Shawn Reagan and Terry Anderson of the Property and Environmental Research Center in Bozeman, Mont., estimate native subsurface wealth to include: 30 percent of the nation’s coal supply, 50 percent of our uranium reserves, and a whopping 20 percent of our known gas and oil reserves, a bonanza worth an estimated $1.5 trillion in 2011 dollars.

That equals $1.5 million for every tribal member in the United States.

Tonto is rich but his wealth is being kept from him by those awful federal plutocrats who enjoy endless perks at the expense of the rest of us.

This not to say that is not some exploitation of reservations resources. But the amount is a paltry 1.5 million acres compared to known resources covering 15 million acres of known energy and mineral resources.

Far from being “sovereign,” American natives are imprisoned in islands of contrived poverty floating on a sea of their own wealth denied to them by overweening, self-serving nincompoops, who like all liberals, believe they know best.

Unless or until the American natives demand access to their own subsurface wealth, they will be kept in serfdom for no reason other than the eternal phenomenon of the corruption of those in power over them and us.

The plight of the American Native is the plight of us all.

Our government has become a self-serving Leviathan, bent only on self-advancement by placing their tax-demanding jackboots on our collective necks.