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Wow, you guys are getting screwed. In my area of Wisconsin the HO-CHUNK tribe member's are given $1000 a month from the tribal government. Around here they have some casinos most of which are in small towns and smoke shops (basically gas stations that sell tax free tobacco).

You can imagine how quickly that money is spent

I have seen it here. When I graduated high school a native friend of mine was given $25,000. He spent it all one a limo ride from Wisconsin to NYC and also bought a bunch of booze and weed and rented a cheap hotel room for a week in NYC. It was a fun party, but a waste of an opportunity for him.

Me personally I'd like there to be more people that acknowledge and educate native americans. A lot of people I meet ask very > stupid and borderline racist questions. I used to get very offended but I relaize now that the general population is very uneducated on our culture.

I do not mean to be rude but do you think that could be because natives are a nation inside a nation? You guys have your own tribal lands, cops, court systems and governments ( your may not have all that but some tribes do). I kind of feel like your need to be your own sovereign nation inside a nation leads to isolationism.

I am not saying the tribes should do away with those things but I feel like the natives should reach out to the world more, like you are doing with this AMA.

Improvement though starts with us specifically though. We use past troubles (having our land taken away from us, gambling, alcoholism, etc) as an excuse to justify our laziness.

I do not know the circumstances of your tribe, but the natives that live around me, HO-CHUNK, have similar problems with alcohol and drug abuse. The biggest culprit that I can see is their per-cap,precap I don't know what it is called. Basically the tribe members are given something like $3,000 every 3 months. Add onto that the fact that the tribe gives housing to those in need, has their own healthcare and social services along with food banks and access to free house hold items like soap, tampons, towels, dish soap, toilet paper etc. On the one hand the tribe is providing for its people but on the other it is creating an environment that allows those people in the tribe to continue in the wreckage of their addictions.

I do believe there are some requirements, it acts like welfare to those in need and so does the the rest of the services. One thing I did not mention in my post is that once a HO-Chunk graduates high school they are also given $25,000, if they do not graduate they are given $15,000 at the age of 25 I believe. Now this tribe does not have reservations, they have little suburb like areas in rural parts of the state but that is it and most just live among everyone else.

What do you think about the federal government allowing tribes to legalize marijuana on their lands? The HO-CHUNK tribe by me is setting up to do just that and the Menominee Tribe here in Wisconsin has already done so.