Ranchers see public lands as their own.

[jaxexpat]

17. Not to stretch a metaphor too far, but it seems to me, the BLM regulates the western version of "Jim Crow".

In the south, the "40 acres and a mule" promise became the big lie of its age as white people terrorized society and weaponized economics to drive black people from their "lands of opportunity" into perpetual poverty. The agricultural finance business still, last I heard, refuses to treat black applicants the same as their white counterparts. In the west, how many Native Americans lease land for grazing cattle? How many ever tried but were denied access to necessary funding, supplies and markets? Just asking. I have no data to support my supposition, but the theory tracks with facts of current inequities. It's just odd that tribes find funding for the building of casinos at every reservation, but an unusually high percentage of citizens on those reservations have predictably low average incomes, some to the extreme. You drive along a highway in any reservation; nothing but numerous and often derelict modular home habitations and then come upon a multi-million-dollar gambling enterprise. Doesn't seem to make sense to me unless there are dominant elements at work here whose interests are limited to short-term gain with no interest in the communities they rape.