My wife is a Seneca indian so I have heard many sides to the issue. One point that seldom gets reported is that many natives are in favor of such things because they keep alive some form of native awareness and culture.

Indeed, I’ve heard the same thing from other people of Native American descent. Anyway, the Seminole nation has a very good relationship with Florida State and has rebuffed any attempts at sanction. In part that’s because FSU has made an effort to reach out.

The NCAA was way out of bounds in their action. The U of I board of directors went around several referendums which were 80/20 in favor of the Chief. If we live in a democracy, then we live in a democracy. Cantor’s dealing with the Swanland takeover was nothing short of disgusting. Every thing about the issue was misused by one side or the other.

My wife is a Seneca indian so I have heard many sides to the issue. One point that seldom gets reported is that many natives are in favor of such things because they keep alive some form of native awareness and culture. Yes the Westward expansion Indian policy was flawed. But you should sometimes hear the stories of what the native Americans did to each other.

In the early colonialization of India, the British wanted only to have a stable trade relationship. The warring factions of the principalities disrupted that trade and the British found themselves pacifying larger and larger tracts until they were the de facto rulers of India.

I thing something similar happened in the Indian resettlement effort. The initial thinking was that the Indian culture needed to be preserved, thus giving a moral justification for the atrocities involved in resettlement implementation. The biggest problem for the tribes was believing Washington. A problem we still have today, I might add.

If I were a “resettled” native, I would be dead, because there would be no way I would be giving up my land because of some damn treaty.