The road to Hell is paved with good intentions

I was speaking with my sister about a friend of hers, who belongs to the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, in Oregon, although he does not live in tribal land.  He’s a recovering alcoholic, and lives a fairly marginal existence.  Sadly, his is not a unique experience for Native Americans.  Statistics for the United States’ Indian populations are depressing.  Those who live on reservations are poorer, less educated, less unhealthy, and more drug and alcohol addicted than the average American who does not live on a reservation.  The reservations, although technically sovereign, are really federal appendages.  Each is a mini-welfare state.  The residents get to preserve their tribal identification and a few of their rituals (as long as they don’t violate federal law), but otherwise, barring those few who have gotten rich from oil or gambling money, these are rural ghettos.

The thing about these ghettos is that they are well-intended.  We, the beneficent Americans, having taken over the land the Native Americans once freely roamed, have “generously” given back to them small slices of land.  Full reparations are impossible.  There’s no way America can return the entire continent to the Native Americans.  But I wonder if government created ghettos are a blessing or a curse.  Would it have been better for the Native Americans if America had shown less conscience and, through passivity, rather than government love, forced the Native Americans to assimilate completely, rather than partially, into America.  Maybe if that had happened, there’d be more Elizabeth Warrens (taking her tribal identity at face value), and fewer of my sister’s rather pathetic friends.

The same holds true for the Palestinians.  When UNWRA was first created, it was an effort to give a modern twist to the refugee problem.  The UN wasn’t going to let “a people” vanish (never mind that these people had historically just been Jordanians, and never mind that Jordan hadn’t existed before but was just Trans-Jordan, and never mind that Trans-Jordan hadn’t existed….).  It was going to do something useful with them.  Instead, it created a people who would rather drink dirt than work with their neighbors.

This is an inchoate, ill-developed post.  I’ve got to run, but I thought I’d throw this idea out here, and see if you all can either refute it (and it may well deserve to be refuted) or develop it further.