The Nacirema

So aparently American Indians are buying up the land that once was theirs. This has become possible recently through the generous donations made by the white man at the native's traditional style gaming longhouses. They are also taking the ironic move of uitilizing a treaty that could only have been a cruel legal kick in the face when it was enacted. After using violence to drive the natives off their lands the U.S. then made it possible for the natives to buy the land back. How generous! Well now the American Indian tribes are using that treaty to take the land they buy out of the tax base of the local municipality it used to belong to and into their own sovjerenty. And OH! to hear the white man cry when you disrupt his tax base!

The thing that pisses me off the most about local governments is that they act as if the land within their boarders and the tax money they expect to bring in is theirs instead of the property of the people they are supposed to serve. Exibit A Now that someone is using the machenery of capitalism and the law to their own advantage and exercising their rights, these local governments cry foul, gnash their teeth, and beat their chests untill the blood comes out. These local government "leaders" need to have a lesson in real American freedom but sadly this is the kind of corruption that infects local government like a festering boil.

In the meantime some crazy fuckers have gone and disturbed a previously uncontacted tribe in the Amazon just to prove they exist. Now droves of anthropologists will stream down there looking for them to figure crap out. Nowhere is Heizenburgs uncertainty principle more appropriately glossed over into a philosophical statement than with regard to anthropology. The presence of the anthropologist that examines the culture alters what he is examining tremendously. All this, and social anthropology can barely call itself a science.