With all the real problems that are endemic on Indian reservations:
I just find it hard to take them seriously when this is the issue they hang their hats on. Fix what's broken, fellas.
Quote: highest rate of school drop outs (about 54%),
highest rate of child mortality,
highest rate of suicide
highest rate of teenage suicide ( 18.5 per 100,000),
highest rate of teenage pregnancy,
lowest life expectancy ( 55 years)
Drug abuse and alcoholism have become mass problems among the American Indians (in some reservations eight families out of ten have problems with alcoholism) and unfortunately among their children, too. For those the confrontation with unemployment, environmental destruction, the decay of the reservations and the lack of positive future prospects and leisure time activities to distract them situation, are probably hard to bear.
Caused or at least promoted by drug abuse, there is a lot of crime in the reservations and outside of which the American Indians (especially children) are victims and offenders (especially young adults) at the same rate: Domestic violence, rape, child abuse and child neglect are reported to take place very often in the reservations, with the estimated number of unknown cases being very high.
I just find it hard to take them seriously when this is the issue they hang their hats on. Fix what's broken, fellas.
