There are more than a million people in our country who have been robbed of 95 percent of their land, approximately 2.8 million square miles.

These people have been subject to a holocaust -- some estimate that up to 90 percent of their population was destroyed.

And their oppression is ongoing: Although the military's massacres on these people may have ended, the war continues to further dispossess these people.

Native Americans are still around and the war against them has not abated.

They are not just history, they are not all assimilated or dead. They represent many living, vital cultures with unique languages, customs, religions and knowledge.

Though our textbooks told us about the Pilgrims' Thanksgiving feasts, or maybe even the "Indian wars" in the Midwest, the history of Native Americans extends from far before those periods into the present.

It is important to remember that Native Americans inhabited this land for 40,000 years before our Anglo ancestors came here, and that the vast majority of native peoples' land was taken 80 to 100 years ago.

When I first became aware of the nature and enormity of what our government did to these people, I was overwhelmed. What could I possibly do? What could anyone possibly do to right the terrible injustice done here?

How embarrassing, how ironic that it was the result of the creation of America, the policeman of the world, the torchbearer for freedom.

We are not responsible for history, but we are responsible to history. We must see what has happened; white society has benefitted from native peoples' loss.

But guilt is a disempowering feeling, and what needs to be done requires strength. There is much we can do to correct the injustice of the past. It may not be realistic to think we can recover their land and otherwise undo the damage of the past. It is realistic, however, to look at returning certain important tracts of land that are sacred to these people, which our government holds and has reserved for big business' use.

A case in point would be the Black Hills, or the Paha Sapa of South Dakota that are sacred to the Lakota, Nakota and Dakota Sioux. Our government robbed them of the place where they believe their genesis took place. The site is being used to mine gold ore and to pay tribute to our presidents -- Mt. Rushmore is carved into the side of the Hills. The Supreme Court has ruled that it was stolen from them; the U.S. Treasury holds hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation. The Sioux won't take the money and are still fighting for the land.

It is their sacred ground.

It is also realistic to look at how our government's paternalism is still crippling these people. Our government is enforcing native peoples' dependence. As long as that continues, the acculturation process -- and the social dysfunction -- of these people will continue.

These nations of people deserve to live in their own way, to determine their own future by reshaping their educational, economic and political systems as they see fit.

The Office of Economic Opportunity and the Bureau of Indian Affairs need to wake up. Their guiding philosophy since the 1970s has been to give native people the opportunity to help themselves, to end the dependence on our government that brings white culture and its trappings onto the reservations.

But those are just words, and their practices belie their real intent. Most of the money our government provides these people with has strings attached. In some cases, this money has been guaranteed them in treaties.

This policy tells the Native Americans, you can get an education, but in the schools we Anglos have structured. You can have your own tribal government, but we will dictate the political system you will use. We'll build you a house, but you can't plant a garden or trees, or make repairs.

Don't think for a moment that these are hypothetical examples. I've seen these schools, this political system, these houses. This is real.

Stop wondering why there's a handout culture and devastating alcoholism on the reservation, why Native American kids drop out of school at an alarming rate, why the tribal governments are often riddled with corruption and do not represent their communities' interests.

The answers are right in front of us.

Now it's our responsibility to create discussion about these issues to find ways to listen to them and solve these problems, to end our society's ignorance about what has and is happening to the native people of America, and why. We have to start thinking about it.

Thanks to Jerry Mander, Sherry Red Owl of Sinte Gleska University, the department of sociology at South Dakota State and the Pine Ridge Sioux reservation Indian Health Services.