Stossel was on Fox & Friends [on March 24] to discuss some high-paying government jobs recently reported in The Daily Caller. The report found that the "Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs needs someone to run the Facebook page for the Dept. of the Interior and they'll pay up to $115,000 a year." Stossel took that as an opportunity to wonder about the entire concept of a Bureau of Indian Affairs.The video:
"Why is there a Bureau of Indian Affairs?" he said. "There is no Bureau of Puerto Rican Affairs or Black Affairs or Irish Affairs. And no group in America has been more helped by the government than the American Indians, because we have the treaties, we stole their land. But 200 years later, no group does worse."
Good to see he includes the "we stole their land" part. So I guess he's not a complete moron. From the Department of State:
The story of westward expansion by European Americans is a basic theme of the American experience, but it also is a history of Indian removal from their traditional lands. Indians lost their lands by purchase and through war, disease, and even extermination, but many transfers of Indian land were formalized by treaty. The Constitution of 1789 empowered Congress to "regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes. Federal policy regarded each tribe as a sovereign entity capable of signing binding treaties with the U.S. Government. In the first 40 years of the new republic, the United States signed multiple treaties with Indian tribes, which usually followed a basic pattern: the signatory tribe withdrew to a prescribed reservation and in return the federal government promised to provide supplies, food, and often an annuity. In 1830, Congress chose to disregard Indian treaty guarantees when it passed the Indian Removal Act, a bill engineered by President Andrew Jackson. Despite its language suggesting a voluntary and fair "exchange" of lands, the act opened the door for the militias of trans-Appalachian and Southern States to simply drive the Indians across the Mississippi by force. The Indians' destination was to be an "Indian Territory" set aside west of Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas.And:
The U.S. Government's inability and unwillingness to abide by its treaty obligations with Indian tribes was clearly related to an insatiable demand for cheap land for European settlers. To make matter more difficult, Indians generally had a different concept of land ownership than Europeans, emphasizing land use for hunting, farming, or dwelling for the tribe, but not recognizing the concept of individual ownership. Indian society was loose, decentralized, democratic, and nonauthoritarian where "chiefs" were often men of respect and informal authority but not designated by the tribe to make decisions. The result was that treaties were often signed with Indian leaders who did not have the authority of the tribe. Whether the system of Indian treaties were ever meant to work is a matter of debate, but in reality, most Indian treaties were broken.Nice to see Stossel acknowledged the treaties as well.
Moron. On Fox "News" of course.
