Me thinks historically and by todays standards, there has been lots of "wanton waste" in rural Alaska by the Native population. Not all of it was intentional, a lack of quick transportation and refrigeration did not help. Over the last few years multiple reports of caribou slaughters have been reported and left to tribal courts to deal with. A white person is not treated the same.
History says over 30 million Bison were slaughtered over a 10 year period by hide hunters and the pickled tongues were shipped back East and the U.S. Govt. believed it would force Native Americans onto reservations. Pretty sick in my opinion. No one ever came up with a figure on how many Bison were killed by being run off of cliffs and ran off with an arrow in there body only to die a slow death. Lots of meat was left to rot due to no way to preserve it other then smoking and drying.
The white man committed many atrocities on the Native Americans. Native Americans committed many atrocities against other Native Americans. They murdered each other, raped each other, enslaved each other and tortured each other. They ran other tribes out of their "traditional" hunting grounds. If any one thinks the Sioux were the first ones in the Dakotas, Montana, etc. they don't know history. None of those tribes ever gave back any thing they took from a weaker tribe, weakness was not respected. Only the white man gave land back, gave money, gave hospitals, housing, etc.
Alaska's villages are not a Shangri-La. Murders, rapes, incest, domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse are the norm.
I have been in Alaska for 54 years and my Native Alaskan wife of 43 yeas was born here. We love this place and it's people of all races. We both believe every one should be treated the same and that Alaska is much better off because the U.S. bought the place from Russia. Picture Alaska and the native population if Russia still owned the place.
