Enduring Malign Neglect

There are many examples of misplaced priorities and distorted values emanating from Congress and the White House, but due to their peculiar history, the disaster unfolding on South Dakota Indian reservations deserves special mention. Still without electricity and water, thousands of families have now endured two months of bitter cold temperatures without heat. Food supplies for the most impoverished people in the United States are also dangerously low.

When there was gold to steal in the Black Hills, the US government had no trouble mobilizing troops to the sacred lands of the Sioux. When the Lakota tried to free themselves from the colonial oppression of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the US government did not miss a beat in sending the army and federal police to quell their democratic aspirations. But now that the Sioux have been subdued to a condition akin to Gaza, what is there to gain from continuing official malign neglect?

The Sioux have paid many times over for defeating the US Seventh Cavalry. Maybe it’s time the United States paid for what it has done to them since then.