This sounds very much like "racism of low expectations". "These people" are just as self-sufficient as any other group of modern people of similar socioeconomic background. It's been 100+ years since they were mistreated in any serious fashion.
I come from eastern Europe and 150 years ago most of my ancestors were serfs, only a rung or two above chattel slaves on the ladder of human condition. If someone seriously suggested that well, what do you expect of these poor chaps, serfdom and all, I think I'd get quite upset.
Just food for thought about how both your phrasing and implications of what you're saying might seem to people who aren't from your background.
History is not fair but your actions yesterday determine your life today and your actions today determine your future. It is extremely damaging to sustain this culture of of course your life is shit because of what happened hundreds of years ago, nothing you can do
https://www.npr.org/2022/02/18/1081872135/native-americans-p...
Or the US government's uranium mining on Navajo land continuing to poison people today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_and_the_Navajo_...
For example, these populations have to be spread across massive ranges of completely worthless land, making infrastructure extremely inefficient even in scenarios where they have the financial means to invest in it whatsoever (which is also rare for all the same reasons^)
They gave that as an example in response to the claim that the abuse of natives is historical and not actively happening. While it is not directly damage done to the occupants of Pine Ridge, it does demonstrate that the sort of injustices that destroy native communities are still occurring.
You cannot really compare the successful genocide natives in NA to being poor in Europe.
50 years ago a lot of their descendants in the Eastern Bloc countries were probably still in that condition or in the USSR factory worker equivalent.
I think that many just don't know how widespread, deeply ingrained and recent much of this was - they think there was slavery, a bit of racism hanging around and then (in the USA at least) the civil rights act sorted things out and made everything equal. And that's really similar in nature to the comment you replied to - people have picked up a simplified and wrong version of history of Warsaw Pact countries and they're just a bit ignorant of the truth.
In the USSR, peasants were essentially serfs. They only got internal passports in the 1960s and 1970s, and without those they could not leave the village without permission. They worked for a state collective farm, most of their pay came in just counting the "labour-days" they contributed - a totally self-containbed, essentially prison-like economic system.
So yes, I agree, I originally brought up serfs as being something from 150 years ago, but it was more like 50-60 years ago.
It's not quite life-on-the-reservation out there, but it's not far from it.
They were never any good, and as soon as the planned economy stopped pouring money and work/busy-work into those areas, they all went straight to shit.
I live in Denver, with a very large Native population, and many still remember being taken from their families and being forced to speak English, while the rest of the country experience the affluence boom of the suburbs and such. Acknowledging that recent history isn’t controversial in those communities.
This is just patently untrue. Land is still being stolen, programs to help Indigenous people are still being cut. I dont think people realize how close our history actually is. There were still nearly 10,000 children in Native American residential schools as of 2007. The height of them ended in the 70s, which is barely 50 years away. Thats quite literally the parents of modern day teenagers and young adults.
These schools have absolutely decimated the population and culture of indigenous people.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_boarding_schoo....
The last residential school (Where native children would be kidnapped into, to have the Indian, quite literally, beaten out of them) in Canada closed in 1998.