What? are Native Americans, not talkable aboutable? Where do Trump and Clinton stand on Native issues?
We dont know. News media as usual keeps running film loops of mockery in presidential debates, pushing that the rehearsed put downs of Reagan, Kennedy, Ford, and others are somehow the height of true debate, and elections. They are not. Not even close. They are diversions from the real issues our nation needs answers to. For weeks, media touts carnival. Side show. Open mic night at the local saloon.
Im mad as hell about media trivializing the most important election of our time. Surely mainstream media has forgotten who contributed flesh and blood, death and dying and maiming of brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, to WWII, Korea, VietNam, Gulf, Falklands, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan– not to mention the huge death tolls of children, pregnant mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandmothers, grandfathers in the war zones.
And yet media breathlessly hangs the latest red herring on their line for us to salute. Im not saluting. Asks absurdist questions instead of questions of depth of candidates that will effect not just our world/nation, but the ENTIRE world, all nations. And First Nations, in particular.
1. I’d like the answer to this: What are the candidates’ plans re what plans are in place and planned re Native American groups protesting the oil pipeline being put under a major clean water source?
2. And answer this also while you’re at it: what does each candidate think truly about a big oil corp digging into burial grounds? Do we just think it would be ok if we who carry NA blood dug up a Catholic cemetery, say for instance? A holocaust cemetery? The National Cemetery, would that be just fine?
Would it be fine to come run an abject black poison river underneath the highly capillaried water tables just under municipal water supplies across the nation, especially those in upscale hoods? That would be alright as a national project so all human beings were endangered from oil spill water pollution equally?
3. I grew up on the Great Lakes where oil tankers sank, leaving for GENERATIONS, huge black tar gobbets of black oil clots in the beige sandy bottom and on the once beautiful beaches, despoiling the water, the sands, the marine life, the fish, and the children and people who came to try to walk down the beach, or swim. KEROSENE was the only thing that could remove that black gunk from the skin. Water, skin, beach, lake floors polluted for miles and miles, flowing then into rivers that flowed into streams that flowed into fields and farms and gardens. Answer THAT this will NOT happen again!! That big money corp will NOT again harm the innocent people who fish for food, who love the land as Mother, who only take as much as needed, not at much as one CAN.
4. I’d like to know too how much money each candidate plans will be allocated to NA tribal people from the Feds EACH YEAR in coming years. Mark Fogarty writes in Indian Country Today in October 2015 that the Fed budget for Native people “… comes to about $20 billion a year, give or take a few hundred million dollars, a document from the Department of the Interior shows…”
5. How is Trump the ‘fiscal conservative’ going to allocate 20 BILLION dollars a year, and more and more needed each year and still and yet, for Native budget yearly? And Clinton, same question.
TWENTY BILLION IS A HUGE AMOUNT OF MONEY AND NOT EVEN HALF THE MONEY NEEDED for Natives.
Where is the discourse on this? Why is this NOT on Face the fn Nation. Nation, which nation? Only the Nation that disincluded Native people. What about the TRIBAL NATIONS? Where is the discourse, the dialog, the PLANS>
I havent even gotten into what are candidates’ plans for HEAD START, children’s nutrition programs so they CAN stay awake during school, EDUCATION for all that actually educates instead of forcing rote c down student’s throats and asking them to purge it back up. There’s more, all sorely needed by all those of our nation who struggle horribly. No homes, no shelter from heat and cold, no clean water, no safe place to shelter. What about them?
How is it we NEVER hear from media in any depth whatsoever, about what will help the poor, the struggling, the sick, the mentally ill, the addicted, those dearly wanting education… all persons worthy of receiving aid in order to thrive for they were NOT born into advantage of any kind. While we’re at it, when will we hear about the abject poverty of people of Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, Alabama, and every other state and ‘possession’ of the USA. And while we’re at it, let’s do away with the entire idea that any nation of persons is a “USA possession.” That is insulting, and diminishing of the very people who live, work and strive there.
Mark Fogarty again: “…Which federal agency allocates the most assistance to tribes? The Bureau of Indian Affairs? Not even close. The Department of Health and Human Services spends more than twice as much assistance as the whole Department of the Interior, which includes the BIA.The President’s request for HHS Native assistance for 2015 was $6.7 billion, also up about five percent from 2014. DOI came to $3.2 billion, up a modest 2.5 percent from 2014.
The Department of Education was second to HHS, with $5.6 billion slated to go to tribes and tribal communities. That’s an increase of about four percent from 2014. DOI was third, including $2.6 billion for BIA. The only other agency with more than copy billion in Native assistance was the Department of Agriculture, at copy.8 billion.
Looking at individual programs within those agencies, the Indian Health Service was slated for $5.8 billion, a four percent increase. Next largest was a puzzling “other” amount “for indirect support,” $4.5 billion for the Department of Education…”
As we see, the budget for Native people increases and needs to keep increasing every year. With Trump and Clinton, how can it be that such a huge and needed appropriation to the tribes does not show on their radar. If it were a group of African Americans receiving reparation payments yearly, would such a multi-billion dollar budget be discussed? If it were a group of Japanese Americans who were incarcerated and their lush farmlands and homes stolen from them? If they were yearly being compensated, would the subject EVER arise in media?
Or would we continue to hear BILLIONS of dollars of free publicity for the Clown Show on all media. Rather than billions from the Feds for those in needs of many kinds, those threatened in way of life, in food scarcity, in educational needs, health needs.
There is a saying in my father’s family. He was the headsman of his family and I heard him say a thousand times about our immigrant and refugee family slaughtered in war… “War mongers make people invisible so that it is nothing to starve and kill them.”
Why and how do the candidates who want to be President of this nation, make a huge group of people invisible? And what are their plans to NOT starve huge groups of persons, to NOT kill them by going all white-eyed and unconscious along with MSM over touting the latest clown show, the freak of the week show, calling mockery ‘debate’… favoring wink wink corporate lust over the true hearts and needs of true human beings?
Where are Native Americans in dignity, on the map of the candidates, not to mention the MSM?
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/10/09/20-billion-total-us-support-american-indians-162020