Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Sovereignty, personal and territorial

Apparently, the Oglala Sioux -- a sovereign Native nation -- are offering to create and maintain legal clinics which offer safe abortions within South Dakota borders. The political, legal, and cultural ramifications of this are remarkable, actually.... I don't even want to think about what's going to happen when the Christian right realizes that the reservations -- which they've been missionizing relentlessly for as long as they've been in existence -- are reservoirs of both gambling and abortion, and the only ways around that are going to be either promoting hard-core religious movements on the reservations or breaking down the sovereignty of the First Nations.

2 comments:

The Chainik Hocker said...

..."either promoting hard-core religious movements on the reservations or breaking down the sovereignty of the First Nations."

Neither one of which are very practical.

I like the "First Nations" bit. You crazy liberal, you.

Ahistoricality said...

I didn't say they were practical: I said they were the only options. I am wrong about that: the other option is to just leave it alone, but the Christian Right hasn't been very good at that.... I'm quite sure they will do a great deal of collateral damage in the process, too, which is why I'm worried.

You know, I specifically said I didn't want to think about this....