What going on with Native American in the 21th Century!

http://www.thenation.com/blog/177800/florida-state-seminoles-champions-racist-mascoting#

("It’s easy to oppose the name of the Washington Redskins and call for owner Dan Snyder to change his beloved bigoted brand. After all, it’s a dictionary-defined slur bestowed on the NFL franchise by their arch-segregationist, minstrel-loving founder. When you have Native American organizations, leading sportswriters, Republicans as well as Democrats in Congress and even the president say the time has come to change the name, it is not exactly difficult to get on board.

But what about the Florida State Seminoles, whose football team on Monday night won the Vizio/Dow Chemical/Blackwater/Vivid Video BCS National Championship Game? The NCAA, since 2005, has had formal restrictions against naming teams after Native American tribes, and yet there were the Seminole faithful: thousands of overwhelmingly Caucasian fans with feathers in their hair, doing the Tomahawk chop and whooping war chants on national television. Their passions were stirred into a frenzy by a white person, face smeared with war paint, dressed as the legendary chief Osceola riding out on a horse. As Stewart Mandel of Sports Illustratedgushed, “Chief Osceola plants the flaming spear in the Rose Bowl. Awesome.” (Osceola was adopted after the school quietly retired their previous Native American mascot “Sammy Seminole.”)" -Dave Zirin

http://kunm.org/post/health-guides-work-convince-native-americans-try-obamacare

("When he learns that signing up for Medicaid will mean he can visit a nearby hospital in Española instead of traveling to Santa Fe for urgent care, the Native American man sits back in his chair, eyebrows arched. Then he smiles.

“Cool! Oh that’s good,” the gray-haired, middle-aged man from Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo says.

He explains that he’s never had health insurance. His entire life he’s visited clinics and hospitals staffed by the federal Indian Health Service (IHS) agency – a system of care for Native Americans whose director and others say is perennially underfunded. The federal government spends less per capita on health care for Native Americans than it does inmates.")-Byrant Furlow.