Tribes beneficial to economy
Hey savvy news reader! Thanks for choosing local.
You are now reading
3 of 3 free articles.
Editor,
I have been treated well by tribal and non-tribal people since I moved to the reservation. I have been hearing non-tribal people grousing about what tribal people have, because our taxes (some of them) go to paying for bridges and housing. Well, we don’t pay on a one-to-one basis. Our taxes go to fund projects and government entities (like the military) all over the country.
So, somebody in Connecticut is paying for our reservation, with no reservation in that state. I’ve heard non-tribal people say that no one in their family fought with, or killed Indians; they emigrated. I’m in that group. I also pay taxes to the same government that paid for fighting with and killing Indians. And I reaped the profits of the land that that government took from the Indians. Am I going to go back to Europe? No. I’m going to live as peaceably as I can, with tribal and non-tribal people alike. Grousing about the pittance of my taxes that goes for tribal use? No.
I see timelines printed about treaties, and this and that, but none seem to go back eight or 12 thousand years. Our government, when it was negotiating these treaties, had guns and a language that was barely understood by the Indians. If I was being negotiated with, and I didn’t quite know what was being said, I’d say yes, and sign, knowing what the guns would do.
Now we all have a tribe, east of the Mississippi, that’s feeding us gobbledygook, and they have guns. This is the U.S. government, and they’ve gotten this large, figured out a hidden language, and gotten this powerful, because we’ve been paying attention to our six-packs and TVs.
Back to the bridge, and housing. That bridge (at Pablo) employed about six entities to be built: an engineering and design firm in Kalispell, a steel fabricator in Kalispell, crane firms, Treasure State Concrete, a welding contractor, traffic control, and a steel supplier. Housing gets most of its supplies from local outfits. I’d say, if it wasn’t for the tribe, there wouldn’t be any economy at all in this valley.
Ried S. Hurtig
Pablo
