US should return stolen land to Indian tribes, says United Nations

[YellowRubberDuckie]

41. We grew up really close to a reservation.

Let me preface this with saying that my father was Native American, I was raised understanding my heritage, and I was friends with a lot of the children in school that I am about to speak about. The only family life a lot of them saw, as screwed up as it was, was mine.
Anyway: There were many Native Americans in our town. They didn't live in the horrible conditions shown in the pictures, but they were close. The tribe in our area now has a casino, although that wasn't always the case. Now people are working, but back when I was a kid they didn't. My parents owned the liquor store in a small town. The Native Americans in town kept us in government commodities (Cheese, peanut butter, etc) which they traded to my dad for booze. And when they got their government checks, they would by large amounts of alcohol.
In El Reno Oklahoma, a town 20 miles south of where I grew up where the reservation actually is, they have to have what they call the Indian Education Program. They had to start it after the horrific amount of Native American children who were sent to school without school supplies. They provided what their parents refused to provide. These poverty stricken people refuse to work, barely kept a roof over their kids' heads, sent them to school in dirty, filthy clothes, and the only meals these kids got were free lunches at school. That is terribly depressing. This is the image of Native Americans that I grew up with. The subsidies provided to Native Americans have hurt them far more than it has helped them. The Elders have tried to reverse this cycle, and in some tribes this has worked, but in the one in our area, I think they are too far gone, even with the casinos they own and run now. There is no push for them to get educated, even though they could go to any state school for free. Three of my friends went to nursing school and are making something of themselves and their children are way better off for it. I wish that was the norm around here, but unfortunately, it isn't and I doubt it ever will be.
The parents of those children (in the pictures) should be ashamed of themselves. The US Government in a different time with a different group of Native Americans started this mess. In order to fix it, it is going to take a lot of work from EVERYONE to stop this cycle. And it's not going to happen as long as we keep letting them play the victims and don't hold them accountable for the decisions they made in their lives that put those children in that situation. If other tribes weren't doing that and promoting Tribal Pride and making something of themselves like the Chickasaw and the Cherokee, then I would agree with everything, but that is not the case. I've seen this crap with my own eyes and it isn't pretty. That is the side of this story no one will tell you.