A democracy that will meet our standards.

I'm trying to demystify our predicament here. I understand a conservative perceptive, or a traditional, fundamentally, theological, authoritarian view, which is not new in Indian country. But I'm trying to confront the vulnerability of a inadvertent, pretentious Native conservative bid to hegemony Native political based issues. If the elimination is necessary for the condition of poverty amongst Native people, it is substantive to confront it presence in order to achieve Native progress. The affirmation of our humanity, especially amongst ourselves as Native Americans, is a sufficient condition of such a progress. Such affirmation speak to existential issues of what it means to be a degraded Native person in a racist society. You need to ask yourself how do you affirm yourself without reenacting negatively to Indian stereotypes or overreacting to white supremacist ideals? The difficult and delicate quest for Native identity is integral to any talk about racial equality. Yet it is not solely a political or economic matter. The quest for Native Identity involves self-respect, and self-regard, realms inseparable from, yet not identical to, political power and economic status. The flagrant self-loathing amongst some Native working and middle class bears witness to this painful process. Unfortunately, conservative minded Natives more commonly focus on the issues of self-respect as if it were the one key that will open all doors for Native progress. Most times they illustrate the fallacy of trying to open all doors with one key: they wind up closing their eyes to all doors except the one that fits their particular key. But even the Natives that consider themselves progressive(democrat) for the most part must take up a serious quest for self-respect, even as we train our eyes on the institutional cause of Indian social misery. The issues of Native Identity -both Native self love and self contempt sit alongside Indian poverty as a reality to confront and transform. The uncritical acceptance of self-degrading ideals that call into question Native intelligence, possibility, and beauty not only compounds Native social misery but also paralyzes Native working and middle class efforts to defend broad redistributive measures. This Paralysis takes on two forms: Native bourgeois preoccupation with white peer approval and Native nationalist obsession with white racism. The first form of paralysis tends to yield a navel-gazing posture that conflates the identity crisis of the Native working middle class with the state of siege raging in the more commonly Native working poor and very poor communities. That one dimensional view obscures the need for redistributive measures that significantly affect the majority of Natives, who for the most part are working people that fell into or are on the edge of poverty by little fault of their own. The second form of paralysis precludes any meaningful coalition with white progressives because of an undeniable white racist legacy of the modern western world. The anger this truth engenders impedes any effective way of responding to the crisis in Indian country. Broad redistributive measures that will give us a say in environmental issues that effect our way of life require principled coalitions, including a multiracial alliance of like minded people.Without such measures, Indian countrys suffering will deepen. And white racism does indeed contribute to this suffering. Yet an obsession with white racism often comes at the expense of a more broad based alliance to effect social change and borders on our tribal mentalities. The more xenophobic versions of this viewpoint simply mirror the white supremacist ideals we are trying to survive by opposing and it preclude any movement towards redistributive goals. How one defines themselves influences what analytical weight one gives to the Native predicament. Any progressive discussion about the current and future of our racial equality must speak to Native poverty and Native identity.