Dear Editor:
In response to Bill Jones
‚ LETTER to the EDITOR published last FRIDAY (boy, he sure likes
the cap key on his typewriter, doesn’t he – seems to use it almost
at random), please allow me to state for the record how much I
appreciate his standing up to defend the culture and history of the
Native American population.
Dear Editor:
In response to Bill Jones‚ LETTER to the EDITOR published last FRIDAY (boy, he sure likes the cap key on his typewriter, doesn’t he – seems to use it almost at random), please allow me to state for the record how much I appreciate his standing up to defend the culture and history of the Native American population. However, nothing he says was SURPRISING, much less SHOCKING to me, as his information is a matter of COMMON KNOWLEDGE. The REAL story of Indian/European relations in California is a topic I never even came close to in the column with which Mr. Jones has such a PROBLEM. In fact, the only reason I’m responding at all is to correct his thoroughly erroneous attempt to lump me in with the group he vaguely describes as SOME PEOPLE to whom the idea of “a rich American Indian is infuriating.” As he so often does in his undisguised zeal to make some sort of point, Mr. Jones throws a lot of cherry-picked information into a Cuisinart and hits the “puree” button; what comes out bears little relation to what went in.
In the land of my youth, western New York, we shared the territory with a number of Native American tribes – primarily Iroquois and Algonquin, a significant proportion of whom were steelworkers specializing in what was called “high steel,” meaning they were the ones who constructed the superstructures of tall buildings. As members of a strong union working a highly dangerous job these skilled craftsmen were paid top dollar; they lived in beautiful homes, drove new cars, and were widely respected by the community as the local fellows without whom those fancy folks down in New York City couldn’t get their skyscrapers built. I never saw or heard anyone becoming mildly annoyed, much less infuriated, that a local Native American was making a lot of money.
To the extent my column disclosed a PROBLEM, Mr. Jones, it was with the superficially thought-out federal scheme to rectify our historical robbery of the indigenous population by handing them special entry into an inherently dubious industry as though to say, “Here, go get rich – now we’re square.” No one thought to deal in advance with such issues as “what constitutes a tribe and who gets to be in it” or “how do we define tribal lands” or “if the casino is actually financed, built, and run by Indonesian businessmen who take 70 percent of the revenues off the top is it really Indian gaming?” Some Native Americans have undoubtedly been helped, but the policy is so fraught with inequities, arbitrary rules, and opportunities for corruption that a great many have gained absolutely nothing, while a group of wily non-Indians skilled in playing the system are making out like bandits.
So Mr. Jones, I humbly suggest that in your next polemic you first take the trouble to understand what it is that you oppose, lest your BLEEDING HEART once again miss its mark by a COUNTRY MILE.
Robert B. Mitchell,
Morgan Hill
Submitted Monday, Nov. 10 to ed****@****ic.com
