I am not an Indian, but I live in the center of the Navajo reservation, on the campus of the tribal college the tribe established in 1968. (Tsaile is anglicized from a word referring to the place where water enters Canyon de Chelly.)
When I am here, I am in a distinct minority and, after 3 years here, still a learner. When I visit Albuquerque, a city of roughly half a million, I am part of a large majority and among people whose knowledge of the Navajo Nation is generally such the I feel I stand out as a virtual expert, which is actually sad.
As a progressive, politically-oriented person, I see a need for comment from this perspective. My impression is that progressives, particularly as represented by blog comments, are deplorably unaware of why Indians are vitally relevant to a progressive vision of the future. The Democratic Party seems remote and uninterested, but the county I live in votes Democratic despite this. There is a grassroots networking through families and clans here that precinct level activists anywhere else would envy if they knew about it.
The Iraq War is recognizeable from this locality as the same colonialism as that at work in the nineteenth century, and no different from that initiated by Columbus. You see pride in veterans mainly because it is a way out of poverty and a way of gaining respect for Indian people. Men who fought in World War II came home to a country where they couldn't vote and for whom, as residents of a reservation, the Bill of Rights were not in effect. This was a main argument for Indian suffrage.
Republican policies disrespect social justice needs generally made worse or promulgated by holier-than-thou missionaries and bureaucrats with the BIA. Republicans do not generally seem to understand the purposes at work in the multigenerational effort to achieve real sovereignty, to bring Navajo language and cultural educaton into schools, and to support traditional religion.
The reason that the US was comfortable creating reservation land designations after the bloodbaths of the nineteenth century was that, back then, oil, coal, uranium and other resources were unknown.
When valuable resources did come into the picture, Indian people were cheated shamelessly. Royalty payments were set at rates most thieves would blush at. Thus, while coal is mined or oil is drilled on Indian lands, poverty remains. These people should have a level of economic sustenance closer to that enjoyed by Middle Eastern arabs.
Two or three generations of Indian kids have succeeded in getting through good law schools and have improved things. But much needs to be done to create a strong enough sovereignty so that the Nation can get a solid handle on economic development.
Recently the Navajo Nation showed some strength by banning uranium mining. Corporations however, are lurking around the edges looking for individual families willing to capitulate. Local memories of "doghole" mining and safety conditions reminiscent of the Roman Empire or Columbus' slave operations in the Caribean are still painful. Not only did miners develop cancer, but some of their children had genetic damage.
Beyond all that, it must be a basic progressive element that America must come to terms with, and develop respect for, Indian perspectives.
We need to be frank about the history of the holocaust and atrocity of the American past. It doesn't do any good to excuse it or deny it. The problem is to open the truth to honest public inspection, so as to address the ways racism affects our present and might be cleansed from our future.
Racism directed at Indian people is still pretty rampant. Our friends on the reservation all report how they must psyche themselves up to go to the WalMart or do other shopping in the towns and cities they must drive to. Whites just never see this.
This racism towards Indian people is at work in our prejudices towards people from the Middle East, as well as Latin and South America. It can certainly be seen in right wing demagoguery over immigration.
For America to restore itself as a beacon to other peoples of the world, America has to re-align its way of relating to other peoples in a way more consistent with the core ideals of the American Revolution. For this to happen, America has to come to terms with indigenous peoples.
Now, someone will define "indigenous" as merely meaning anyone who comes from some place. It should be obvious that Native Americans developed a unique set of cultural identities over tens of thousands of years. The issue is the ability for the immigrants to the Americas, particularly those of European descent, to recognize and respect the way indigenous people feel, thus to achieve an inclusive embrace of everyone who should have a stake in a progressive future.