I was reading the Lakota Freedom Delegation website, and here is a list of their reasons for leaving the US:
list (Click to reveal) * Lakota men have a life expectancy of less than 44 years, lowest of any country in the World (excluding AIDS) including Haiti.
* Lakota death rate is the highest in the United States.
* The Lakota infant mortality rate is 300% more than the U.S. Average.
* More than half the Reservation's adults battle addiction and disease.
* The Tuberculosis rate on Lakota reservations is approx 800% higher than the U.S national average.
* Alcoholism affects 8 in 10 families.
* Median income is approximately $2,600 to $3,500 per year.
* 1/3 of the homes lack basic clean water and sewage while 40% lack electricty.
* 60% of housing is infected with potentially fatal black molds.
* 97% of our Lakota people live below the poverty line.
* Unemployment rates on our reservations is 85% or higher.
* Federal Commodity Food Program provides high sugar foods that kill Native people through diabetes and heart disease.
* Teenage suicide rate is 150% higher than the U.S national average for this group.
* Our Lakota language is an Endangered Language, on the verge of extinction.
I can't see how these will be fixed by being their own country. Health is terrible? Let's leave and not have access to US hospitals and doctors and fix these things ourselves (because we obviously couldn't do that under US control somehow). Food programs giving us diabetes? Let's have no food programs at all and grow our own food (obviously the only reason we couldn't do that before is because we had convenient food programs). No water or electricity? Let's lose access to the government provided water and electricity we already have.
Unless I am thinking about this all wrong, it seems like they're making things WORSE than better. These conditions are bad, but I don't see how they're fixing them by removing themselves from what they DO have.
edit: oh man just a few weeks ago my grandma was rambling on about how "the white man and the red man could never be friends" and apparently she was right all along