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Do any of you spend any time with or around Native Americans? What are they up to these days?
I've been reading the 1970s novels of James Welch, which describe the modern lives of Native Americans living in Montana and other places; and that's the most up to date information I have. I guess I wonder if they've been absorbed into atomized individualism, if they still have a big alcohol problem, if there are any interesting cultural developments in general.
(In Welch's novels, I would say they've already been partially consumed by the main stream of American life, suffering from a wistfulness and purposelessness that may only partly stem from the loss of tribal structure and power over the land, and which may just as much originate in the inherent pointlessness of American working-class life as some then saw it.)
I know the native Alaskans have done quite well for themselves by selling drilling rights on their land to oil companies. Other stories that have come to my attention over the past few years include the Squamish Nation's proposed high-rise housing project in Vancouver and the court battle over whether half of Oklahoma was actually tribal land and outside the state's jurisdiction.
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