Today, I’m going to build off last week’s blog and write more about the research I did on Native Americans this week. As a quick review, last week I went over how Native Americans struggle to gain access to basic resources like water. At the same time, Natives don’t have the power to get out of the situation they’ve been put into. Often, companies will prey on existing weaknesses within a reservation (like access to clean water) in order to secure long-term access to the land which would perpetuate the harm faced by these communities. After last week, I wanted to look more at how things were allowed to stay so bad for Native Americans despite modern laws, their sovereignty, and almost 300 years of development. More than that, I wanted to research what was preventing them from moving forward.
Arizona Central, a local news reporting agency described how Natives are kept in their terrible situations. They analyzed a state report where they found that the additional impacts of the covid-19 pandemic would alone cost 6.7 billion to just get clean water to native reservations. During national crises, Natives in particular were left behind as people struggled to get through.
The new article went on to describe how even in a zoomed-out larger-scale picture, Native Americans face ongoing discrimination in access to basic services like healthcare, education, and clean water. Many Native American communities are located in rural or remote areas that lack adequate infrastructure, and they often struggle to get the resources they need to provide these services to their people. The history of forced relocation and the establishment of reservations in areas that were unsuitable for agriculture or other forms of economic activity has contributed to the poverty and lack of resources that many Native Americans face today.
One of the most concerning parallels between modern America and the historical treatment of Native Americans is the ongoing threat of violence and abuse. Native American women are disproportionately likely to experience sexual violence and domestic abuse, and these crimes are often committed by non-Native Americans who know that they can act with impunity due to jurisdictional loopholes in federal law. This echoes a long history of violence against Native American women, from the systemic rape and sexual abuse that occurred at boarding schools to the widespread sexual exploitation of Native American women by traders and other outsiders.
These loopholes in federal laws are what leave Native Americans so vulnerable because they don’t have access to the same checks and balances as the rest of the country. An article from the Atlantic explained how in 1978, the Supreme Court case Oliphant v. Suquamish stripped tribes of the right to arrest and prosecute non-Indians who commit crimes on Indian land. Court cases like this took power away from tribal courts. At the same time, 39% of cases have been declined in federal courts. Furthermore, for the cases that DID get into courts — In 2011, the U.S. Justice Department did not prosecute 65 percent of rape cases reported on reservations. Right now, no one is being held accountable.
The other key issue Natives face is disaffection from the political system. Even as they face injustices, their pathways to correcting them are limited as they don’t trust the political process.
The National Council for Historical Education explains that “Native Americans today are unwilling to accept or trust the platitudes of western legislators or even Supreme Court justices because they can’t completely reverse the exploitation and pain on reservation land. For many Native American communities, the first step is just gaining access to drinking water.”
This disaffection has meant that millions of Natives don’t vote. The Native American Voting Rights Coalition conducted a series of field hearings in seven states and their report found that of the 4.7 million of voting age only 66 percent of those eligible to vote are registered, leaving over 1.5 million Native people unregistered. Throughout the report, “Native Americans expressed their distrust in the political system, describing the traumatic relationship Native Americans continue to have with these governments. Antipathy and distrust persist because of past and ongoing actions that discriminate against Natives.”
There are also many efforts underway to address the structural inequalities that Native Americans face. The Indian Health Service is working to improve healthcare access for Native Americans, and there are a growing number of Native American-led organizations and initiatives that are focused on improving educational outcomes, promoting economic development, and protecting the environment. At the same time, these issues should have been solved decades ago, and if nothing has been done in the past it makes you wonder what will happen in the future.
Prior to reading this post, I find the way you’ve covered this topic in the past to be thought-provoking and unique. I liked that you took a book that everyone read for AP Literature and turned it into a learning opportunity for yourself and other people to dig deeper into the issues that affect the Native American and Indigenous community and its effects that still linger in the present day. From your last post, the way you dug into this topic was interesting and made me want to read more about this topic, so I came to this post with some ideas and expectations. First, I like how you focused on different aspects of the inequalities many Native Americans face, notably the issues within the legal system that allow these issue to persist and cause additional harm. Your format of introducing this side of the problem through local sources such as Arizona Central help give it a closer connection and perspective to the issue at hand. It is pretty disheartening to learn from this post that not only do these issues still persist today but also how some actions in the past, such as the court case, was used to weaken the power that the Native Americans had within their tribal lands. I liked how you progressed in this post from introducing and explaining the factors that perpetuate inequality to the effects and implications it has on the community as a whole. It is also very unfortunate that these inequalities caused a sense of apathy and distrust amongst individuals, especially in the low proportion of Native Americans that are eligible to vote. The ideals of regularly participating in elections for leaders that would work for the community is an ideal that we all seem to take granted. Hopefully, people both within and outside the Native American community can take action to address these issues in the legal system. While it would not get rid of the inequalities overnight, it would be a key step in the right direction for the betterment of our society.
Hey Varun. This was a nice piece to read and you provide an intriguing display of the issue you discuss. The situation is simply not right, and one which has gone back to our country’s birth. Unlike other issues in this country, I feel that the Native American situation is focused on less. I could be incorrect, however much of the obvious and very clear unfairness to the Native Americans is overlooked. I think the most intriguing part of our writing was when you describe the lack of affection between the government and Native Americans. This ultimately leads to lack of voting from these groups of people, showing a clear disconnect in relationships. However, especially in the last few years with so much more representation and empathy for people of other groups, there is still hope for this issue, as you point towards as well. Nice writing.