The new Trail of Tears

the long version

"If you want to know why American Indians have the highest rates of poverty of any racial group, why suicide is the leading cause of death among Indian men, why native women are two and a half times more likely to be raped than the national average and why gang violence affects American Indian youth more than any other group, do not look to history. There is no doubt that white settlers devastated Indian communities in the 19th, and early 20th centuries. But it is our policies today of denying Indians ownership of their land, refusing them access to the free market and failing to provide the police and legal protections due to them as American citizens that have turned reservations into small third-world countries in the middle of the richest and freest nation on earth."--