a sad commentary in and of itself, but rampant unemployment aside the simple reality of the conditions these people are living in is even more amazing. I saw kids playing outside, on a day when the temperature was just below freezing, in shorts and bare feet (though they were wearing parkas). I met people living in homes with broken out windows and nothing but a piece of plywood or some plastic stretched over them to keep out the cold. I saw homes with dozens of abandoned vehicles around them, and took in smells emitting from some of the doors that were opened to me that brought tears to my eyes. Inside the homes I saw mountains of unwashed dishes, mounds of unwashed clothes, overflowing trash cans, walls literally dripping with nicotine from the constant smoking and throughout it all children playing in the reek.

And the people living in these homes were as disappointing as the homes themselves. I met people who were drunk (or possibly high) at noon, even as their children played in the road and on the twisted, sharp metal of abandoned cars. I saw a visibly pregnant mother smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer. I met a woman who was 29 years old and already a grandmother (to no fewer than three grandchildren) thanks to both her and her daughter’s young pregnancies. I met men and women, fathers and mothers, who had spent more of their lives in prison than out of prison. I met entire families whose only source of income seemed to be from stealing or selling drugs plus whatever they got from the government in terms of assistance.

I have heard tales from the notorious slums in places like Los Angeles and New York, but I’m not sure those slums can beat North Dakota’s Indian reservations in terms of pure filth and abhorrent living conditions.
So how is this happening in North Dakota? A state that is thriving economically right now? A state where the unemployment rate is so low that employers are practically screaming for workers? I know why it’s happening, but not a lot of people are going to want to hear it.

It’s happening because of the total failure of the idea embraced by some that the government exists to take care of us. The government has been taking care of North Dakota’s Indians, but it’s harming them more than it’s helping.

I know, I know. The Indians have gotten a raw deal in this country’s history, but “history” is exactly what that is. We’re in a new era now. Our government spends billions of dollars on creating education and employment opportunities for Indians, not to mention the billions spent on personal assistance for the Indians themselves in the form of housing money, food money, welfare money, etc. But none of this is working. Most of the Indians on these reservations eat up all of that assistance and still don’t manage to lift themselves out of the ghettos they’re living in. Why? I think it’s because they live without consequences.

Most of us would probably consider living in a squalid apartment in a nasty housing complex a pretty serious consequence for not getting ahead in life, but it seems to me as though most of these Indians are perfectly content to live there. Probably because they don’t know any better. They were likely raised in housing projects by their parents, who in turn were probably raised in housing projects themselves. The “welfare mentality” has become so ingrained in these people that most of them don’t have any drive to reach for something better. It’s not that they’re incapable of education and holding down a steady job, it’s just that they don’t have to do those things to eek by in life. Like their parents before them, they leave selfish lives full of self-gratification and little achievement while the government subsidizes them.

We can give these people all the opportunities in the world, but it isn’t going to make a lick of difference until there are some real consequences for cashing in on those opportunities. The safety net needs to be taken out from under the Indians. The reservation system needs to end. The cradle-to-grave entitlements need to end. The time of tough love needs to begin, because that’s the only way things are going to get better on these reservations.
Our government has tried to take care of the Indians for decades now, and all it has resulted in is rampant crime, rampant unemployment, rampant substance abuse and poverty.  It is cruel to perpetuate the current system simply because the idea of removing assistance from these people seems cruel.  What is cruel is putting them in a situation where there is no impetus to succeed. Now is the time to shift the responsibility for making it in the world to the Indians themselves. Not only to help them, but also to end the mean charade of the status quo.