Native Americans have been on the short end of a stick for centuries now, and our current Government is only making matters worse. The Federal Government is mistreating Native Americans at the border. Immigration, Customs & Enforcement (ICE) officers are arresting Native Americans at border on their land. The Native Americans need sustained financial resources invested into their communities, and the Feds are looking the other way. The Tohono O'odham Nation, a Native American reservation on Arizona border, is the home of the Shadow Wolves, a team of American Indians who stalk drug smugglers on the remote reservation along the U.S.-Mexico border. The Native Americans' homes are crumbling, and there are other reservations like this in America.
The real problem is the poverty on the reservation, because of the United States and Mexico taking the Native Americans' land, and not paying them reparations for what they have done to them. They've put them on reservations that are just a small part of their original lands. The drug cartels will pay $10,000 for a 2 hour drive of a drug shipment, which is what someone in the reservation can make in an entire year working an honest job. Drug cartels are offering to pay Native Americans due to their poverty on the reservation, to shuttle drugs for them, and they get caught. They have a casino on their reservation, but more than 40% on the reservation live below the poverty line, inside America. One casino isn't enough. In March, 30,000 Fentanyl pills were seized on the reservation. That's enough to kill thousands of Americans.
Reparations for Native Americans
How could reparations not be on the table, with the Shadow Wolves policing their own land - saving countless American lives, while they live in some of the lowest poverty levels in America. Cartels also target migrants that don't have money to pay for coyotes. They have no other option to get across the border but to smuggle drugs. Police use vehicles filled with drugs with a kill switch, to trick Native Americans into taking the vehicle with the drugs to some location they think is for the cartel, but then they use the kill switch to cut off the gas to the vehicle and arrest them. We need to provide them basic services, like the Internet, cable television, 911, running water, police officers, and build them shelters to live in, so they don't fall into the Catch-22 of the drug cartels. They've literally all been victims of violence, or sexual violence in their lifetimes.
If Patrick R. McElhiney is ever elected to public office, he will fight for the rights of the Native Americans - because they are American citizens, and we owe it to them after hundreds of years of repression by the White man. Reparations will benefit all Native Americans, including the Tohono O'odham Nation!
Unauthorized Uses of Slogans, Tribe Names, and Symbols
There should be Federal legislation to ban the public from unauthorized uses of Native American slogans, tribe names, and symbols in advertising and the Media. It isn't fair that we took their land, and it isn't fair that people are now trying to take their stories and Intellectual Property. We need to protect the Native Americans, not disenfranchise them.
