re: #27 William Barnett-Lewis

Here in Hayward, I live next to a rez where they do much of the same. One of the best things they do is they have a public radio station (WOJB, streaming online!) that does much to help white/native relations in this community.

We were driving through the rez lately (it’s a shortcut to my MiL’s cabin) and noted how much better the houses look since our childhood. The fact that there are fire hydrants every few hundred meters along the main road now. The new school (elementary & secondary) buildings. The clinic. The college. Yeah, it’s still not exactly a rich neighborhood, but if you had seen the insane level of grinding poverty that was the rule here in the 70’s? And if you knew that this place was always comparatively rich when compared to places out in the Dakotas or the south-west? Then you might begin to understand how important these things are to the people who live here. They’re moving, slowly, from the fourth world to the first.

All funded by drunk white folks betting against the house in the casino ;)

I’m not big on gambling, but I do get a huge laugh out of how the tribes have used our idiocies to get back at us via our wallets.

There’s a reason I don’t gamble…