Joe Rigert

The Dependency Curse Joe Rigert

It's an oft-told story of Native Americans: conquered by invading white Europeans, deprived of their land and forced to live on scattered reservation ghettos, reduced to lives of poverty and endemic social problems. But there is another side to that story. It's a story, first, of their incredible resilience in decades of separation and isolation. But it is also a story of wars among native tribes, of the taking of slaves, the building of native empires, and then, in the wake of their defeat by the Europeans, dependence on government and now-most recently-on the riches of casino gambling. Now, some native leaders contend that these dependencies may be a major cause of their alcoholism, suicides, domestic violence, child neglect, and so many other problems. Journalist Joe Rigert tells that unusual story of the bitter fruits of a dependence that leads to a lack of self worth and initiative, that is causing more and more natives to flee their reservations to live in the mainstream of society, seeking jobs and a better life. In this barely noticed migration, two-thirds of the natives have moved to the cities, rivaling the long-ago migration of black Americans from the South to the North. Rigert's account focuses on the small Klamath Tribes of Oregon, independent for a while and now dependent again, by their choice, on government benefits, and by comparison, the Mdewakanton Sioux of Minnesota, a tribe also suffering from dependency, in their case dependence on casino gambling that makes them all millionaires who don't need to work, and don't work, to their own tragic detriment. Rigert shows how the problems of these two tribes are indicative of the social pathology, as a native scholar put it, found among so many members of the 560 tribes of America. It's a seminal story never told before.