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O'siyo Brothers and Sister!
Please set aside your prejudices and
preconceived notions for a moment, and take a journey with me.
You are a young man or woman with a decent education, but in a place of
grinding poverty and oppression. Daily, you toil in some menial task
simply to put a bit of bread on the table, and your sleep is from sheer
exhaustion. You have zero hope for the future if you stay where you are,
except an early death. Even that might be preferred to other "options",
like conscription in a military you cannot support in your own mind, or
prison like many of your neighbors and former schoolmates.
You learn there is real opportunity in another country called the United
States. One route to this opportunity, illegal entry, is
incredibly risky. You decide to take the risk. You pay a "contractor"
every cent you have plus all you can borrow. This buys you a dangerous,
miserable journey. If you fall on the trail or become too ill from the
heat and vileness of the broiling boxcar or truck, you know you will be
abandoned and left to die. If you survive, you and the other survivors
are handed over to a "coyote" who has agreed to smuggle you from the
border you just crossed to the border you hope to cross.
Once in the United States, by working jobs no one else wants, for less
than anyone else will accept, you realize there is hope and opportunity.
In spite of the jobs and pay, it really is a better life than what you
left.
The other source of entry is via a green card. The problem is that this
is a limited solution. You hoped to earn and save enough to send support
to your family back home and to have a decent life when you must return.
You also discover opportunity, but as your time to return nears, the
family you left behind writes to tell you that you dare not return home.
Rather than check in with your green card and head back home you go into
illegal alien status just like those who bartered their lives with the
coyotes.
You still have opportunity. You marry. You have a child that is now
something you are not - a U S citizen. Besides the joy this brings,
there is also palpable fear. If you get caught, and you know the INS is
very busy trying to insure you and your spouse (if not a US citizen)
will be caught, and you are deported, your baby can and will be legally
kidnapped by the U.S. and handed off to foster care services. Aside from
the emotional wounds inflicted on both parents and children, you fear
for their future. It is true, there are decent foster parents, but I can
count on one hand the number of Indians that found these good foster
parents and a brown child will fare no better.
Ah, but you hear you can join an Indian Tribe and your problems are
solved. You ask a few real Indians, and they tell you this is not so.
You must have decendancy or blood proof of your right to be a member of
a tribal nation. Still, you hear the whispers and desperation makes you
believe what you so very much want to believe. Once again, you pay some
"tribal agent" every penny you own plus all you can borrow to become a
member of an Indian Tribe. Mr. "tribal agent" has promised you you will
now become a U S citizen by virtue of your tribal citizenship. After
all, he did point out most people from your country have some tribal
ancestry, so it's no big deal.
Mr. "Tribal Agent", you are the scum of the earth preying on the
desperate needs of decent human beings. You are also the reason I firmly
believe there is a hell for bastards like you.
As for the so-called tribes that support these schemes, I have only
contempt. Where is the honor in victimizing desperate people? And to
what end? Money? If you're so assimilated that these dollars matter more
than honor, why bother pretending to be Native? Could it be a notion
that establishing the right to adopt immigrants will somehow prove the
tribe's sovereignty? Not only is that unlikely to ever happen, the very
attempt lessens the respect and credibility that might be afforded any
group seeking legitimacy as a Native nation.
Dohiyi Ani Oginalii
Gary Smith (*,*)
wotanging@bellsouth.net
P. O. Box 672168 (`-') gars@nanews.org
Marietta, GA 30006, U.S.A. ===w=w===
http://www.nanews.org
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"The Nation is very accommodating to the
efforts to try and secure the border."
"But you can't do that without coming to the people and asking, 'This is
what we would like to do, and these are our thoughts.'"
"Unfortunately, sometimes the mentality or the attitude is you're a
federal reserve, and we are the federal government, and we're going to
do whatever we need to do."
"We are saying: You can't operate that way. We are not going to allow
that to happen here." -- Ned Norris Jr., Chairman Tohono O'odham Nation |