MOTIVATING FACTORS At least five major factors motivate anti-Indian groups. The first is the call for “equal rights for whites”—the argument that the increased legal powers and jurisdiction of tribes infringes on the liberties or private property rights of non-Indian residents on and off the reservations. The use of civil rights imagery can reach such lengths that whites are described as oppressed individuals victimized by “Red Apartheid,” and the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is invoked in support of an agenda to roll back Native rights. The second factor is access to natural resources, such as fish, game, land, and water. Treaty rights guarantee some tribes access to resources on their ceded lands outside their reservations. Anti-treaty activists assert that no citizens should have “special rights” to use natural resources (even though non-Indians also can retain property use rights over land that they sell). Natural resource interests oppose sovereignty when it enables tribes to block projects—such as mines or dams—that may harm treaty resources. The third factor is cultural superiority, which can be exhibited in sports team logos and mascots, the excavation of mounds and burial sites, disrespect of sacred objects, or efforts to restrict Native languages. Native objections to these practices often provoke strong accusations of “political correctness.” The very existence of an enduring non-Western belief system, rooted in the middle of the most powerful Western country, is seen as a fundamental problem. The fourth factor is outright racism, including not only slurs and violent harassment, but also the belief that Indians are unfit to govern themselves, and are merely recipients of government hand-outs (or passive pawns in government conspiracies). Anti-Indian groups accuse Native people who appear white or African American of using their “blood quantum” only to obtain financial benefits. Most anti-Indian activists deny any trace of racism; their more subtle approach is to romanticize past Indian cultures and compare them to modern Natives who have adapted to Western technologies, presenting Native peoples as “authentic” only if they are frozen in the past, rather than living, dynamic cultures that incorporate outside cultural elements. The fifth factor is economic dependency. In a rural reflection of the “Welfare Cadillac” myth, reservation Indians are said to wallow in food stamps, free housing and medical care, and huge federal cash payments—all tax-free. (No one has to pay state sales tax on reservations, but otherwise Indians have had virtually identical tax obligations as non-Indians.) The anti-Indian groups condemn tribes if they are poor, but also if they try to pull out of poverty through economic self-reliance, such as gaming.-find.galegroup/gic/infomark.do?&contentSet=EBKS&idigest=a1246e79a84f851714ff24bc5fffc137&type=retrieve&tabID=T001&prodId=GIC&docId=CX2831200037&source=gale&userGroupName=mtbakerjrhs&version=1.0
Posted on: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 22:47:57 +0000
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