At what point do the “sovereign” nations hunkered down on Indian reservations have to stand on their own, paying their own way, instead of living off the confiscated wealth of another nation’s taxpayers? Isn’t that the definition of slavery? We work and they eat?

At what point can we connect a community’s failures to their cultural failures?

Well apparently not yet, at least according to Jeff Young at Newsweek, who yesterday insinuated that the attempt by President Trump’s EPA to recover the “green” slush fund dollars shoveled out by Joe Biden and company right before their blessed departure is a stunt of heartless cruelty and political betrayal.

Per Young, the decision to freeze the funds where they were has left the Indian communities, specifically the Navajo nation, “at risk” of energy blackouts, ripping away the chance at reliable energy for more than 5,000 homes on the reservation that are using generators as their main sources of power.

Oh I’m sorry, is energy infrastructure and connecting homes to the power grid a novel thing? Where have the Navajo people been for the last one hundred years while the entire West built out power plants and power lines, bringing reliable electricity to individual domiciles?

What’s so absurd though is that the Navajo nation has, for decades, supplied power via to cities across the Southwest—but somehow they couldn’t figure out how, or be bothered, to connect their own people to that same power supply. But, when Biden took control of the executive, and a bipartisan Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, thereby establishing the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, the Navajo nation received a windfall, and planned to buy solar panel systems for thousands of families who couldn’t otherwise afford them:

In a rural area with rates of poverty and joblessness well above the national average, few residents could afford to add solar on their own.

I have to ask though: Who is to blame for all the “poverty and joblessness” that plagues countless Indian communities across the states? Why is it my responsibility to foot the bill for communities that choose this poverty and joblessness?

What else can one expect with high rates of alcoholism? (The “drunk Indian” is a stereotype for a reason.) For context, the rate of alcohol-related deaths in the Navajo community was at one point, twenty times what the total U.S. rate was. Is anyone forcing them to drink and waste their money on booze?

What else can one expect when your community adopts a vice like gambling as a hallmark of your contemporary culture? More context: the Navajo nation alone brings in around $80 million per year in slot machine revenue. There’s that much money floating around, and they can’t start buying their own solar panels, or afford to run power lines to the shacks?

What else can one expect when a substantial portion of the Navajo people choose to affiliate with the criminality of the Mexican cartels for a quick buck?

What else can one expect when the entire nation runs on the largesse of another? Since when have government handouts ever equated to real wealth and prosperity?

Image: Free image, Pixabay license.