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Why politics?

The politics that are creating difficulties for Native Americans are mainly consisting of altered treaties, many violated treaties, Indian laws, corruption in some tribal governments, the policies of te BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) in the USA and the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development  in Canada, the desinterest by the media and the general ignoring and ignorance by authorities as well as the public. This general invisibility is something that activists need to fight by making some good noise about it.

This noise is really very much necessary because Native Americans are actually the most forgotten and ignored people on earth. And what many people often don't realize is that the Western media are not really as free, neutral, democratic, balanced or independent as we all may think they are. We only need to turn on the television to see how frequently the same old news items get endlessly recycled, even on the news stations that claim to bring "world news". But the reality of the REAL news is much more diverse than that. Every news station has some kind of opinion or is often dependent on government subsidies from governments that have other interests than gving out the whole truth of what's happening in the world. Most of us really do care about injustice and will have our say about the treatment of women in Arab countries, the treatment of Tibetans by the Chinese authorities, the illtreatment of animals, or the swaetshops in the wellknown low wage countries, but quite often we do not l like to hear the same kind of criticism if it happens to be about our own country. Yet there are injustices taking place in every imaginable country on earth but the changes to improve this, need to happen right there and are dependent on the people who live there and who in their turn need to take an honest look at themselves for this. Criticizing the things that need to be criticized can often mean being accused of being "anti-american" as I have many times experiences but we shouldn't be bothered by this bromide. It is simply inevitable and it's going to happen over and over again anyway. There will always be people who will get offended by it but if it were to deter us then we won't make a change and everything will be just the way it is which is not what was good.

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