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Published: Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Native Americans' plight merits public's attention

With all the emphasis on the plight of immigrants, both legal and illegal, in the United States today, perhaps it is time to tackle the problems of the most persecuted minority in the nation - our Native Americans.

In the period after the Civil War, with settlers rushing to the Great Plains to grab free land and prospectors penetrating the mountains and deserts in their search for gold and silver, the Indian tribes were considered by the politicians and the U.S. Army as little better than savages who needed to be eliminated by any means possible.

So the buffalo hunters killed millions of buffalo, the main food source for the Plains Indians, and white settlers took over their land. Even the Wall Street Journal says life expectancy on the Pine Ridge reservation (Sioux) is the lowest in this hemisphere except for Haiti.

Suicide rates for Native American teenagers and young adults are three times higher than the national average. The Navajos in New Mexico and Arizona are in desperate need of water, because their few streams were poisoned by the uranium prospectors.

On the Rosebud reservation, 59 percent of the homes are substandard. In Montana, the Cheyenne and Crow children go to a school without indoor plumbing.

It is a grim picture, and we ought to do something about it.


Locate new visitor center at the old county jail?

I've got an idea that could solve several problems without creating more government and more taxes! Why not locate the visitor center at the old county jail? Also locate the dog pound at the jail. Of course, some minor renovations would be necessary. If enough space is still available, a drunk tank could be used for the overflow that will undoubtedly occur when the alcohol petition passes. This would require some agreement of City Council members, so I doubt my suggestions will ever see the light of day.


Pregnant man' headline prompts many questions

On July 3, a national network news headline reported "Pregnant man' gives birth to baby girl." That headline gets attention because the truth is only a woman can give birth to a baby.

Can a surgeon's knife or a prescription for hormones really turn a woman into a man? One estimate says the human body is made of 20 to 30 trillion cells. What about the two X chromosomes in almost every cell of this woman's body? (Only cells which have to do with reproduction of a baby do not contain a pair of those chromosomes.) Did not our biology classes teach us that it is the XX chromosomes in women and the XY chromosomes in men in almost every cell of our bodies that determine sex? Is it possible to change the chromosome pairs in all those cells in the body?

On the tower at the University of Texas are the words of a respected teacher: "'Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." Are our biology departments weighing in on what really determines a person's sex? Is it mentally healthy for a person to try to deceive herself that she is a man when she is actually a woman? Is it mentally healthy for the baby born to live in a home that practices that deception? Are psychology departments weighing in on what is actually mentally healthy in this situation?