Over at Daily Kos, Johnny Gunn has a story of a bicycle trip he took in 2005 through Navajo Nation and the reservations of northern New Mexico. The story builds to the allegation that “There are reasons why there are no Whole Foods stores in any of these places – reasons that go beyond population and sales volumes,” which is unfortunate, because the exact reason there are no Whole Foods stores in areas of rural poverty is that the residents of these areas are too few and too poor to create a return on an expensive grocery store format.
Whole Foods is run by a libertarian jackass with views on health care that can most charitably be described as a less intellectually rigorous version of Arthur Laffer. John Mackey also happens to run a pretty good store. Like Howard Schultz, he took luxury products that were once found in a handful of coastal enclaves and decided he could sell them in suburbs around the country. Sure, you can get a beat a Starbucks cappucino by going to Blue Bottle and the fish at Citarella is far superior to anything at WF. But compared with the rest of the full-range supermarket world – the Safeways and Albertsons and Publix and Krogers that decorate our parking lots – it is a world of improvement.
The question shouldn’t be why are there no Whole Foods on the reservation. It should be why are there reservations.
Our nation was born with two mortal sins: the disgraceful treatment of the native population who preceded European settlement and the African population the Europeans brought and worked at point of sword.
It’s rare to find truth in a Glenn Beck show, but there it is – Obama is exactly right, reparations would not suffice. Reparations can be given among distinct parties as settlement for a finished injury. At the end of World War I the victorious powers decided to charge Germany for the cost of the war, to try to impose on Germany the bill for the suffering caused by a war fought largely on French and Belgian soil. That didn’t work so well, because to pay the enormous bill Germany had to redevelop, and redeveloped Germany didn’t feel like paying…so when the Allies won a second time, they settled for stripping Germany of anything remotely portable and called it a day. The real settlement to the grievance was to build a European Community that would actually reduce the incentive to fight.
We cannot offer reparations to the black population for a number of reasons, the most obvious of which being that the black population has as much claim to this country as any other. It isn’t going anywhere, and it is not terribly productive to have a divorce settlement among a couple staying married. No, the proper reparation, the difficult task Obama referenced, is to build an America that actually provides a fair shot for its black population.
The native population is a somewhat different story. The end result of a long string of broken promises is that the remaining tribal members are herded onto semi-sovereign reservations. They have every right to the status quo – God knows it is the least the government owes. But is that a sustainable situation?
There are no jobs on the reservation. There are no jobs on the reservation because reservations are remote, isolated, and governed by tribal law, which is not a justice system to which anyone would entrust vast sums of investment. The lack of jobs creates poverty, and the poverty manifests itself in a terrible educational system. The poverty and the poor education create generations with few skills. An unskilled, isolated population has little chance in the modern world, and staying on the reservation on government assistance means a life of shelf-stable ham, cheese, and beer. A short, unhealthy life.
The saving grace of the reservation is supposed to be gaming, and for a few imaginary tribes such as the Mashantucket Pequots (a tribe with 0 members on the reservation 1973-83 that exists solely because of the IGRA), it has been fantastically successful. That is not a recipe for widespread prosperity, however; indeed, if anything it creates a bit of Dutch Disease where no other form of economic activity can be developed.
I would like to say that the best path forward is to assimilate the native populations, to encourage all Americans to go to the same colleges and follow the same dreams and chase the same jobs to the same suburbs. To empty the Plains and let it go back to buffalo country.
Something in me cringes at the thought of the cultural loss. It is the way of the world – Savoy and Pomerania are mere geographic markers today, though they were once states – but it seems an insult too far after all we have done.
So what is there to do? Try to build a knowledge economy – say, locate an NIH cancer research lab in Kayenta – and watch the majority overrun the reservation? Wait for intermarriage to end the tribes?
I don’t know. Do you?
