Its very difficult containing my frustration and anger when you see things for what they really are here, and not how the media encourages the public to react to these blatant injustices victimizing the native people here in bemidji, in most situations I'm left feeling nothing but total outrage by the pretentious conceptualizations my people are being made subject to here in bemidji, being cast aside to make way for the white mans excessive necessities that are encouraged to overshadow our basic human needs, neglect and racism ravage the very fabric of the native Americans humanity here in bemidji, you have these grown men talking about civilization, and how we lost these ideals, when in fact we've been making progress. It might not be that much, but at least today I can go to walmart without someone trying to kill me for my scalp, but supposedly we let go of these ignorance's to move forward in a civil manner because supposedly we let go of these ideals of 'white privilege' that held America captive for so many generations of my people, so that we may move forward in equality throughout america, but not here in minnesota, not in good ol' Bemidji. This society which the white man evolved around our communities and on lands which I have rights to by Treaty of Law. They share this notion that they believe they have a right, no, they believe its their privilege to overlook our grievances because it may disrupt the comfort they have provided themselves with at the expense of the suffrage of my people. From the working class to the blue collar, the white man shares compensation, whether it be public and psychological wages of giving themselves priority in public matters, functions and programs they have discretely devised to ensure that they remain in their positions of power, to regulate what they believe the Native American is allowed to have, not what we need, but only as long as it doesn't interfere with their agenda or interests. This 'lets just give em enough to keep them settled down' theory is evident, this summer a young native man was killed by the police (which white men have drawn from their ranks). If this was a white man, they would have shown up and given him a warning to settle down and give him a ride to a safe environment, but no, they seen this native man which needed them to put their foot down on. They killed him in cold blood, claiming they did everything they could have in preventing this tragedy that claimed this young mans life, why was he fatally shot? Why not in the leg or in the shoulders? I also suspect from my experience with dealing with these cops here, that they antagonized an already sensitive matter with their notorious lack of humanity of the whole situation. This is an act of 'white privilege.' This leniency is encouraging lawlessness, where as a white man can legally kill an indian without any consequences what so ever. Poorly veiled legalized discrimination exist here in Bemidji, white democrats and white republicans differ on many things, but when it comes to preventing the Native American equality, they walk hand in hand, and react very fondly on these notions they inherently share when it comes to our matters. Most whites of Bemidji haven't dealt with their own issues of inherent racism, because yes, they did inherent this society from their predissessors which treated my people even worse, and it gets worse the farther we look back, and not dealing with it isn't going to make it go away, because very little progress has been made here in Bemidji concerning natives since ol' Tams Bixby and his buddies got together to turn Bemidji in to a health resort for rich white men. Like those of which fuel the institutionalized racism plaguing the work force and devaluing the quality of life of the native people that live here today. We've lived here before Bemidji's founding fathers came here to turn it into this health resort/hate factory fueled on the suffrage of its native people. Property taxes have been raised to push the poor that come here for opportunity out of the city, and back to the reservations, once again this is an attempt of ridding Bemidji of its guilty pleasures of denying anybody who is not concerned with their interests and the poor ideals they reserve for my people. They can exploit the indian dollar, yet they systematically attempt to prevent us from involving ourselves unless we're token to their 'idealistic' on how we indians should deal with their degenerate perspective of us. This system of privilege is ravaging the future of my children's human rights. Whites are afforded opportunities that are unavailable to me here, suburbanization of Bemidji is happening in front of our eyes, do these summer vacationers that frolic in this playground of discrimination see these problems? Do they even care? Or do they manipulate electoral demography to vote here to re-assure that their working class counterpart is here to maintenance the good ol' health resort in their absence so the natives don't get any bright ideas and formulate a plan to release ourselves from these shackles of discrimination? Well, its too late, and you aren't fooling us that those aren't human rights your hiding behind your back either, my father, who was a full blood ojibwe man raised me to refuse these injustices from consuming me like it has consumed so many of our people, we need to re-dedicate ourselves to one another, not let the white man drive these ignorant practices between us here in our community of bemichiigamug, we must take pride in our resistance, we must change the way native people think, wake them up to these injustices and stand strong together in the face of our oppressors.
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