Yakama Nation man leads anti-immigrant efforts

Source: AP

In the museum gift shop at the Yakama Indian reservation, Wendell Hannigan shows off a small bronze statue of a Native American woman holding a basket full of hops.

Asked if there are Yakama farm workers left, the 66-year-old Yakama Nation member laughs and says, "no, no."

Behind the laughs, though, is Hannigan's conviction that the large influx of illegal Latino immigrants into this reservation, about 160 miles southeast of Seattle, poses a threat to his people.

His beliefs have prompted Hannigan to spearhead efforts for better supervision of undocumented workers - mostly from Mexico - on the reservation, and sponsor a state ballot initiative to impose stricter immigration rules.



Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/6420ap_wa_yakama_latino_tensions.html

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"Intermarriage is also an issue"

sorry, but i find this disgusting! as a quarter NA (shoshone and nez perce) this kind of talk makes me sick. like i'm (to use a children's lit reference) a mudblood or something. this kind of talk is not helpful and will get the tribe nowhere.

I'm not in favor of illegal immigration because it is a tool to smash workers' rights everywhere, to oppress folks, whether they be US-born, legal immigrants and illegal immigrants alike.

On the other hand, this is absolutely silly, particularly since the number of native folks probably goes up with all the immigration we have had. Around here, to my eyes, anyway, the only physical difference between US native population and the Indians who come here from Central America is only that the latter are shorter.

"Gutierrez said most people get along in the area, and that it's just a few people making trouble. She said that Latinos and Native Americans have much in common."

I think it is more a matter of available resources and being crowded for those resources. When I was in college in the early 80's I worked one summer at an Indian Children's Home and Mission in a small reservation town near Yakima. Our food and clothing pantry was open twice a month and each person or family could come in one time a month. I remember that the hispanic farm workers would come on the first of the month and the native families would come on the second open date. The Native families avoided the hispanic families like the plague even though they knew the second session of the month would be more picked over for food and clothing. I always thought it was rather sad. That was the 80's, I can imagine how much worse the immigrant farm worker influx is now. There was already high unemployment on the reservation so the migrant workers just drained the economy further as they took jobs and also resources such as the free food and clothing that was really intended first for the local Native American families.

Considering the average Mexican is more probably more racially native Indian than the average American "Indian" today, this idiot's attitude speaks volumes.