LP>This is based on the premise that native Indians are just one ethnic
  >group among many.  But I don't think they are.  Here's Professor Miller
  >in 'Skyscrapers hide the heavens':  'Attempts by governments, churches,
  >and the general population to change Indians, Metis, and Inuit into just
  >another ethnic group in the multicultural mosaic have failed.'
Look at the Nanticoke living in South Jersey and in Maryland.  Not given
any official recognition for a couple of hundred years (as a matter of
fact declared extinct), forced to attend Black schools (because they
weren't white, and the Nanticoke didn't exist, so they must be Black),
and forced to all sorts of shinnanegans in order to own property, they
still have a sense of thenselves as a separate people.  The same thing
is true of the Shinnecocks in New York State.
LP>I've come across this view too, and I can see that it looks like a tidy,
  >logical, once-and-for-all solution.  The only answer I've been able to
  >come up with is that Indians aren't recent arrivals.  They used to
  >occupy the whole house.  Then we moved in and told them to be good
  >citizens and occupy the basement.
LP>I'd appreciate hearing how you replied to him.
He ended up writing it as a poem, and I replied more to the poem than to
the ideas in it.  Not all of his ideas were altogether bad, although his
concept that we already have a level playing field is absurb.  He ended
up talking more about the Black situation; and comparing King (whom he
dmires) to Jackson (whom he can't stand); than about Indians.  Implied
in his poem, but not actually stated, was the idea that we lack
spiritual leaders today; all we have are politicians.  I think, for the
country as a whole, that there is a lot of truth to that idea, although
we would probably disagree on what constitutes a "spiritual leader."
                       Sondra
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