Governor Heineman met with the president of the Ogala Sioux yesterday. It went poorly.
It seems clear that Heineman went in with the expectation that Brewer would attempt to pin sole blame on White Nebraskans for his 'own people's' social problems. And so the gov acted defenseively in what he percevied to be a zero-sum game of moral prestige.
There is no need here to engage the phony dichotomy of blaming only either the society or the individual for poverty addiction or what have you. Everyone accepts as obvious the fact that society influences individuals until that moment when some part of society they identify with is associated with something bad. Then comes the time to righteously lecture on personal responsibility. But never mind all that. The important thing here is that the governor had a job to do. That job was not to defend the innate innocent goodness of 'his people' but to actually talk to this man. On this matter of his own personal responsibility he has unquestionably failed.
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