Native Americans/Canadians

So I know we usually talk about how hard it is for us young people growing up in a world like the one we live in, but today at school we saw a presentation about life on native reserves, and how horrible the conditions are. It's like, the white men came in hundreds of years ago, gave them all diseases, took all their shit, and put them all on to little crappy pieces of land with practically nothing. I mean, yeah, the government built houses and gave them schools and stuff, but they are WAAAAY worse than the worst houses in the worst neighborhoods outside of the reserves. A lot of them don't even have clean water!!!!

There was some stupid jerk at the presentation who was all like "well why don't they get off their asses and do something about it instead of whining for more money" and I just wanted to get up right then and there and yell at him, "how stupid are you?? Haven't you been listening? They can't just leave, or they will be , and they will lose all their culture. They are like connected to the land and their tribes and stuff! They can't just LEAVE! We should be talking about helping them and what we can do about their problems instead of telling them that we don't care!!!"

It makes me feel a little bit better that there are some people out there (the natives, not the jerk guy) who have troubles like I do.