Conquered by Dependency

Suppose you were an evil genius who decided to create a permanent underclass out of a particular race. What provisions would you make to ensure that they remained permanently poor and outcast?

Here are some ideas. First, physically separate them from the rest of the population. Give them room to live, but make sure the land is not owned by individuals who could grow their net worth but by the collective, each tribe with its own sovereign government within the national government.

Encourage economic dependency by supplying them with lots of free stuff, some available only to them. Create a bureaucracy to manage the financial affairs of only this particular race. Grant them special privileges exclusive to their race, such as the right to operate certain businesses, but again on the condition that the ownership is by the collective.

Finally, emphasize the history of oppression this selected race has experienced and how the guilty oppressors owe them these “favors” in perpetuity.

If you’ve deduced that this roughly describes the treatment whites accorded to American Indians, that’s because it does. We all know the story of how this came about. When Europeans settled the New World, the clash of civilizations often wasn’t pretty.

Yes, there were atrocities on both sides, and it probably was historically inevitable that the more technically advanced culture would prevail. Nevertheless, our treatment of the indigenous populations can never be totally defended.

In a better world, when the fighting finally ended, we would have worked out a sharing arrangement where both sides would have enjoyed equal citizenship rights and responsibilities. We would all have had the right to participate in the religious and social structures of our choosing, with no special legal status belonging to any group.

In short, we could all be Americans, a blessing sought after around the world.

That’s not what happened, of course. Instead, in the words of an 1881 Supreme Court ruling, the tribes were fashioned into separate “domestic independent nations” with a relationship like “that of a ward to his guardian.” The federal government began management of the land use and title management for millions of acres in Indian country.

Moreover, the government to a large extent assumed responsibility for the care and upkeep of these territories, including everything from schools and medical care to infrastructure projects and routine maintenance on reservations.

The result in hindsight was predictable. American Indians, no surprise, did not become the first group ever to achieve prosperity through welfare benefits. Instead, of all the racial minority groups in America, they today have the lowest average income, despite, or maybe because of, receiving the most economic aid from government.

In fact, of all our ethnic groups, the less access historically to entitlements they have received, the more wealthy they have become.

Also unsurprisingly, the federal government has done a notoriously terrible job of overseeing Indian economic affairs. For example, sixty-six million acres of land are held in trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), presumably to be managed for the Indians’ benefit. Yet the lands have produced minimal profits for the tribes.

The reservation lands contain abundant uranium, coal and gas reserves. Still, Senate hearings concluded that only two million of the fifteen million acres of energy reserves have been developed, leaving $1.5 trillion in underground resources untapped.

BIA rules or “white tape” often result in stricter regulations for tribes than for others. The result is that up to 49 steps can be required to obtain an oil lease in Indian country that requires four elsewhere. Excessive regulation also explains why valuable farmland is often left unused.

Before the European conquest, American Indians operated self-governing states in which they were “strong, self-sufficient, self-initiating, independent, powerful individuals,” according to an historian of the period. Now they’re trapped in a no-man’s land between citizenship and status as wards of the state. Worse, after living under these conditions, many Indians themselves have now developed the habits of chronic dependency.

Some sympathetic observers call for more effective supervision of Indian affairs. But bureaucracies are notoriously resistant to reform. Let’s work instead to achieve for our countrymen full status as free Americans.