Recently in the Our View section of the Morning Sentinel an editorial was run, “Recognizing tribal rights in Maine would boost entire state.” The article strongly promoted giving the four Native American tribes in Maine the same status as the other 570 federally recognized tribes. It gave some bubbly but not totally accurate reasons for doing so.

I have a different tack for this. I believe that the entire reservation system should be scrapped and the lands should be divided up among private citizens. There are a number of easily acceptable facts that support this: Native Americans have the highest poverty rate of any ethnic group in the country and the highest rate of alcoholism of any ethnic group in the country. In addition, we pay hundreds of millions every year to support the reservation system. We are paying for something that clearly does not work, not for native Americans or anyone else.

How did we get into this? The reservation system was the best way at the time to stop the Indian Wars. Those wars are long over. Our government should not in the present be trying to maintain the culture of any one group. It is costing a lot of money and it is not working and it is not fair to anyone else.

Stop and think of the absurdity of having small nominally independent nations in our midst completely surrounded by the richest nation on earth. How independent are they really or ever have been?

Oh, and there’s the guilt trip. They were here first and we took their land. Maybe so, but who is going to pack up, give up their homes and move back to the country of their ancestors? The land was taken, perhaps unfairly, but taken it was.

Gerald Thibault

Skowhegan