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Compass of Compassion: Reflections on a Choctaw Vision of Alliances and Unrecognized Peoples Following Katrina
Abstract
At the height of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, Choctaw writer Cedric Sunray wrote in his Native American Times essay, “Similarities between Tribes and the Ninth Ward”: The word tragedy can hardly signify the extent of the pain being suffered by many in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. While America comes to grips with the enormity of the despair, people, many of them Black, in the previously unheard of Ninth Ward of New Orleans (one of the country’s most impoverished ghettos) already understand the touch, taste, and sound of generations of poverty. A poverty created by a very real caste system, which exists here in the United States of America. And Indians are no exception. Indian country has its own Ninth Ward of . . . individuals and families who have been some of the hardest hit over the course of the past week. . . . As communities of primarily impoverished and identifiable Indian people, we have never had the best of what America has to offer. The prosperity parade doesn’t march down the roads of our communities. And neither will assistance. Our lack of federal recognition has placed us at the mercy of federal bureaucrats and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. We are the neglected of the neglected. You see, it is easy to forget about people, when you marginalize them and pretend they no longer exist. Just ask the people in New Orleans Ninth Ward.
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