It's messed up. I don't know what the Romas are like, but being half-white half-native in a town parked right next to a reserve kind of forced me to learn all too well about the reserve situation. It's an incredibly destructive atmosphere for a child to grow up in, with anger and bitterness around every corner, being taught from childhood to mistrust the outside world, and a lot of selfish in-fighting for the resources of the reserve. People opt not to work because they get enough "free" money to sustain themselves, but it's not really enough money, so they let their houses and schools and shit run down while they buy Playstations and big screen TVs. Kids grow up in that situation, have their parents telling them not to trust the white man's world, and they end up getting stuck in it themselves. Anyone who leaves the reserve and makes it who tries to come back and help things gets branded as a race traitor.
I'll never forget the time when I was volunteering for a native group at my University. We had some elementary school kids coming in from a reserve, real bright ones. The trip to the university was a prize for doing well in school. They were pretty excited. We basically showed them around the campus and did activities in different areas of learning, fun shit like "excavating" treasure from boxes of dirt, or making a little pillar and then using the press in the engineering department to test its strength, shit like that. The idea was to get them excited about higher education and maybe even a career. The kids had a blast, with this one boy in particular taking a major shining to the engineering stuff.
After the tours, we went back to the centre lounge where the parents were waiting and had a pow-wow. The little boy who was so excited went over and happily told his dad about what he'd seen and how he wanted to be an engineer. His dad kind of got this angry look on his face and scolded the boy, saying "Don't ever trust the white man's world, and don't you ever listen to what any of them say". The poor kid just looked like he'd been told Santa wasn't real.
I wonder what happened to him. I hope he made it out. I bet he didn't.
I've worked pretty closely with our district's Native Education coordinator at work. She and her husband are full-blood Natives with Master's degrees who push the value of education on their kids. It's really tough for them, since they've made a point of continuing to live on the reservation, but at the same time not wanting their kids to fall into the rut that most do. I know they get "looked down on" by other members of the tribe.
Also, I've got some native blood (1/4) and am a registered member of my tribe (Ottawa). I don't make a big deal out of it, but the previous director of Native Education sure did and liked to talk it up to families. It always made me feel bad, because to everyone, I'm just some white guy.
CT has reservations too, but I don't know how the casinos impact things...
Everyone who lives on the reservation gets a profit check a few times a year. People on the council tried to tie school attendance into check dispersal, but all it did was make the kids show up for a few weeks and then stop coming again. And a lot of families blew through that many incredibly fast. I lost count of how many times kids would come to school and tell me that they had their power/water turned off because someone didn't pay the bill. Or how they couldn't sleep the night before because their mom was partying all night and kept them up.
