Although the resources endowing American Indian treaty territories have always been sufficient to make native people by far the wealthiest sector of the North American population, they have instead existed for generations as the very poorest. According to the federal government's own statistics, Indians receive the lowest per capita income of any group on the continent. Their unemployment rate is far and away the highest, year in, year out. Correspondingly, the suffer—by significant margins—the highest rates of malnutrition, infant mortality, death by exposure, tuberculosis, plague disease, and teen suicide. The average life expectancy of a reservation-based American Indian man is presently 44.6 years; a native woman may expect to live less than three years longer. "Meanwhile, to select but one example among thousands, the Homestake Mining Corporation alone has taken more than $14 billion in gold from only one mine in the Black Hills of South Dakota, squarely in the middle of the treaty territory of the Lakota Nation. It takes no Einstein to discern the relationship between this sort of wealth flowing into the economy of the U.S. occupiers on the one hand, and the abject poverty of the Lakota people on the other. The same situation prevails throughout Indian Country. This sort of thing has been going on for a very long time now, and it hardly seems wild-eyed to suggest that some very serious pay-back is long overdue." excerpt from Since Predator Came Labeled "controversial" by politicians and pundits alike, Ward Churchill's scholarship endures the test of time. Rational, angry, yet ultimately hopeful, his is a leading voice against the ongoing genocide perpetrated on Native American peoples. Intellectually cogent while remaining accessible to the general reader, the eighteen essays herein will challenge you to think, and then act, in the fight for justice waged since Columbus' arrival.
Author: Ward Churchill
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781904859444
Size: 424 pages
Publisher: AK Press
Year: 2005