I grew up in Arizona prior to the massive growth stemming from Pheonix. My next door neighbors were natives as we live right on the border of the reservation. I grew up surrounded in native culture and it's honestly upsetting to see how ill informed most Americans are of the natives. In elementary and middle school I grew up alongside many natives who's families moved out of the reservations because of work in the towns and cities, so my schools were closely related to and oftentimes named after native culture. Because of this we took a lot of field trips to native historical grounds and read a lot of books centered around the culture for our curriculum. There's a bad stigma attached to natives and gambling or tobacco trade but what people don't see much of is their beautiful artwork and the amazing music. Let's not forget the food. My neighbor would make turquoise pendants for us if we brought her turquoise which we would find quite a bit of in the desert surrounding our house. So I became close to her and she talked a lot about her life and the life of her parents/grandparents.

Now, some reservations are in poor condition and there are some lazy natives but that's found in every single human establishment. From the stories I've heard, it's quite obvious that the natives ties to their culture are extremely deep rooted. What we have done is forced them into poverty. It's just like the situation with African American dominated cities. You cut off on funding and force them to remain in a place where they remain in a vicious cycle of poverty. Some communities may flourish through trade but American society has become a corporate nation where we get a large number of our goods outside of the country. It's not that natives are lazy, it's that we've really hurt the reservations economy by forgetting about them over time.