Are Indian Reservations Examples Of Socialism?

I've heard different people over the years say that if you want to see the failures of socialism just look at most of the Native American reservations.

"Today, some tribes are finding ways to restore their rich heritage of self-governance and entrepreneurship to unlock the economic potential of their communities. As Lance Morgan, CEO of Ho-Chunk Inc., a $100 million Winnebago tribal corporation employing nearly 400 people puts it, “We’ve taken control of our destiny, gotten a taste of independence, and don’t plan on giving it up. Government-led economies have been a total failure. I refuse to believe the Winnebagos are Karl Marx’s last hope.”

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/aug/27/no-more-socialism-native-americans/

 

The Menominee tribe of Wisconsin seems to be one of the few tribes to develop a successful business industry. This tribe has a long history with it's lumber industry.

"But it is lumber sales that dominates the Menominee economy, accounting for around half the reservation’s economic activity. The business is run by Menominee Tribal Enterprises (MTE), a body elected by the tribe to operate commercially but sustainably."

Tree Keepers: Where Sustaining the Forest Is a Tribal Tradition

 

Yeah, look at the reservations. Every effort has been made to insure the tribes wound up with the shards of resource poor land, had their culture smashed and it’s far from over. It’s a disgraceful list from the rip off of land for a gold mine in the Rocky Boys reservation in Montana to “Legend Lake” constructed for wealthy whites during a short period of non-reservation status for Menominee County in Wisconsin. From the coal plant and uranium rip-off in the southwest to the Butte des Morts burial site outside of Oshkosh that I grew up next to. As a boyI watched a sacred burial location holding remains of 75 GENERATIONS of Ho-Chunk people and their ancestors used as a refuse pit, dug up for a gravel pit and finally a plot of McMansions.

And the casinos that have given some tribes a chance at economic independence…..every year various states try to end the Indian monopoly on gambling. Today Governor Kristy Noem was disinvited from the Oglala Reservation in South Dakota for pro Maga remarks. The ray of hope is the fact an Indian now heads the US DI. Independence yes…..not the efforts by the Washington Times, the Hoover Institute and predatory capitalism to tout Adam Smith.

 

I visited the Menominee mill about 65 years ago and it and the surrounding forests are a great example of resource management oriented to the community. Not so the rest of the surrounding lands exploited by private lumber companies. You can still see that Forest as an island on satellite photography surrounded by the results of capitalism run amok.

 

Russell Means was known for speaking on this.

 

Been reading about wind farms on Indian lands in Oklahoma.

 

There were originally six thousand tribes and, although their numbers have been severely reduced, their diversity speaks for itself. Calling them all socialists is akin to the Tea Party claiming liberals are socialists, because they support the government. Note that, most of these tribes are not even on their ancestral land, and have had to adapt to lying fucking lawyers in the Supreme Court.

 

Outside my home town a few miles, there is a tribe that lived next to the huge Tulare lake before the white men came, Including my ancestors. They fished, hunted elk, deer, antelope and lived naturally as many other tribes across the land did. The lake has been dried up for farming by large corporations, the animals are gone and when I was growing up in town in the 40 and 50s, the conditions of the tribe living on the reservation were horrendous. The place was run down and I even saw some residents driving in town without tires on their cars!! Just the wheels!! NOW: There is a quite successful casino on the reservation and each family gets a good sum of money from it. What a change. New houses, fancy cars ---all the trappings of a successful capitalist enterprise. Sometimes I wonder if in their heart of hearts they would rather live there like they did a thousand years ago.

 

I'm thinking that the socialism involving reservations is that they have been turned into "welfare states" in relation to government aid. This is what people say has kept people's lives down on reservations.

 

That is an example of where socialism works. Needles to say it will fall apart at the seams if it degenerates into communism.

 

To the original question, the answer is yes and no. In general, the lands and mineral wealth are owned by the US government, so that would indicate "yes," but that ownership is as trustee, which would point to "no." Where a named individual and his/her designated heirs are beneficiaries, this points to "no." Where a tribe or tribal council are beneficiaries of the trust, this points back to "yes."

Native Americans living on reservation lands have full rights to private property, with one huge exception. Not having individual full rights to the ownership of the land and what is below ground is a strong indicator of socialism in rights and practice. That glaring exception aside, and it's a major one, individual Native Americans living on reservation land can earn money, own businesses, and own personal property, just like Americans living off reservation land can.

For an idea of the scale of this, the US Government holds 55 million acres of surface land and 59 million acres of subsurface mineral wealth in trust. The vast majority of that conveys beneficial rights to the group, rather than to the individual.

As to the original question, if I had to come down on one side or the other, yes or no, I'd say "yes." The right to individual private ownership of real estate is fundamental to capitalism. It exists only to a very limited extent on reservation lands.

It isn't just Indian reservations. By that same measure, 8 of the 50 states in the US are socialist (both solidly red states like Wyoming and solidly blue states like California) - a majority of the land in those 8 states is publicly owned. Alaska tops the list at 95 percent. Rhode Island is the 6th bluest state in the US, but it has the highest percentage of land that is privately owned (98.5 percent). Go figure!

Taking a look at the size of the public (government) sector in the US, the country as a whole is arguably socialist. Government spending as a percentage of GDP is much larger than that of mildly-socialist countries like Germany, and the US public sector is larger even than that of the self-identified socialist country of Venezuela. The US public debt as a percentage of GDP is much larger than that of most socialist countries. It's a strong indicator that the US has trended away from capitalism and toward socialism for most of a century. US Government debt alone amounts to about $100,000 for every man, woman, and child who lives in the US. The big lie that Republican elected officials tell is that Democrats spent all that money. The big lie that Democrat elected officials tell is that the public shouldn't worry about it, because only the rich will have to pay it back.

 

Only one in well over 4,000 people actually provide jobs and cash for the rest, while the machines are steadily doing more of the work, for all of them. US politics going down the toilet altogether, is a reflection of the fact half the damn country is encouraged to hate everyone, so they always know who to blame, and who to suspect is a dirty rotten commie. The entire civilized world population and ecology are imploding, while the idiots watch the Super Bowl. According to the experts, neither socialism nor capitalism appear to be capable of surviving without the other, in any damn country in the world, while the combination is killing everything.

We need an entirely new economy, based on the laws physics, which they've been censoring, for fun and for profit.

 

I can't imagine one person having more than others in the tribe in the days days before white people came. One for all and all for one, not get all you can any way you can while some get nothing.

 

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely! But, Money Is Even Quicker Than Liquor!

 

So, how do they keep the mob out of their casino businesses? Or are they just the price of business?

 

Oh dear. Out of the frying pan into the fire.
I am sure that Eric has his views on this one.

 

It simply means academics are still debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Information theory has two categories that contradict each other, while the accepted grammar for English is self-contradictory, explaining why Donald Duck is Emperor of the World!

 

There have always been wealth differences among pre-colonial or traditional cultures depending on how they measure wealth.

In many traditional African cultures wealth is measured by cattle ownership. So there can be wealth differences based on how much cattle people owned.

There may have been something similar with Native Americans in relation to how they measured wealth in their cultures.