#WakeUp
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Lisa Christiansen Companies™
Imagine if the government were responsible for looking after your best interests. All of your assets must be managed by bureaucrats on your behalf. A special bureau is even set up to oversee your affairs. Every important decision you make requires approval, and every approval comes with a mountain of regulations. How well would this work? Just ask Native Americans. The federal government is responsible for managing Indian affairs for the benefit of all Indians. But by all accounts the government has failed to live up to this responsibility. As a result, Native American reservations are among the poorest communities in the United States. Here’s how the government keeps Native Americans in poverty. Indian lands are owned and managed by the federal government. Chief Justice John Marshall set Native Americans on the path to poverty in 1831 when he characterized the relationship between Indians and the government as “resembling that of a ward to his guardian.” With these words, Marshall established the federal trust doctrine, which assigns the government as the trustee of Indian affairs. That trusteeship continues today, but it has not served Indians well. Underlying this doctrine is the notion that tribes are not capable of owning or managing their lands. The government is the legal owner of all land and assets in Indian Country and is required to manage them for the benefit of Indians. But because Indians do not generally own their land or homes on reservations, they cannot mortgage their assets for loans like other Americans. This makes it incredibly difficult to start a business in Indian Country. Even tribes with valuable natural resources remain locked in poverty. Their resources amount to “dead capital”—unable to generate growth for tribal communities.
transcript;
shattering conventional wisdom if you ever been to an Indian Reservation if you have you probably saw serious poverty and alcoholism and drug abuse so because there's something about Indians that makes them lazy or irresponsible no when Indians own their own land they do about as well as other Americans Manny Jules wants to see more of that he was chief of the Kamloops Indian band in Canada for 16 years Manny why are so many Indians so poor well first of all John nobody chooses poverty one of the things that's happened is we've been legislated out to the economy by the federal government's both in the United States and Canada what do you mean they've been taking care of you that sounds like the best deal and well by taking care of us that means providing social welfare programs the only way to break the cycle of poverty I believe is by the recognition that every other Canadian and American takes for granted and that's real property rights so in Canada as in much of the u.s. reserves they are owned by the government yes so the Indian has some piece of paper that says this is my lot but underlying that title is the fact that in Canada the federal government owns the land so you can't borrow against you can't borrow you can't get a mortgage you can't be bonded there's nothing that you can have that'll be allow you to be able to go to the bank on your own without the minister co-signing that loan let's bring another guest from perk economists Terry Anderson into this Terry you find Indians do much better when they own their own land yes John I first got interested in this subject in 1976 when I visited a member of the Flathead Indian Reservation and while visiting his house I just how well off he was he was not in poverty and I asked how do you explain this and I'll never forget him leaning across the table resting his chin on his hand and elbow saying I this place and that was my first introduction to the fact that many reservations in the United States do have some fee simple land that is privately owned land like you and I owned our houses and the Indians that have privately owned land do much much better their land is way more productive than the land that is overseen by the federal government held in for us and Natives managed said more productive you found yes the the the statistics are just astounding I've done a lot of gathering of those data and they show that that fee simple lands are anywhere from 40 to 90 percent more productive then the the lands held in trust and as Manny said these Indians who have their land under the trustee ship of the federal government can't borrow against them they are really locked into a poverty cycle as a result it is pretty amazing that no group has been more taken care of by big government than the Indians and no group in America has done worse well fundamentally the root of the problem is the fact that we don't have the same property rights as others take for granted and that has to fundamentally change we have to be able to recognize the collective ownership by the tribe or the band and free the imagination of the individual entrepreneur we've had economies that went back many many millennia and were successful until 1492 and Terry you found that that Indians had a form of property rights before white settlers came here and messed that up before before contact with White's Indians were we're very much aware of markets and trading and property rights some Indians actually owned the salmon streams they managed those streams so that they let the larger salmon go up to spawn and the result is that even today those streams have larger salmon than the streams that were held in a commons owned by everyone and hence the managed by no one the clan not an individual Indian but a clone would on the stream and why today would they still have more salmon that just goes back to to what was superior management over a century ago and at the same time I should note we are mismanaging our salmon stocks by chasing them around the ocean open ocean and over harvesting salmon and many other fish species we could learn from what the Native Americans did to husband their resources and you say you can see the private property difference just by driving through some Indian land oh it's fascinating to drive through a reservation in the West recently I drove through the crow Indian reservation in south-central Montana and when you would come to a fence line and on one side see over grazing a few scrawny cattle maybe maybe a house and if so not a very livable house right next door you would see cultivated fields irrigation systems beautiful barn home and so on and you don't even need to look at the property records to know that the productive one is held in private and the other one is held in common in trust by the federal government Indians on both sides of the road but private property on one you can even see it from the Google Maps the difference you can see it from the Google Maps it's it's fascinating to just google a reservation the Blackfeet reservation the correctors Blackfeet there's not much development very few farms here's one where they have your kind of property rights you can see the same thing on manis reserves where they have managed to develop an industrial park they're creating jobs creating wealth and at least getting one foot up the ladder out of poverty mani I'll give you the last word on this well what we have to do is reverse 500 years of colonization put First Nations Indian tribes in the driver's seat we can be successful where the federal and governments in both countries have failed and the only way that that ultimately can be resolved as by granting us the right to be able to own our own lens Thank You Terry Anderson Thank You Manny Jules coming up we return to my local park why is it so nice when so many parks are a mess but next how clever ways to mark property helped make America rich you
